BMW Championship이 미국 중서부의 뿌리로 돌아간다. St. Louis, Missouri의 Bellerive Country Club에서 FedExCup Playoffs 2단계가 열린다. 이는 Bellerive의 두 번째 BMW Championship 개최다. 2008년 Camilo Villegas가 마지막으로 우승했다.
01Robert Trent Jones의 설계
Bellerive는 정통 Robert Trent Jones 설계의 골프장이다. "The Open Doctor"로 알려진 거대 건축가의 철학이 담겨있다. 길고 거친 코스로 큰 벙커, 벌칙적 워터 해저드, 두터운 러프가 특징이다. Jones의 설계 철학은 '골프는 파는 어렵지만 보기는 쉬워야 한다'는 것이다.
이러한 특성에서 Bellerive는 "Green Monster of Ladue"라는 애칭을 얻게 되었다. 코스는 속이지 않는다. 어려운 홀들이 연달아 나타날 뿐이다.
021965년 U.S. Open과 Gary Player의 역사
1959년 현재의 부지로 이전한 Bellerive는 Championship을 염두에 두고 설계되었다. 단 6년 후인 1965년 U.S. Open을 개최했으며, 당시 7,191 yards의 토너먼트 역사상 최장 코스였다. Jones의 설계 중 20개가 U.S. Open을 개최했으며, Bellerive는 그 하나다.
1965 U.S. Open에서 Gary Player는 역사를 만들었다. 최종 3홀을 3타 차이로 앞서갔지만 호주의 Kel Nagle과 월요일 18홀 플레이오프에 들어갔고, 폐막에서 5타 차이로 승리하며 커리어 Grand Slam을 완성했다. Player는 Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan에 이어 세 번째로 Grand Slam을 완성한 선수가 되었고, Jack Nicklaus가 이듬해 따라갔다. Player의 우승은 38년간 이어진 미국 선수의 U.S. Open 연승을 끝내기도 했다.
032018년 PGA Championship: Koepka와 Tiger의 극적 대결
Bellerive는 PGA Championship의 100주년 기념대회를 2018년에 개최했다. Brooks Koepka가 우승했지만, 그 주간은 그를 쫓는 선수 때문에 역사에 남았다.
Tiger Woods는 최종라운드 64를 기록했으며, 이는 메이저 챔피언십 최고의 최종라운드였다. Woods의 266(14언더)은 홀 안에서 좋은 성적이었지만, Koepka는 일요일 66을 쳐 264(16언더)로 역사를 썼다. PGA Championship 역사상 265 이하의 성적을 내지 못한 선수는 아무도 없었는데, Koepka가 그 기록을 세웠다.
이는 Woods에게 1년 만의 메이저 우승 기회를 불태웠다. Bellerive의 이 경험이 몇 주 후 TOUR Championship 우승, 그리고 이듬해 Masters 우승으로 이어졌다.
Koepka는 세 번째 메이저를 수집했으며, 29세 이전에 3개의 메이저를 우승한 다섯 번째 미국인이 되었다. Jack Nicklaus, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods뿐이다.
04시그니처 홀들
앞 아홉 홀의 가장 유명하면서 어려운 홀은 6번이다. 215 야드의 파3는 2018 PGA Championship에서 플레이되는 가장 어려운 홀이었고, 1965 U.S. Open에서는 평균 4.03타(par 3 기준 1타 이상)를 기록할 정도로 악독했다. 그린은 최근 축소되어 전반부도 후반부만큼 힘들어졌다.
11번 홀은 Bellerive의 유일한 드라이버블 파4다. 2018 PGA Championship에서 이글과 더블 보기가 같은 수만큼 나왔을 정도로 극단적이었다. 짧은 거리는 271야드, 긴 거리는 361야드다.
"The Ridge"는 14-16번 홀의 3홀 구간이다. 코스의 가장 높은 지점을 따라 이어진다. 14번은 417야드 파4로 비교적 쉽고, 15번은 495야드 파4로 2018 PGA Championship에서 가장 어려운 홀 중 하나였다. 16번은 237야드의 길고 높이 차인 파3다.
052030년 Presidents Cup 예정
Bellerive는 또 다른 주요 대회를 기다리고 있다. 2030년 Presidents Cup이 Bellerive에서 개최될 예정이다. 올해는 시카고 Medinah, 2028년은 호주 Melbourne의 Kingston Heath에서 열리고, 이후 Bellerive의 차례가 온다. 이것이 Bellerive의 첫 팀 이벤트가 될 것이다.
