Alex Elias Founded in 1897, Belleair Country Club is the oldest club in Florida. Originally a six-hole course, the West Golf Course expanded to eighteen holes in 1909. In 1915, Donald Ross redesigned the West Golf Course, while adding the East Golf Course. Less than a decade later, in 1924, Ross returned and revised both courses based on another decade of experience designing courses across the U.S. In 2020, Belleair Country Club hired Fry/Straka Global Golf Course Design to oversee the restoration of the West Golf Course. To restore the course to Ross’ 1924 design, Jason Straka turned to historical records stored at the Tufts Archives at Pinehurst Resort (Pinehurst, North Carolina) and The Bellview Inn (Belleair, Florida). "The vast bulk of the work we did at Belleair was to undo what had been done over the past sixty years," said Straka. "Through previous rebuilds, where the greens had been built on top of the previous greens, rather than having been removed and rebuilt at the same grade, and decades of top-dressing, the greens had been raised significantly – five, six, seven feet in the air, even more in some cases. As a result, there was a big misconception that Ross' greens were inverted saucers, but that couldn’t be anything further from the truth." As the greens had drastically strayed from Ross' vision, the green on the Par-3 4th had been pushed up several feet, with runoffs in all directions, to where if you stood on the tee, you couldn't see the Intracoastal Waterway behind the green. Restored to Ross' design, No. 4 now plays slightly downhill to island green surrounded almost entirely by sand. Jim Slattery, Director of Golf at Belleair Country Club, described the Par-3 as "incredibly restored" and "absolutely beautiful." "Not only does the green now sit down, offering a view of the water, but it appears as if the water is directly behind it, when in fact there’s two fairways between the green and the water," said Slattery. The fourteenth green was perhaps the most dramatic. Straka said, "As we reviewed Ross' notes, Ross had a four-foot backsplash on the fourteenth green, where if you hit it slightly long, the ball would feed back towards the center of the green, but when we stood there, the green was built up like a volcano, falling away on each side." "When we started lowering the fourteenth green, we went through the layers of the old greens, like a birthday cake. On most greens, we knew when we got down to the original grade because the surrounding grade was tied in better, but on the fourteenth we hit the old railroad bed, which Ross had built the green on," said Straka. Straka’s restoration of Ross’ cop mounds, “inverted bunkers,” and streams, which come into play on eleven of the eighteen holes, had an immense effect on restoring the course to how Ross intended for it to be played. Referencing No. 3, which Straka admitted, "was painstakingly restored to Ross’ design," Slattery said, "The strategy has really come back to life." "With the return of the cop mounds and streams, you can really see how brilliant Ross was. Members would tend to hit away from the stream, but with the return of the cop mounds, players are forced back towards the center, bringing the stream into play. On No. 3 especially, but really throughout the entire course, players now have to think about the risk/reward much more on the tee," said Slattery. In all, Straka restored seventeen holes and replaced an existing Par-3 with the Par-3 7th. The downhill Par-3 7th plays to a peninsula green that extends into the Intracoastal Waterway. Although there was some hesitancy to design a new hole, Straka said, "The consensus was that if Ross had had access to the land, then he would have used it,” as at the time the peninsula was owned by the town of Belleair.
"If you hit it short, long, or right, you're in the water, and if you hit it left, you're in a bunker, and possibly cop mounds. It's a demanding hole, but the view trumps even the difficulty of it," said Slattery.
1 Comment
1/8/2025 04:30:57 am
This article does an excellent job of showcasing the deep connection between golf course architecture and its historical context. The restoration of Ross’ design is a testament to the timelessness of great design.
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