The West Course at Belleair stands on ground first put to golf in 1897, when Henry Plant opened the Belleview Hotel beside a six-hole loop with crushed-shell greens; the loop grew to nine holes by 1899 and to eighteen in 1909. [1]
In 1915 Morton Plant hired Donald Ross to create two full 18s on the property—Belleview Course No. 1 (today’s West) and Belleview Course No. 2 (today’s East). Contemporary club chronology and period press note that Ross laid out “two fine 18-hole courses” on a site with notable natural features. [2]
Ross returned in 1924 to “completely renovate, upgrade and improve” both courses, producing a second-generation plan set whose detail survives in the Tufts Archives and guided the club’s 2022 restoration. [3]
Ross’s intent in 1915 can be inferred from his drawn green entrances and the way he used the bayfront topography. Original plans (1915; revised 1924) indicate that, with only two exceptions, the greens accepted approaches at “zero grade,” a design that let players run the ball onto surfaces tied at fairway height—a point later confirmed during excavation of the West’s putting surfaces. [4]
The 1924 drawings also show Ross’s conscious effort to raise the course’s difficulty: he introduced numerous “cop” bunkers—sanded mounds within fairway corridors—specified by height and construction cross-sections, and he strengthened hazards where ravines and streams cross lines of play. [5]
The club’s modern restoration phase began with member planning in 2016–2019 and a decision to use the 1924 Ross drawings as the design template. Work began in March 2022 under Fry/Straka and Clarke Construction; the West reopened on November 30–December 1, 2022. [6]
Unique design characteristics
Ross’s 1924 plan for the West (#1) exploited a rare-for-Florida site with roughly thirty feet of natural relief and a half-mile of frontage on Clearwater Bay. The restoration literature describes the West as an exception to the state’s flatness, with elevation changes and coastal edges repeatedly engaged by the routing. [7]
Seventeen of the present eighteen holes enjoy bay views, reflecting how Ross threaded corridors along and toward the shoreline. [8]
Hazard placement on the restored course follows Ross’s 1924 sheets closely. The most distinctive are the “cop” features—sanded mounds with wiregrass faces that intrude into “the fair green,” in Ross’s phrase. At the sixteenth, Ross’s section called for a seven-foot-high cop mound affecting tee-shot placement; that specification was rebuilt to dimension. [9]
On the eleventh, Fry/Straka reinstated sets of Ross’s “sanded mounds,” which function as diagonal carry hazards and angle-set obstacles on a hole otherwise laid over gentler ground. [10]
Ross’s use of diagonal and cross hazards reappears where the routing meets re-exposed streams and swales; these had been filled over the decades and were opened again to the lines he had drawn. [11]
Green designs on the West merit special note. Construction crews uncovered multiple generations of drainage stacked upon earlier systems, evidence of mid-century rebuilds that had gradually pushed surfaces upward and contributed to the later “inverted-saucer” reputation. The Ross drawings and the 2022 restoration brought the entries back to grade and the surrounds back down, so most approaches can again be played on the ground. [12]
The fourth green was a specific touchstone: period imagery and the 1924 drawing guided its recapture; today it reads as a faithful build of the Ross sketch. [13]
Which holes most clearly convey Ross’s hand as it survives today? The sixteenth exemplifies his 1924 hazard idiom with a documented cop mound and attendant fairway angles; the eleventh shows his willingness to texture flatter ground with “sanded mounds”; the first green—where the team found the original drainage beneath later layers—now presents the fair-height entry he drew. [14]
Historical significance
Within Ross’s corpus, Belleair’s West is unusual on two counts: he designed it in 1915 and then returned less than a decade later to redesign his own work, leaving behind unusually complete plan sets and construction notes. Those materials, preserved at Tufts and cited by the club during restoration, make Belleair a rare, document-rich window into Ross’s design practice before and after World War I. [15]
The West (#1) also occupies a special place in Florida golf history: the property hosted the Florida West Coast Open, where Walter Hagen shot a then-world-record 62 in March 1923 en route to victory—an achievement noted at the time and celebrated by the club’s own chronology. [16]
The course and hotel also drew significant exhibition play; a 1935 four-ball featuring Bobby Jones and Horton Smith drew thousands to the property. [17]
The American Society of Golf Course Architects treated Belleair as an informal home in its early decades, convening multiple annual meetings there—another indicator of the site’s standing within the profession and a thread connecting Ross to the club’s modern restoration team (Jason Straka served as ASGCA president during the project). [18]
