Donald Ross uncovered: Jason Straka finds original Belleair CC layout in the Florida ground and in the history books

Below are excerpts from an article that originally appeared in Golfweek.

BELLEAIR, Fla. – Standing on the incline rising from the Intracoastal Waterway to Belleair Country Club’s clubhouse, it might not look like a work crew is restoring a classic golf course. To a casual observer, it looks more like the crew has demolished one. 

Everything is dirt, piled high in places, flattened in others as the earth tumbles down to the salt water. There’s not a blade of green grass to be seen for acres. Trees have been chopped out, a pond has been drained, tractors and work trucks bustle about the site some 20 miles west of Tampa. A steady breeze off the nearby Gulf of Mexico throws a layer of dust onto everything. It looks lunar, only in brown. 

But looks are certainly deceiving. 

Architect Jason Straka in June was midway through a major face-lift of Belleair Country Club’s West Course, with a reopening slated for November. In order to save the original Donald Ross layout, which the private club says is the oldest continually operating course in Florida, Straka first was tasked with erasing decades’ worth of alterations that dampened the intent of the original design, often burying Ross’s sublime work beneath good intentions.

Enter Straka, who serves as current president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. 

“There were still a lot of Donald Ross features out there, but they were buried,” Straka said. 

To reintroduce those original Ross features, Straka turned to historical records stored at the Tufts Archives at Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, where Ross lived for years. Straka was able to acquire photography and diagrams of Belleair’s West Course that showed the course in detail after Ross’s 1924 renovation to his own layout that reopened in 1925.

Click here to read the full article on Golfweek.com.