06전통의 구심점
Bellerive는 미국의 모든 전문가 메이저 챔피언십(U.S. Open, U.S. Senior Open, PGA Championship, Senior PGA Championship)을 개최한 단 3개의 코스 중 하나다.
1965년 Player의 우승 이후 1981년 U.S. Mid-Amateur(우승: Jim Holtgrieve, St. Louis 지역 출신), 1992년 PGA Championship(Nick Price 우승, 메이저 3개 중 첫 번째), 2004년 U.S. Senior Open(Peter Jacobsen, 고관절 수술 후 재활 중 우승), 2013년 Senior PGA Championship(Kohki Idoki 우승), 2008년 BMW Championship(Camilo Villegas 우승) 등을 개최했다. 2018년 Koepka의 PGA Championship이 이곳의 마지막 전문가 토너먼트였다.
한 가지 역사적 주석: 2001년 Bellerive는 WGC-American Express Champions를 개최하기로 되어있었으나, 9월 11일 테러로 토너먼트가 취소되었다.
07Original (English) — PGA TOUR
The BMW Championship heads back to its Midwestern roots, playing host to the second leg of the FedExCup Playoffs at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri.
This will mark its second time hosting the BMW Championship. Camilo Villegas won the last time the PGA TOUR came in 2008.
Here's what to know about the host site and information on what players will face this week at the penultimate event of the 2026 Playoffs.
It won't take a keen eye to recognize the roots of Bellerive.
The course is a quintessential Robert Trent Jones design, the famed golf architect known as "The Open Doctor."
Long and brutish, Bellerive is equipped with large, deep bunkers, penal water hazards and thick rough. It was designed to embody one of Jones' guiding philosophies: golf course design should yield a "hard par, but an easy bogey." That doesn't mean it's tricked up – quite the opposite. The course is right out in front of the player. There's little deception with a Jones design. Just a string of difficult holes stacked on top of each other.
Thus spurred Bellerive's nickname, affectionately tabbed the "Green Monster of Ladue."
The course was designed with championships in mind, starting with the hiring of Jones, and it wouldn't be long before the club hosted the U.S. Open in 1965. That year, the course was the longest in tournament history, measuring 7,191 yards.
Bellerive is one of 20 Jones designs to host America's Open.
The Bellerive we see today is far from the version first laid out when the club was incorporated in 1897.
To start, the club was on an entirely different property, a nine-hole course northwest of the city, with an entirely different name, St. Louis Field Club.
Three years later, the membership established the name Bellerive Country Club, named after Louis St. Ange de Bellerive, the last French commander in North America. Still, it took another 60 years (and two different moves) before the club acquired and developed the land that encompasses the modern-day layout.
In 1910, the club moved to Normandy, Missouri, and developed an 18-hole golf course that hosted the 1949 Western Amateur and the 1953 Western Open (now known as the BMW Championship). That site was later sold and is now part of the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. The clubhouse was retrofitted into a residence hall.
In 1959, the club made its final move to a plot of land southwest of St. Louis and tabbed Jones to design it. The rest is history.
Bellerive is part of an exclusive club, one of only five courses to crown a career Grand Slam champion. The club was the youngest to host a U.S. Open, only five years old when it staged America's national open in 1965. Its champion was a gift for its growing acclaim.
Gary Player relinquished a three-stroke lead with three holes to play on Sunday, leading to an 18-hole Monday playoff against Australia's Kel Nagle. Player led by as many as five shots during the closing 18 and comfortably finished the last leg of the career Grand Slam. Player joined Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan as the only men to complete the feat at the time. Jack Nicklaus became the fourth the next year. Player's victory snapped a 38-year run of Americans winning the U.S. Open.
The other courses with the distinction of crowning a Grand Slam champion are a who's who of incredible venues: Augusta National (Gene Sarazen, 1935; Rory McIlroy, 2025), St. Andrews (Tiger Woods, 2000), Muirfield Golf Links (Jack Nicklaus, 1966) and Carnoustie Golf Links (Ben Hogan, 1953).
Bellerive was granted the PGA Championship's centennial in 2018 and again played host to a tournament befitting that milestone.
Brooks Koepka emerged the victor, but the week might be most remembered for the man who tried to chase him down.
Tiger Woods shot a final-round 64, his best final round in a major, to push the championship into historic territory. No man had ever shot a lower total than 265 in a PGA Championship.
