Belleair Country Club - West

Golf at Belleair began in 1897, when Henry B. Plant opened his Belleview Hotel with a six-hole course beside it, laid out roughly where holes 1, 2, 3 and 18 of today's West Course run. The greens were crushed shell. Under Joseph J. Eldridge the course grew to nine holes with sand greens by 1899, the year Plant died, and his son Morton F. Plant took over. The club credits Morton Plant's experiments with Indiana topsoil for the first grass greens in the South. The course reached eighteen holes in 1909. The Belleview Hotel stood until 2017, when most of it was torn down; a portion was moved about 100 yards south and restored as today's Belleview Inn.

The club dates Ross's commission to 1915, when Morton Plant gave him an open checkbook to build two eighteens for the resort: Belleview Course No. 1, today's West, which reworked the existing eighteen, and Course No. 2, the inland East. The club's timeline also quotes M. L. Ballard in Golf Magazine, which it dates to 1914: "Mr. Ross laid out two fine 18-hole courses, modern in design and up to date in every way." The courses were renamed West and East in 1920.

Ross came back in 1924 to revise both courses, and Straka says Ross meant to make the West harder. He was on site for the original design and again for the remodel, and he left construction drawings, cross-sections and notes in his own hand. These survive in the Tufts Archives, the club's files and the Belleview hotel archives.

Holes to Know

The West plays 7,123 yards from the Green tees, par 35 out and 37 home. The front nine has two par 3s and a single par 5. The back nine opens with the par-5 10th, the 231-yard par-3 11th and the 636-yard 12th, and holds three par 5s in all.

The 178-yard 4th from the Green tees (stroke index 17) is the hole the restoration set out to bring back. Connor T. Lewis, a member who pushed for the restoration, has written that Ross built it as a short one-shotter to a green completely surrounded by sand, and Golf Course Architecture has published a 1924 photograph of that green. The 2022 work restored it to the 1924 design, the green almost an island in sand with the bay behind. Writing during construction, Lewis said about 70 percent of the ring would be rebuilt, with the back of the green left in grass for maintenance access and as a bail-out, and the forward tees staggered to the right with a zero-entry route out of the front-right bunker.

The 412-yard 6th from the Green tees (stroke index 7) runs along Clearwater Bay. In 2022 it was moved back to its original waterside position, lowered to meet the water and given a new seawall.

The 182-yard 7th from the Green tees (stroke index 15) is the course's one new hole. Its green sits on a promontory surrounded by the bay on three sides, land the club leased from the Town of Belleair in 2020 and that Ross never had.

The 636-yard 12th from the Green tees is the longest hole on the card and stroke index 2.

The 413-yard 14th from the Green tees (stroke index 10) has the most dramatically lowered green on the course. While digging it out, the crew found the railway bed Morton Plant had laid to bring visitors to the hotel, and the green now sits on top of it.

Ross's Design Here

The plans Fry/Straka worked from are the 1924 revision. They are mostly on graph paper, marked with heights but not exact contours, so Straka overlaid them on a modern image of the site to produce construction drawings. They show that all but two of Ross's greens had entries at zero grade, open to a running approach. Excavation found two or three generations of drainage stacked under some greens, the first green among them. Rebuilds layered on old greens and decades of topdressing had raised surfaces five to seven feet or more, the source of the West's later inverted-saucer greens. Restored to Ross's contours, the greens have big slopes, tall ridges and buried mounds.

Ross's 1924 sheets also specified "cop" bunkers: mounds sitting in what he called the fair green, faced with sand and wiregrass, with cross-sections showing how to build them. Straka gave the 16th as an example: if Ross drew a cop seven feet high there, it was built seven feet high. Sanded mounds were also restored on the 11th. The bunkers are sand-faced, as in the vintage photographs used in the research, rather than grass-faced.

The fairways were widened by about half to Ross's widths. The natural streams that two large ponds near the bay had replaced were put back as meandering watercourses and now come into play on eleven holes.

Historical Significance

Belleair is a course Ross designed and then redesigned himself within a decade, with his drawings and notes surviving. Laurie Auchterlonie, the first professional (1900 to 1910), won the 1902 U.S. Open. Alex Smith, his successor, won the 1910 U.S. Open while at Belleair. Billy Burke, the professional from 1930 to 1943, won the 1931 U.S. Open and the 1932 Florida West Coast Open at Belleair.

In the 1923 Florida West Coast Open, played on Ross's original layout before the 1924 revision, Walter Hagen shot 62, then a world record by the club's account. On 1 March 1935 more than 2,000 spectators watched Bobby Jones and Burke beat Horton Smith and Ky Laffoon in an exhibition four-ball.

The American Society of Golf Course Architects visited Belleair four times in its first 16 years after its founding in 1947. Jason Straka was the Society's president during the restoration.

Unranked before the restoration, the West entered Golfweek's Best lists in 2024, tied fourth among Florida's private courses and tied 77th among classic courses in the United States. The Donald Ross Society scheduled both courses for its January 2024 Clearwater Getaway.

Changes Since Ross

The courses were leased to the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943 and used as drill grounds for more than 3,000 trainees, and they were brought back into play from 1946. U.S. Steel bought them in 1971, and in December 1986 the members bought the club for $15 million. Over the following decades trees closed off the bay views, two large ponds were dug near the shore, and the greens rose with each rebuild. Gene Bates was hired in 2002 for a 36-hole renovation that was to keep the routing; the club records a $2.7 million West renovation in 2003. Before 2022 the greens and bunkers had been rebuilt every few years, most recently in 2007. The club also says the hole sequence has changed since Ross.

