52 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! “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 McArthur Club is one of several Florida designs that Bel Jan contributed to during her time working with Tom Fazio
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