In the ranking era following restoration, Golfweek listed the West as the No. 4 private course in Florida and No. 77 among America’s Top 200 Classic Courses. [19]
Current condition / integrity
The West Course reopened in late 2022 following an eight-month, $8.8 million restoration that converted Ross’s 1915 and 1924 drawings into modern construction documents. Every green was rebuilt to USGA specification and then shaped to the 1924 drawings; putting surfaces are TifEagle ultradwarf bermudagrass with Bimini bermuda on fairways and rough. [20]
Fairways were expanded “fully 50 percent wider” to the widths shown on Ross’s sheets, and historic ravines/streams were re-opened to restore his cross-hazards. [21]
The restoration also rebuilt Ross’s cop mounds at documented heights and locations, re-establishing a hazard type that had nearly vanished on the property. [22]
Two caveats temper the course’s Ross integrity. First, the club secured a long-term lease on a small peninsula south of Bayview Drive and, in concert with the restoration, created a new par-3 seventh over Clearwater Bay; this hole occupies land Ross did not use and therefore represents a sympathetic but non-Ross insertion into the sequence. [23]
Second, while the greens now match 1924 shapes and tie-ins, they necessarily sit atop USGA gravel and drainage profiles and are turfed with modern bermudagrasses—changes in construction and agronomy rather than geometry. [24]
Even with those realities, the present West course reads, hole-for-hole, as an unusually faithful rendering of Ross’s 1924 intent. The club’s own summary describes the routing and “turf lines” as returned to Ross, with meandering fairways, restored natural streams, and the controversial but now-embraced cop mounds all back in play. [25]
The yardage today (7124 yards, par 72 from the Green tees) reflects modern back-tee placement on Ross corridors rather than wholesale lengthening by rerouting. [26]
And in a final nod to how closely the restoration hewed to the 1924 documents: where Ross wrote seven feet for a cop at the sixteenth, seven feet is what golfers now see. [27]
Uncertainties & disputed points
The club timeline asserts that Ross “completely” renovated both courses in 1924; surviving drawings and the restoration team’s statements support full-course scope on the West, but the degree of concurrent East-course work is summarized rather than documented hole-by-hole in public sources. [28]
Claims that “inverted-saucer” greens are a Ross hallmark are explicitly corrected by the Belleair excavation record and drawings; at Belleair, raised fronts appear to have been a product of later topdressing and rebuilds rather than original design. [29]
Sources & Notes
Belleair Country Club, “About Us” timeline (1897 six-hole origin; 1899 to nine; 1909 to eighteen).
Belleair timeline (1915 commission of Ross; contemporary Golf Magazine remark quoted by club).
Belleair timeline (Ross returns 1924; Tufts drawings used in 2022 restoration).
Golf Course Industry, “Restoring Ross at Florida’s oldest club” (zero-grade green entries; excavation findings); Golf Course Architecture news item (same).
Golf Course Architecture, “Fry/Straka restores Ross design…” (cop bunkers specified by height; 1924 routing intent); see also ASGCA note summarizing 1915 design and 1924 redesign.
Belleair timeline (2016–22 planning; Nov. 30–Dec. 1, 2022 reopening).
Golf Course Industry and Golf Course Architecture (site relief; bay frontage description).
Club “Golf” page (17 of 18 holes with Clearwater Bay views).
Golf Course Architecture; Golf Course Industry (No. 16 cop mound rebuilt to Ross’s 7-foot spec).
Golf Course Architecture (No. 11 “Ross sanded mounds” restored).
Golf Course Architecture (re-exposed ravines/streams to Ross lines).
Golf Course Industry & GCA (stacked drainage; lowering surrounds; zero-grade entries).
Golf Course Architecture (1924 image of fourth green used in restoration).
Golf Course Architecture; Golf Course Industry (No. 16 cop, No. 11 mounds, No. 1 green drainage find).
Golf Course Industry & GCA (two Ross eras documented at Tufts).
TIME Magazine, March 24, 1923 (“world’s record” 62 at Florida West Coast Open); Belleair club timeline (Hagen’s 62 at Belleair).
Belleair timeline (1935 Jones/Burke exhibition).
Golf Course Architecture (ASGCA’s historic connection to Belleair).
Club site (ranking claims) and Fry/Straka news release summarizing Golfweek placements.
Golf Course Industry & GCA (USGA greens; TifEagle/Bimini).
Golf Course Industry & GCA (fairways widened ~50%; hazards reopened).
Golf Course Architecture (reconstruction of cop mounds to Ross’s sections).
Belleair timeline (2020 lease of “Waterfall West” peninsula; creation of new par-3 seventh; dedication at 2022 reopening).
Golf Course Industry & GCA (modern construction profiles and grasses).
Belleair timeline (restored turf lines; meandering fairways; natural streams; cop mounds).
Additional context
— The West Course was historically labeled “No. 1” and the East “No. 2”; by 1920 they were known as West/East. [A descriptive note widely repeated in club histories and directories.]