A teed-up trip through one of the jewels of St. Louis’ golf culture, as columnist Michael Mattingly illustrates the history, mystery, and majesty of Bellerive Country Club
By Michael Mattingly | Lead Golf Columnist | August 23, 2026
Bellerive Country Club | St. Louis, MO – One of my wife and my favorite local courses is Kokopelli in Marion.
It’s simply a wonderful place to play golf, with beautiful scenery, challenging doglegs and enough trouble hiding around the corners to keep you honest.
But one of the things we’ve always enjoyed about Kokopelli isn’t just the golf.
It’s the homes.
They peek through the trees and sit along the fairways as if the neighborhood itself has a front-row seat to the game.
On one particular hole, a dogleg left, we found ourselves standing in the middle of the fairway with about 100 yards remaining.
As I walked toward my ball, I noticed a couple sitting on their patio, sipping coffee, and quietly watching golfers pass through their morning. I couldn’t help but wonder what they had seen over the years.
The pure shots.
The chunked wedges.
The three-putts.
The occasional miracle.
Being someone who enjoys a little pressure, I immediately knew one thing.
I could not hit a bad shot with an audience fifty yards away.
Or else I was liable to hear about it like a Cardinals fan sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.
So I committed.
The ball came cleanly off the face of my wedge, climbed into the morning air, landed softly on the green and rolled to within about ten feet of the flagstick.
When I looked up, the gentleman raised his coffee mug in silent approval.
I smiled and tipped my cap.
If only every golf shot came with that kind of encouragement and result. Walking toward the green, I thought about something I’ve come to believe about golf.
We spend an awful lot of time talking about conquering golf courses.
We attack them. We beat them. We try to take them apart.
But the best ones don’t really work that way.
Great golf holes aren’t conquered. They’re courted.
And this week, the top 50 PGA players have been courting Bellerive.
Fifty players arrived.
Only thirty will leave with a ticket to next week’s Tour Championship.
And St. Louis has shown up.
Maybe that’s because we’re a little golf-starved here.
The PGA Tour doesn’t come through town every year. When championship golf does arrive, it feels less like another stop on the schedule and more like an event.
Maybe scarcity makes us appreciate it a little more.
The weather has cooperated beautifully through the first three days, but the crowds have been the real story.
More than 150,000 fans are expected during the championship—well above the roughly 120,000-fan baseline the PGA Tour typically expects for a playoff event.
That’s not U.S. Open territory. A major championship can draw roughly 275,000 spectators over a week.
But the BMW Championship is comfortably among the biggest draws on the FedExCup schedule, and St. Louis has responded accordingly.
For a market that doesn’t get this very often, that’s saying something.
Give St. Louis a reason to show up, and we’ll come.
And perhaps no golf course in America is better suited for such a week.
When Bellerive opened in 1960, Robert Trent Jones Sr. wasn’t designing a country club that hoped someday to host championship golf.
He was designing one for it.
Five years later, the U.S. Open arrived.
Bellerive was the longest course ever used for the championship.
The Green Monster of Ladue had announced herself.
But length was never Bellerive’s real defense.
It was something more subtle.
Bellerive has personality.
It doesn’t need to knock you over.
It just waits for you to make a mistake.
Hit a good drive instead of a great one?
The approach gets uncomfortable.
Miss the fairway by a few yards?
The angle changes.
Leave yourself the wrong distance?
The green suddenly feels half its size.
The course keeps asking questions.
And the questions get harder the longer you play.
That’s what Robert Trent Jones understood.
A hard par.
An easy bogey.
Bellerive doesn’t have to be unfair.
It just has to make you pay for being careless.
Which brings us to the par-3 sixth.
There are golf holes that are difficult. There are golf holes that are beautiful. And then there are golf holes that make you stand on the tee for an extra few seconds because you’re not quite sure whether you want to hit the shot you’re supposed to hit.
The sixth at Bellerive is one of those.
From the elevated tee, the hole opens in front of you. Water, bunkers, the green waiting beyond the trouble.
Everything is right there.
And everything looks tempting.
The Missouri sky stretches behind it.
It’s a beautiful golf hole.
Which is precisely the problem.
Beautiful things have a way of making us overconfident.
You stand there looking at the green and think:
I can hit that.
