Golf design, up to now, has been a male-dominated business.
The first female golf architect is believed to be Ida Dixon, who created the Springhaven Club in Pennsylvania in 1904. Leading amateur golfer Molly Gourlay assisted Tom Simpson on a number of projects, most notably at Ballybunion, and Marion Hollins, a top amateur of the time on the other side of the ocean, was involved with the development of several courses in her role as athletic director for Del Monte Properties, and famously is supposed to have persuaded Alister MacKenzie to build the sixteenth at Cypress Point by proving the shot to the green was feasible.
Because of the shortage of women in the industry, it tends to be the case that those few who exist are passionate about encouraging more. That’s certainly true of Jan Bel Jan, who has been in the industry since the late 1970s, for most of that time as an associate of Tom Fazio, and more recently running her own practice.
Bel Jan’s grandfather Joseph, of Slovenian origin, came to the US in 1908. “He made barrels – he was a cooper – and he moved to Pittsburgh, where there was a Slovenian community, and he went to work for H. J. Heinz Co,” she says. “He never played golf, but after he retired from Heinz, he was hired by the Longue Vue Club to cut the grass on the steep slopes with a scythe. I was about five or six when I saw him clearing the grass along the slopes of the creek near his house, and I learned about keeping a sharp blade and the importance of rhythm. He had six sons, and all caddied at Highland CC, which sadly closed in 2011, and later became club professionals – my uncle Willie was at Longue Vue. My father designed and built the course where he worked, and where I grew up – it’s now known as Mannito GC, and it’s about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh. We lived on the property, and I was working on the course long before I started to play. By fourteen, I was mowing greens, digging ditches and felling trees – though only on weekends and school holidays obviously! That was how I spent my mornings. Then I’d go home, shower, change clothes and go to work in the golf shop, selling merchandise, issuing golf carts, collecting guest fees and calculating handicaps. In those days, they were done manually. People would put their cards in the box, I would collect and record them, and calculate the handicaps. My father thought that was a good job for me to do because no-one would yell at a fourteen-year-old girl!”
Bel Jan’s father (second from right), grandfather (centre) and her uncles all worked in the golf club industry (Photo: Jan Bel Jan)
“I had clubs in my hand from eight or ten,” she says. “The range was behind our house, so at first it was mostly watching my dad and hitting a few myself. But later I progressed to playing more. The courses my dad and his brothers played were all Golden Age, and my dad used the same principles. He and his brothers grew up as caddies, and they were very knowledgeable about golf courses, and they’d discuss them. When my uncles would come to see my dad, I saw them talking about competitions and this course and that hole. I had never heard any adults so enthusiastic, and it tickled me. My uncle Willie took me to Longue Vue, and it was like nothing I had ever seen – beautifully landscaped, and the clubhouse was the most remarkable building I’d seen at that point, except for a church. I observed what my father did, laying the greens on the ground. They fit seamlessly into the site.”
Those experiences with her father and uncles became the embryo of Bel Jan’s eventual career. But it didn’t happen seamlessly. She studied landscape architecture at West Virginia University. “It wasn’t where I intended to go, but my dad moved the family to West Virginia for a job, so I was an in-state student,” she says. “I had wanted to go to Penn State, but as an out-of-state student it was too costly for the family budget.”
On graduation, she took a job a long way from where she would finally end up. “I went to work with the Davey Tree Expert company in their lawn care division,” she explains. “I was the second woman in that division, and my job was to sell and then maintain the clients I acquired – to look at peoples’ lawns and tell them what sort of grasses, weeds and insects were in them and give them programmes to enhance their lawns. I was driving a split shift 1,500-gallon tanker truck around the streets of Pittsburgh. Other truck drivers would shout at me, ‘What are you doing with that big truck, little girl?’”
And it was through that job that Bel Jan found her way back into golf. “Because of my background in golf, I was delegated to the more high-profile areas of Pittsburgh – Fox Chapel, Oakmont and the like. At one of my clients in Fox Chapel, I left my business card with his assistant, she gave it to her boss, and he asked me to come in. He was expecting to see one of Willie Bel Jan’s nephews, and this girl turns up. He was Jack Mahaffey, a member at Oakmont, and also at Jupiter Hills in Florida. He was a very prominent amateur golfer, and was on the executive committee of the USGA. He recognised the Bel Jan name because he had played numerous rounds with my uncles. Mr Mahaffey asked me, ‘What are you going to do with the rest of your life’, and that there was someone he’d like me to meet.
He introduced me to Tom Fazio, and my first interview with Tom was on the veranda of Oakmont in 1978. He asked for a second interview and then asked when I could start work. I said I had to give two weeks’ notice, so I did, and I started with Tom. I owe everything to him.”
