Belleair Country Club: East Course

The East Course at Belleair Country Club is one of two Donald Ross 18s at what the club describes as Florida's oldest golf course. Ross laid out the East on inland ground around 1915, reworked both courses in 1924, and the East today plays as the more links-style of the two companion layouts at the Belleair property.

Belleair Country Club traces its roots to 1897, when railroad and steamboat magnate Henry Bradley Plant opened the Belleview Biltmore hotel on Florida's Gulf Coast and laid out a short golf course to entertain his guests. The initial layout was a six-hole loop with crushed-shell greens, built beside the hotel on Plant's reclaimed winter-resort property. The club's earliest golf is widely credited as Florida's first, and Belleair is also credited with introducing the South's first grass greens shortly thereafter. As the sport outgrew the original six holes, Plant's successors engaged Donald Ross to expand the property.

Ross arrived around 1915 and laid out 18 new holes that were eventually divided into the West and East Courses, with the East routed on inland ground behind the older West. Ross returned in 1924 to refine his work, tightening the West Course to make it more testing and adjusting holes on the East, and the pair remained the club's two 18s through the twentieth century. The East developed a character distinct from its sibling. While the West sits closer to the hotel and the original Plant-era ground, the East's inland terrain lent itself to a more Scottish, links-style character, with firmer ground conditions and more exposed corridors than the tree-framed West. At about 6,200 yards from the back tees to a par of 71, the East has always played as the shorter and more playable of the two Ross 18s. Belleair's status as a historic Ross club fueled a long-running preservation effort. In March 2022 the architects Fry/Straka Global Golf Course Design broke ground on a restoration of the West Course, reopening it in November of that year to coincide with the club's 125th anniversary. Former Belleair president Hal Bodley also published a 200-page club history that season, documenting the property's founding under Plant and Ross's multi-visit design history.

While that initial restoration work focused on the West, the East remains an integral part of Belleair's 36-hole Ross legacy and continues to operate as a companion course on Florida's oldest continuous golf site.