And perhaps you can.
That’s the seduction.
The hole doesn’t tell you that you can’t.
It simply asks whether you have enough courage to carry the trouble—and enough sense not to challenge it unnecessarily.
Coming into the week, the sixth was forecast to be the hardest hole on the course.
Three days in, she’s lived up to her reputation.
The sixth has produced the most double bogeys in the championship and ranks among the top three in bogeys.
Apparently, Bellerive isn’t interested in playing hard to get.
She’s just hard.
Of course, I have no business giving anyone advice about playing the sixth at Bellerive.
I’ve been known to turn a 100-yard wedge into an archaeological excavation.
But I’ve thought about that hole sitting on my deck with a bourbon in my hand.
Maybe that’s because golf makes us philosophical.
Maybe it was the bourbon.
Maybe it was the second bourbon.
Somewhere between twilight and the bottom of the glass, I heard a voice beside me.
Gravelly.
Old.
The kind of voice that sounded like it had spent thirty years smoking cigarettes in the caddie yard.
“Kid.”
I looked over.
There was an old man sitting in the other chair.
I don’t remember inviting him.
He pointed toward the trees.
“That sixth hole at Bellerive?”
I nodded.
He shook his head.
“Don’t rush her.”
I laughed.
He didn’t.
“Come in timid and she’ll dismiss ya.”
A pause.
“Come in arrogant and she’ll punish ya.”
He leaned back.
“The trick ain’t power.”
“It’s respect.”
He stood and slapped me on the back.
“Carry the trouble, mate.”
Another pause.
“But don’t challenge fate.”
He started toward the yard.
Then he stopped.
“Swing it like you mean it.”
He disappeared into the darkness.
Maybe it was the bourbon.
Maybe it was golf.
Maybe I was just tired.
But I remember the last thing he said.
Golfers talk about beating courses, but what we’re really doing is learning them.
Where they want us to go.
Where they don’t.
When to take a chance.
When to take our medicine.
Which greens can be attacked.
Which ones should be left alone.
Play a course enough and you begin to recognize its moods.
That’s when golf becomes something more than hitting a ball around eighteen holes.
It becomes a relationship.
And Bellerive has been building relationships with golfers for sixty-six years.
U.S. Opens.
PGA Championships.
The Presidents Cup.
Now the BMW Championship.
The names change.
The equipment changes.
The golf balls fly farther.
The players get stronger and more precise.
Bellerive doesn’t care.
She sits there beneath the Missouri sky, waiting for the next golfer to make the next decision.
That’s what makes a great golf course special.
It doesn’t promise you success.
It doesn’t even promise you fairness.
It just gives you an opportunity.
The rest is up to you.
This week, thousands of spectators have watched the world’s best players stand over shots most of us couldn’t imagine hitting.
Some have striped them.
Some have found bunkers.
Some have found water.
Some have made birdie.
Some have walked away muttering words that shouldn’t appear in a family newspaper.
And Bellerive has simply sat there.
Beautiful.
Difficult.
Unimpressed.
Waiting.
At Kokopelli, a couple sitting on their patio made me want to hit the perfect wedge.
At Bellerive, the audience is enormous.
But the feeling is the same.
For a moment, the golfer stands alone.
The ball sits in the grass.
The target is out there.
The trouble is waiting.
Your heart beats a little faster.
You make the decision.
And then you swing.
Bellerive has been asking golfers to make that decision since 1960.
She’ll ask it again tomorrow.
And if you’re lucky, she’ll give you one perfect shot.
Maybe the ball will climb into the St. Louis sky, clear the trouble, land softly and roll toward the flag.
For a few seconds, everything will be exactly as you imagined it.
Then she’ll ask you to do it again.
Because that’s the thing about courting Bellerive.
She doesn’t owe you anything.
She doesn’t promise she’ll make it easy.
She simply gives you another chance to make an impression.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Because you don’t conquer Bellerive.
You don’t defeat her.
You court her.
Enjoy Your Sunday – MWM
Michael Mattingly is a freelance journalist from Smithton, Illinois, with a background in advanced mathematics and creative writing. He is a student of the game of golf, drawn to its pressure, rhythm, and unpredictability.
He is also an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and a loyal Chicago Bears supporter
