Though golf is largely an individual sport, it also can be a game for two. Especially in the business world, where husband-and-wife teams sometimes hold different jobs at the same club.
Mario and Melissa Bellomo are one such couple. And as the director of golf and general manager, respectively, of the Outpost Club, an international golfing society, they organize and lead several dozen trips a year that take their members all over the planet with their clubs.
“Mario will travel about 220 days in 2023, and I will be with him for maybe 175 of those,” said Melissa, 42, who met her husband in 1998 when they were attending Crestwood High School in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania.
Those trips will take one or both of them from Australia to Scotland and many places in between, as well as to a number of the best clubs in America, from Oakmont and Sleepy Hollow to Mountain Lake and Myopia Hunt.
Work is a long and winding road for this pair, who are now based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and they have been traveling it as part of the Outpost Club for the past decade. During that time, they have visited 22 countries and 317 cities.
“Every trip offers something that makes it special,” said Mario, who is a year older than Melissa. “For the experiences. For the people we travel with and also meet along the way. And for the golf.”
Melissa is just as appreciative of their good fortune. “I don’t think either one of us could have landed in a better situation,” she said.
A life in golf was the last thing Mario or Melissa were thinking of when they began dating, when he was a senior at Crestwood and she a junior.
“I had never before been around golf,” Melissa said. “And I didn’t even consider it a real sport. I thought that those who played high school golf only did so because they couldn’t make any of the other sports teams.”
As for traveling around the world for their work, that seemed equally unlikely.
“I grew up in a small town with 26 cousins living within 10 miles of each other, and no one in my family ever left,” Melissa said.
Mario only took up golf after breaking his leg while wrestling for his high school team during his during junior year.
“Back then, my plan was to study building architecture in college or go pre-med,” he said.
But he started falling for golf when he began playing with his father. That led him to enroll in the professional golf management (PGM) program at Penn State.
“My goal at that time was to become a head golf professional or director of golf at a top-100 course by the time I was 30,” he said.
Mario headed off to college after graduating from Crestwood in 1998. Melissa earned her high school degree a year later, and they became engaged that summer.
“I stayed home and took classes at a local community college while Mario was at Penn State,” she said. “I also worked a bunch of different jobs, in real estate, banking and radio sales.”
They married in 2001, and Mario graduated from Penn State the following year, with a bachelor of science in professional golf management and a minor in business.
In 2005, Mario went to work at the Heritage Club in Mason, Ohio, just north of Cincinnati, as a first assistant. That gig turned out to be life-altering for several reasons.
“First of all, I learned a lot about the golf business from the head professional, Joe Zinchini,” he said. “And it was while I was at Heritage that I became a member of the PGA of America.”
That also was when Mario and Melissa started working together for the first time, after the general manager hired her to sell memberships to the club.
From there, they moved to the historic Inverness Club in Toledo with Mario serving as first assistant professional to director of golf David Graf and Melissa becoming the club’s director of membership after they had arrived.
“And that’s where I met Quentin Lutz,” Melissa said.
Lutz is one of three founders of the Outpost Club, a group geared toward serious yet social players who possessed a high golf IQ, fancied architecturally significant courses, preferred to walk and relished the camaraderie of a competitive game.
“I was playing a round at Inverness with David when he asked me how the Outpost Club was doing,” Lutz recalled. “We had launched in 2010 and were off to a good start, but we were crazy busy and needed someone to help organize events for us.
“David turned to me and asked, ‘Have you talked to Melissa?’ ”
“Inverness was a great, old club, and I was thriving there. And the Outpost Club was a start-up. But there was something about the OC and the work I was going to be doing there that really excited me.” – Melissa Bellomo
Lutz had not. But he quickly reached out to her, and soon after their conversation, she was working for the Outpost Club, which is also based in Toledo.
“It was not an easy decision,” Melissa recalled. “Inverness was a great, old club, and I was thriving there. And the Outpost Club was a start-up. But there was something about the OC and the work I was going to be doing there that really excited me.”
Life became a little complicated when Mario left Inverness the same year to assume the head professional position at Hidden Creek near Atlantic City, New Jersey, fulfilling the goal he had set at the start of his career.
“I had just turned 30 and was right on schedule,” said Mario, adding he became increasingly passionate about teaching, merchandising and running events. “Thankfully, Melissa could do her work for the Outpost Club from wherever she lived, so she came with me.
“She did an awful lot for the OC back then. The club was growing quickly, and she was like a PGA professional without the PGM degree, running as many as 30 tournaments a year on top of all the administrative stuff she had to do.”
Then in 2013, after two years at Hidden Creek, Mario decided to join the OC himself, coming on board as its director of golf and later adding the chairmanship of membership to his portfolio.
A decade later, they are still together, with a piece of the business as partners and major roles in its operation and success. Until recently, Melissa also served as president of the Outpost Foundation, which was launched in 2015 and has given more than $200,000 in scholarships to those pursuing a career in golf as well as some $225,000 in emergency relief. They also assisted Lutz and his two OC co-founders, Will Smith and Colin Sheehan, in the creation of three OC offshoots: Tallmadge Golf, which plans corporate and charity golf events; Outpost Overseas, which organizes bespoke international trips for members; and the Silver Club, which is a competitive golf society.
“I really enjoy being with our members on our trips and making sure everyone has a good time,” Mario said. “It is also nice to be able to play the best courses in the world, for the personal pleasure it brings and also so I can speak with greater knowledge about the places we are taking our members.”
Melissa also enjoys the people aspect of the business and adds that she takes a special interest in marketing and customer service.
“I am also learning to play a little bit,” she said. “I’ve tried it lefty and righty and really like the game, on either side of the ball. Mario’s my teacher, and I see myself as his Hank Haney project. My index is 32 right now, and my goal is to get down to the low 20s.”
From an Outpost Club perspective, Lutz cannot say enough good things about the Bellomos.
“They are a dynamic couple who love golf and love the Outpost Club,” he said. “We would not be where we are without them.”
And their lives would certainly be poorer if not for the OC – and also the greater game of golf.
Editor’s note: John Steinbreder is a member of the Outpost Club and sits on the advisory board of the Silver Club Golf Society.