Woods' round was good enough to sit in the clubhouse at 14-under 266, but Koepka made history with a 66 on Sunday to finish two better at 16-under 264. It was Woods' closest call at a major championship in a decade and inspired new hope of chasing a 15th major title. He didn't know it at that time, but Woods used his finish at Bellerive as momentum to win the TOUR Championship a few weeks later. Then, in his next major start, he broke through and won his fifth Masters.
Koepka, meanwhile, notched his third major with the victory, becoming only the fifth American to win three majors before the age of 29. The only others were Jack Nicklaus, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson and Woods.
The signature hole on the front nine is also the hardest on the property.
The picturesque par-3 sixth, measuring 215 yards, played as the most difficult hole during the 2018 PGA Championship, more than one-third of a shot over par for the tournament. That's not even approaching how difficult it played during the 1965 U.S. Open, when it yielded an incredible 4.03 stroke average.
The green has even shrunk a bit since then, making the front of the putting surface just as difficult to hit as the back right shelf. Hole locations cut in the middle swale always provide some excitement with tee shots feeding toward the cup. Aside from its merits as a tournament golf hole, it will be a popular viewing area as players hit from an elevated tee box down to the green, with water perilously in between.
The 11th hole is the only driveable par 4 at Bellerive, and it delivered equal parts euphoria and devastation in 2018, yielding the same number of eagles as double bogeys.
Players choosing to lay up short of the pond guarding the front right of the green will only need a midiron to do so. This will leave the player with a wedge to a long, narrow green. The risk-taker will need a precise drive to hit the green.
However, the hole can also be played anywhere between 271 and 361 yards.
PGA National has "The Bear Trap." Quail Hollow has the "Green Mile." Bellerive has "The Ridge."
Aptly named for its topographical location on the property, "The Ridge" is a brutish three-hole stretch beginning at the 14th which plays along the high point of the course and will play its part in deciding the eventual champion.
The 14th is likely the easiest of the bunch, a 417-yard par 4 with an infinity green.
The 15th is a 495-yard par 4 which played as one of the hardest holes during the 2018 PGA Championship. The hole typically plays into a prevailing southerly wind. A good tee shot gives a player a chance to hit a middle or long iron into this wide but shallow target. Miss short right or go over the green and a player will find a most difficult up-and-down from the bunkers. The steep right-to-left slope makes short pitches and chips very challenging.
The concluding hole on "The Ridge" is the lengthy 237-yard, par-3 16th that also traditionally plays into the wind. Players could be hitting lumber into this perched green depending on the severity of the conditions. A par is all players will be looking for.
Bellerive won't go long without hosting another premier PGA TOUR event. The course has already been named as the host for the 2030 Presidents Cup.
The team event pitting the U.S. against the Internationals is playing stateside this fall at Medinah Country Club in Chicago. In 2028, the International Team will host the event at Kingston Heath Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia. Then it will be Bellerive's turn.
Bellerive has hosted a slew of prestigious events, but this will be its first opportunity to host a team event.
Bellerive is one of three courses to have hosted all the traveling professional men's major golf championships in the United States (U.S. Open, U.S. Senior Open, PGA Championship and Senior PGA Championship).
The club has held around one significant championship every decade since its inception. After Player's historic U.S. Open win in 1965, Bellerive had the distinction of hosting the very first U.S. Mid-Amateur in 1981, won by St. Louis native Jim Holtgrieve. In 1992, the club hosted its first PGA Championship, won by Nick Price, the first of his three major championships.
In 2004, Peter Jacobsen improbably won the U.S. Senior Open, after having hip surgery just months earlier. Within three months before his victory, Jacobsen was still walking with crutches. Yet he endured a marathon 36-hole day on Sunday to emerge victorious. It's not the only senior major the club contested either. Kohki Idoki won the 2013 Senior PGA Championship.
In 2008, the club hosted the BMW Championship, its first non-major event. That's where Villegas claimed his first PGA TOUR victory, making a pair of birdies to finish his round and win by two strokes.
"Hopefully, it's the first of many," said Villegas, the eventual five-time TOUR winner.
Koepka's 2018 PGA Championship victory was the last professional tournament hosted at the venue.
There is notably one tournament Bellerive was supposed to host but never did. In 2001, Bellerive was set to host the WGC-American Express Champions. The event was canceled because of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, which happened two days before the tournament was set to start.
