Belvedere Golf and Country Club: an insight into instinctive golf course designing
Golf courses designed some 50 years ago have already turned into a multi-million dollar industry with many big guns of the sport deciding to pitch their designs all over the world. With the sport gaining unprecedented popularity, course designing became
all the more complicated and involved a careful strategic layout and cutting-edge technology.
One man, Ross Stefanik, however, went ahead with his own blue prints carved inside his head. He ditched all the prevalent norms of course designing and came out with a master piece, the Belvedere Golf and Country Club, which is celebrating its 50th
anniversary this year.
A home builder himself, Stefanik wanted a course designed precisely to his liking and initiated the design by simply posting multi-coloured flags to mark fairways and greens on his newly acquired land adjacent to the Highway 14 and Highway 21, southeast
of Edmonton. He later directed the heavy machinery to follow accordingly.
Emma Lien, who was a member at Belvedere for 25 years, said, “There was no architect. No anybody. Just the idea of a golf course that Ross could play when he wanted to.”
Stefanik’s son, who is a local lawyer in Edmonton recalled and said that the land was barely few acres of meadows while the rest was thick vegetation with huge poplar trees. He also revealed that unlike the hefty designing costs today, the Belvedere was
built with a meagre $300,000 and also included the clubhouse.
Steve Eleniak, one of the close compatriots of Stefanik, who also helped him chart out the early designs of the course, admitted that it was more because of their bibulous inclinations that the course has been designed the way it is.
Eleniak, who was on the club’s first board of directors said, “I was drinking in those days. And I drew up this so-called, nine-flower petal design to make sure that we could come into the clubhouse and have a drink on every second hole. That was the motivator
for this so-called daisy flower design — so that nobody would ever go thirsty. The golf was secondary.”
For now, Belvedere Golf and Country Club has a completely different look to what its father had envisioned in 1961. The course has undergone several changes. Starting off as a 10-hole course, another eight holes were added two years later. Eleven of the
previous holes were also re-routed to bring it closer to many of the modern golf course designs. The course has been under a constant renovation process since its creation in 1961 and new tee-boxes and greens are added and replaced almost every year.
In 1980, architect Bill Robinson rolled out a new master plan for the course and Belvedere spent $1-million to pursue the ambitious design. In 2000, Belvedere Golf and Country Club probably received the biggest accolade of its history when it was rated among
the top-100 courses in Canada by ScoreGolf Magazine.
Course designing has now turned into one major sports industry and some course design firms demand several million dollars for relatively average designs. Many of the big wigs of the sport including Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and many others have made
a fortune out of their famous designs throughout the world. Not just the course designing industry has seen unprecedented surge, the equipment manufacturing has also turned into a lucrative prospect for the ever-avaricious industrialist, giving golf a new
commercial look which it never had before.
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