55 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.” 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 JAN BEL JAN Old Collier in Naples opened for play in 2001 Photo: John Henebry “ The courses that were pivotal to me were probably Old Collier, The Nest GC and McArthur GC”
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