In 1978, Fazio was only in the very early days of his great career. “When I first started, the firm was based in Jupiter and was still George Fazio and Tom Fazio Golf Course Design. Andy Banfield had been there for a year or two when I joined. I moved to Florida, and I’ve been there ever since, except for a couple of extended stints on project sites, and a couple of years establishing the Fazio office in North Carolina,” says Bel Jan. “Everything was different, slower in those days – no faxes, no emails, air travel was different. They were still serving full meals on planes, with real flatware. Tom had a strict policy while his kids were young that he wasn’t going to take any jobs that were too far from home. Among the first courses I worked on was Mahogany Run in the Virgin Islands, though I didn’t do any site visits. I was doing production – drawings, construction specifications, bid lists. I was the only person in the Fazio organisation doing production. At Mahogany Run, Hurricane David hit just after sprigging, and two weeks later Hurricane Frederick took the remaining topsoil and sprigs, so the course never became what it could have been.”
Not that long after Bel Jan joined the team, the Fazio organisation started to get extremely busy, eventually creating over 200 courses. “There were a number of courses in those days that received a lot of attention, such as Wild Dunes in South Carolina, where Mike Strantz got his start, and the Vintage Club in Palm Desert. The office started to get really busy from the mid-1980s,” she says. “We did three courses at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, including the Champion course for the 1983 Ryder Cup, where Seve hit his famous three-wood from the bunker on the eighteenth. The courses that were pivotal to me were probably Old Collier in Naples, The Nest GC in Bonita Springs and McArthur GC in Hobe Sound. At the time we worked on projects as a team – it was very beneficial to us, because we could learn from each other.”
McArthur Club is one of several Florida designs that Bel Jan contributed to during her time working with Tom Fazio (Photo: Larry Lambrecht)
Bel Jan is quick to highlight what she learned from her long-time boss. “Tom is both a big picture and a detail guy,” she says. “One thing I observed early in my career with him was his ability to visualise a 2D contour map in three dimensions. He was never set on things being only one way – there’s always another way, a way to improve things. We would do several routings for any given property, keeping in mind always what the client wanted – he is very client-oriented. Tom is very good at listening, to clients and colleagues, and if he hears ideas that make things better, he’ll find a way to incorporate them. The various routings would be synthesised, and there might be a couple of tweaks, often based on site visits. Working from topo is great, but you don’t see the vegetation, specimen trees, rock outcroppings and suchlike, on a topo.”
Bel Jan left the Fazio firm and went on her own during the industry retrenchment that followed the financial crisis of 2007-08. “Going solo after 30-plus years was both scary and exciting,” she says. “Would there be opportunities to work? It was a difficult time, and nobody knew what openings there might be. I was thankful that Tom asked me to do some work on the landscape side of a project – I have pretty strong knowledge of plant materials. And people who knew me from my career with Tom asked me to do work for them.”
Old Collier in Naples opened for play in 2001 (Photo: John Henebry)
Her career since has been very busy. “I am very proud of the work I have done on golf accessibility for people with disabilities, women, juniors and seniors,” she explains. “It’s not just design; it’s about raising awareness. Most of the renovations I’ve done incorporate those ideas. In 2012, the economy was bad, golf was not in a good place, and some courses were closing. My principle to my clients was that they needed to keep golfers on the course, and that the golfers needed to have fun playing – which means pars and birdies.
“In about 2012/13 I was talking to The Nest GC about renovating their two courses, and most of the board of governors were men. I presented to them and described how collegiate golf coaches would have their players play from the most forward tees at least once a week, because it taught them about course management, helped their short games, and enabled them to learn to go low. I explained that this doesn’t apply just to elite golfers, but to all club members. They were able to see the advantages for single-digit handicappers as well as higher ones. In 2015/16, we built sets of tees to create ‘a course within a course’ at 4,051 and 4,002 yards respectively.
“I made the tees big enough so that even if elite golfers played these short courses to sharpen their skills and took large divots, there would still be quality turf for everyone else. Too often more-forward tees are too small, because golfers underestimate how many people want to play them. The USGA definition of a female bogey golfer is that she has a handicap of 24 and hits the ball 130 yards plus 20 yards of roll. But the ‘bogey plus’ golfer doesn’t hit the ball as far. When the handicap index limit was 40.4, fully 10 per cent of women were between 39.0 and 40.4. The more-forward tees made golf more fun for these players as well as everyone who could then choose to ‘tee it forward’.
“Clients who were willing to have their courses be more inclusive 10 years ago helped set the stage for the increased engagement and participation we see today. Golf is more approachable and fun for more people!”
In the end, Bel Jan’s message is one about inclusivity. “I want to mentor other women in the industry – I want them to believe they can be golf architects, but understand how much work it is,” she says. “I want to continue to help golf understand that people with disabilities can be and are golfers, and I want to help golf be environmentally sound.”
Forrest Richardson presenting Bel Jan with a ceremonial gavel following her year as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (Photo: ASGCA)
This article first appeared in the April 2026 issue of Golf Course Architecture. For a printed subscription or free digital edition, please visit our subscriptions page.