The restoration was planned from 2016, with Fry/Straka chosen in 2017. A survey showed the members wanted a faithful restoration rather than a routine renovation, and that sent the club to the Tufts Archives for Ross's plans. Army Corps of Engineers permitting delayed the start by two years. Clarke Construction began in March 2022, and the course reopened on 30 November 2022 after eight months and just under $9 million. More than a thousand trees came out and the two ponds were removed. Some greens were lowered by as much as twenty feet, every green was rebuilt to USGA specification with Ross's 1924 contours, and the fairways were widened. TifEagle went on the greens and Bimini bermuda everywhere else. Straka said the bulk of the work was undoing sixty years of changes.

The new par-3 7th is the one hole Ross did not lay out. The club leased its promontory, the northern tip of Hallett Park on Bayview Drive, from the Town of Belleair in 2020 for $350,000 plus $20,000 a year for 30 years. Fry/Straka calls the result a hybrid of restoration and renovation.

Uncertainties

• The club dates Ross's commission to 1915 but places the Golf Magazine report of his two finished courses in 1914. This listing uses 1915, the date the club, Golf Course Architecture and Fry/Straka all give.

• Hole numbers in Straka's 2022 remarks (the cop at the 16th, the mounds at the 11th) come from Ross's plans or the construction phase, and the club says the sequence has changed since Ross, so they may not match today's card.

• Sources disagree on which hole was dropped to make room for the new 7th. Top 100 Golf Courses says it was a front-nine par 3, and this listing does not name it.

• The sources do not say whether Hagen's 1923 round of 62 was played on the No. 1 or the No. 2 course.

Sources & Notes

1. Belleair Country Club, About Us and history timeline, https://www.belleaircc.com/about-us. 1897 to 1924 history, Golf Magazine quote, professionals, Hagen and 1935 exhibition, 1943 to 1986 ownership, 2016 to 2022 restoration, the 7th's lease, rankings, 2026 East renovation.

2. Belleair Country Club, Golf page and hole-by-hole card, https://www.belleaircc.com/golf. Bay views on 17 holes; yardages.

3. Belleair Country Club, Amenities and Membership, https://www.belleaircc.com/amenities and https://www.belleaircc.com/membership. Facilities; private, member-owned.

4. Golf Course Architecture, "Fry/Straka restores Ross design on Belleair's West course," 25 May 2022, https://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/content/frystraka-restores-ross-design-on-belleairs-west-course. Straka and Shaughnessy quotes, member survey, the Belleview hotel's 2017 demolition and the Inn, zero-grade entries, cop bunkers, cost, grasses, fairway widths, ASGCA visits; captions for the 1924 4th green and the 11th's sanded mounds.

5. Adam Lawrence, "Belleair: Seaside special," Golf Course Architecture, April 2023, https://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/content/belleair-seaside-special. Drawing sources, ponds and streams, trees, lowered greens, the 4th, 6th, 7th and 14th, cop mounds, bunkers, greens.

6. Fry/Straka, Belleair project page and news posts, https://www.frystraka.com/course-gallery/belleair, https://www.frystraka.com/news/belleair-2024-04-16 and https://www.frystraka.com/news/belleair-2022-09-09 (Golfweek excerpt). Hybrid renovation and restoration, raised greens, Tufts research.

7. ASGCA, "Ross design at Belleair West gets renovation from Fry/Straka," 26 May 2022, https://asgca.org/ross-design-at-belleair-west-gets-renovation-from-fry-straka. 1915 design, 1924 redesign, Straka quotes.

8. First Call Golf, Design Notes, 31 May 2022, https://www.firstcallgolf.com/design-notes/feature/2022-05-31/fry-straka-to-reopen-donald-ross-designed-belleair-west. Drainage found under the first green; No. 1 Course name.

9. Golf Club Atlas forum, Belleair West thread (Connor T. Lewis), https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,71029.0.html. Ross's original 4th and what was restored.

10. TurfNet, "Restoring Florida's oldest golf course evokes memories of Ross," 2022, https://turfnet.com/news/restoring-floridas-oldest-golf-course-evokes-memories-of-ross/. Rebuilds to 2007, native plantings.

11. Golf Course News, "Bates to renovate Belleaire's Ross designs," August 2002, https://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/gcnew/article/2002aug11b.pdf. Bates renovation brief.

12. Golfweek's Best 2024, Florida private courses (Yahoo Sports syndication, 2 July 2024), https://au.sports.yahoo.com/best-public-access-private-golf-100044919.html. T4 Florida private, T77 classic.

13. Donald Ross Society, "Clearwater Getaway," January 2024, https://rosssociety.org/event-5519989. Society outing to the West and East.

14. Top 100 Golf Courses, Belleair Country Club West Course, https://www.top100golfcourses.com/golf-course/belleair-country-club-west-course. Added hole; not a pure restoration.

15. Historic Hotels of America, Belleview Inn golf, https://www.historichotels.org/us/hotels-resorts/belleview-inn/golf. Early history; inn guests' access.

16. Golf Compendium, PGA Tour 18-hole record progression, https://www.golfcompendium.com/2021/12/pga-tour-18-hole-record-progression.html. Hagen's 62, 17 March 1923.

17. Hal Bodley, Florida's First Golf Course (Belleair Country Club 125th anniversary history, 2022), catalogued at https://openlibrary.org/works/OL28107141W. Club history book, not consulted directly.