Getting tee times at Bethpage State Park Golf Course is no easy endeavor, but Brooklyn resident Eric Bengyak discovered that he isn’t just fighting his fellow golfers in order to get a tee time at the famed public course, which will serve as the site of the Ryder Cup in September.
Bengyak said that he discovered a larger issue of bots gaming the course’s reservation system and hindering local golfers’ ability to play at the publicly funded course. And it has kicked off a crusade by the Brooklynite to get Bethpage and foreUP to correct the issue.
Bethpage is a public course operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and foreUP is the software vendor contracted by the state to handle the course’s online reservation system.
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“Ultimately, I’m just trying to play golf,” Bengyak told The Post in a phone conversation. “That’s what I want. I see a system that’s broken, that’s not working, and I want it to be fixed. I’m trying to highlight the issue to the people who have the ability to fix it, because it’s beneficial for all golfers in New York and for the taxpayers of New York.”
The use of bots to scoop up large swaths of tee times has been a growing problem nationwide — with courses in San Diego and Los Angeles making headlines last year, and now reaching the “People’s Country Club.” Bengyak began exploring the issue after he noticed more and more golfers in the “No Laying up New York City Metro Group” he is a part of struggling to reserve times to play at Bethpage.
He quickly noticed that when he would sign on to reserve a tee time seven days out — the allotted time New York State residents are provided to reserve spots through the foreUP system — that they would disappear within “five seconds.” And Freedom of Information Act data he requested from the state seemed to support the notion that bots were eating up a significant chunk of the tee times across Bethpage’s five courses — Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and the famed Black course.
“It was pretty eye-opening. There are actually more tee times canceled than played at Bethpage on every single course,” he explained, adding that of tee times booked between 7 p.m. and 7:01 p.m., right when registration opens, just 35 percent showed up to play. “I mean, that’s, that’s astonishing, right? Who is logging on at 7 o’clock, seven days prior, booking a tee time and then not showing up?”
In state data that Bengyak shared with The Post, in August 2024 there had been roughly 450 more rounds of golf that had been canceled than played on both the Black and Red courses at Bethpage, and just 40 percent of tee times booked seven days in advance were ever played.
All of this suggested to Bengyak that bad actors and third-party services were employing bots to book tee times, leaving residents missing out on them or having to pay marked-up prices to book them through other means.
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In a statement to The Post, the Parks & Rec office acknowledged the bots issue, calling it a “nationwide concern” and said while saying they are “ working closely with the reservation system provider, which has already started “to develop and implement additional safeguards to enhance the experience for all golfers.”
ForeUP said in a statement to The Post that it is “fully committed to empowering its customers with the knowledge and tools they need to enforce their course policies and reduce bot interference.” The company also said that it “will take a multi-pronged, scalable approach to combat this complex issue.”
The golf course software company said that it has implemented mandatory credit card information being provided at the time of booking, along with non-refundable booking fees, enabling reCAPTCHA and the use of verification identity technology, among other strategies.
Lawmakers in New York have also taken notice of the issue, with bills making their way through the State Senate and Assembly. The Blocking Illegitimate Reservations and Defending Individual Entertainment Act, or “BIRDIE Act,” would prohibit third-party reservation services from listing, advertising, promoting or selling reservations for golf courses that are state-owned, with fines for those in violation. and would elicit a monetary penalty for anyone who violates the legislation.
Though courses like Bethpage would still need to work with their reservation system partners to weed out bots, Assemblyman Ed Ra — the sponsor of the Assembly bill — believed that the legislation would help fight the issue.
“I do think if you have a stronger deterrent, hopefully that will help them, and that there’s real penalties for somebody who’s doing this,” Ra told The Post by phone. “These are public parks. These are parks our taxpayers should have access to at least a fair shot at getting a tee time.”
“Obviously, Bethpage Black is gonna be in high demand, especially this time of year with the attention we’ll get from the Ryder Cup. But really, if anybody’s making money off of booking and selling a tee time, they’re misusing the public’s resources. It’s something that I think we needed to take a little bit more seriously in terms of penalties and deterrents from people doing that.”
