What do you think will be harder, Bethpage Black or St. Andrews.
My thoughts :
St Andrews - Fast greens, LONG greens, hard to get a birdie without being precise.
Bethpage Black - Hard Fairways, easy greens.
Bethpage has a harder slope rating than st andrews so that would be my answer
St Andrews does not have faster greens. The size of them tends to help your score rather than hurt it, you can miss many of the hole locations and still have a 40 foot putt for birdie rather than a trap shot or a difficult pitch. You can also run the ball to the hole at St Andrews and are not required to carry everything a precise distance. Having played both of these in person, there is no comparision....St Andrews is now a tourist trap, if you want quality golf in Scotland there are dozens better.
I think BPB is by far the more challenging course, St. Andrews is relatively flat with humongous greens. Along with everyone TarHeels said above, it BPB is a significant amount harder being a par 70 rather than a par 72, as the two long par 4s are very long par 4s, almost unreachable at times.
Bethpage by far...... the ruthless back 9 just says it all
Yep, Bethpage will definitely be harder that St. Andrews, especially because of the back nine, where par is an extremely good score there. St. Andrews's difficulty will likely be between Bethpage and Kiawah. Kiaway will probably be easier than St. Andrews because it has 4 par 5's and St. Andrews only has 2.