Bel-Air Country Club

Overview: Bel-Air Country Club is an 18-hole canyon course in Los Angeles, where George C. Thomas Jr. and William P. Bell fitted a strategic routing into dry washes, ravines and steep changes of elevation. The course moves between wooded corridors and open canyon edges, with angled fairways and distinctive green sites making the approach game central to its character. The club’s live profile lists par 70 and 6,800 yards, while historic course records preserve the original scale and Thomas-and-Bell authorship.

History: The course opened in 1926 during Alphonzo Bell’s development of Bel-Air. The club and golf course were part of a planned residential community, and the original layout was built around a difficult canyon property rather than a flat expanse of open land. Bel-Air later hosted the 1976 U.S. Amateur and the 2004 U.S. Senior Amateur. In the 2010s, Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design led a restoration intended to recover Thomas’s architectural ideas while keeping the course suitable for modern play.

Did You Know? Bel-Air’s famous suspension bridge is part of the golf architecture, carrying players across a canyon near the 10th tee and the 225-yard par-three 10th. The bridge is not a decorative clubhouse feature: it is a practical response to the site’s ravines and helps explain why Bel-Air has a character unlike a conventional city course despite being surrounded by Los Angeles.