BIG CEDAR BOUNTY
All told, Branson serves up more than a week’s worth of solid golf in portions that touch every traveling player’s taste bud: sweet hilltop and forest views; design ingredients ranging from mild to spicy to downright stout; plate after plate of sumptuous course conditioning; and dashes of deep surprise that dance across the palate as each round plays out. I got my fill in four days but went home craving more.
The first full day’s feast began with a literal feast — a full-bore breakfast buffet in the upscale log cabin setting of the Devil’s Pool Restaurant, one of ten dining options under the Big Cedar umbrella (including a two-hour “Lady Liberty Dinner Cruise” on nearby Table Rock Lake). A made-to-order omelet, some good ol’ biscuits and gravy and a couple sausages that would have felt at home on a “full Irish” table set me up for a go at Tom Fazio’s Buffalo Ridge, the first of three rounds at Big Cedar’s main golf complex. Its clubhouse sits atop its own Ozarks peak a short drive from the lodge itself; a handsome full-sized bronze bison stands sentry between the practice area and a swooping, majestic par 5 opening hole that’s part pure theatrics, part come-get-me challenge.
Video Bonus:
The Presleys Family & Top Of The Rock
Secret Golf’s Steve Elkington visits Branson, Missouri to talk golf with the Presleys’, plays Top Of The Rock Golf Course, and catches up with Rocco Mediate.
From there the ride through verdant dale, across quarries and around rock-pocked hillsides just gets more fun — a well-modulated marriage of natural terrain and familiar Fazio flourishes, including sweeping bunkers framing fairways canted at angles that never go so far as to repel golf balls, unless, of course, your shot doesn’t take its intended tack. There are flat lies but this is hill country; slight cuts and draws tend to turns into flat-out hooks and slices unless you move the ball into the places Fazio provides — into the grain, in effect. His greens accept approaches from a variety of angles, though, in a couple cases (at the long par 3 6th for instance), a pin stuck behind the front-right bunker is rendered next to impossible to get to with a hybrid or long iron from the tee.
Holes 5-8 form a lovely necklace around the course’s main water feature, with the 200-yard par 3 7th playing into its teeth and the par 5 8th demanding a tee shot between tumbling stream on the left and a forested slope on the right. If you need some fortification for this stretch, a cool little log cabin between 5 and 6 houses Johnny’s Hot Dog Stand; don’t be surprised to see an angler casting a line into the pond. The back nine feels a bit more open, beginning along a ridge, diving into a broad ravine and moving gently back uphill for the final stretch, with the 18th bringing some familiar Fazio trademarks to bear, from stacked fairway bunkers on the dogleg’s inner elbow to a green hanging above a hillside, framed by tall trees with a ridgeline in the distance. In the two decades since its debut as Morris’s full-throttle entry into high-end resort golf, Buffalo Ridge has been named the state’s top course, or close to it, several times. It’s easy to see why.
