74 having what are believed to be the first grass greens in America’s South. The course expanded to eighteen holes in 1909, and in 1915, Donald Ross came and redesigned it, while also creating the East course, on land inland of the older West. He returned to revise the courses in 1924. In the century that followed, Belleair’s courses went quite a long way from Ross’s vision. Trees grew and blocked most of the views of Clearwater Bay, a mile and a half wide at this point, and which separates the club from the barrier island of Sand Key. Two large ponds were excavated only yards from the sea, and the fill used to build up some of the waterfront holes, again restricting views of the water. A few years ago, the club decided it wanted to upgrade the course, and selected Jason Straka and Dana Fry, to advise on what to do. Straka, on viewing the West course, and seeing a number of original Ross drawings in the club’s possession, was clear: either he would restore the course to the vision of its original designer, or he would not be involved with the project. According to all parties involved, the club’s membership was not, at first, desperately excited at the prospect of renovation, but a heavy duty lobbying effort by the architects and a number of members, including renovation committee chairman Hal Bodley, long term sports correspondent and one of the founders of USA Today, and Connor Lewis, founder of the Society of Golf Historians and presenter of the popular TalkinGolf History podcast, won them round. After a visit to the Tufts Archive in Pinehurst, and combining what they found there with what was already in the club’s possession and in the Belleview/Biltmore hotel archives, the project team assembled a near-complete set of Ross’s original drawings. These were mostly on graph paper, as was often the case in the “ The club’s membership was not, at first, desperately excited at the prospect of renovation” BELLEAIR The restored par-three fourth green, with the new sixth and seventh greens visible on the water’s edge in the background Photo: Vaughn Halyard
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