OZARKS NATIONAL RAISES THE BAR
But as of November 2018 it has competition, BIG competition, just up and around the bend with the unveiling of Ozarks National. I’ve played my share of Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw creations from Bandon to Colorado to Central Florida, all laced with a certain unmistakable design DNA born of the duo’s “let the land decide” ethic. But this course makes a somewhat different aesthetic mark, especially in its bunkering, which tend to be “contained” within the course rather than bleeding out into the margins without defined edges, as at Bandon Trails, Sandhills or Streamsong Red.
“We try to get the very best out of this particular piece of ground as we possibly can,” Crenshaw says in a video on the Big Cedar website. “We’ve worked on a lot of golf courses, but when you get to one of these greens, yeah, you want to get the ball in the hole, but if you look around … there’s a lot to look at.” He’s right: cast your gaze in any direction, from not just on the expansive putting surfaces but anywhere, and you’ll feel the kind of golf-on-a-grand-scale chills that it usually takes an ocean view to conjure. It could verge into overwhelming if the course itself weren’t so beautifully laid upon the hills and valleys with big-shouldered brawn, but not a hint of bombast or undue force or sour strategic notes.
“We don’t try to fight a piece of ground,” Crenshaw continues. “We work with the contours. There’s a flow to the holes. And they’re different enough that we hope they’ll hold people’s attention. For every golfer, regardless of handicap or ability, there’s a way around. We offer an avenue into the green.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to build a hard golf course. What you want is something pleasurable and enjoyable for all sorts of people.”
The key at Ozarks National, as always, is choosing the right tees. “White” is right for most folks, even at a tick under 6,000 yards, thanks to elevation changes that surpass what you find at Buffalo Ridge and a couple blind tee shots that’ll keep even the biggest bomber honest. The front nine’s three par 5s (there are also three par 3s and 4s, the latter coming in a row), are a lesson in risk-reward equilibrium: No. 1 is wide open and gettable if you keep the tee ball up the left-center; No. 7 slides slightly downhill into a lovely tucked-away green, with a broad target zone from the tee; and No. 9, the course’s hardest hole by handicap, is perhaps the best one, too, a C&C wonders where Crenshaw’s friendliest “avenue” isn’t immediately apparent from the box. I can tell you definitively that the perceived shortcut on the left is anything but — high and right means alive and breathing. The back nine is nearly 400 yards longer from the whites than the front, and my scorecard reflected that fact — after going 38 out I posted just one par in, on 16, three holes after another blind tee ball took me too far left again, into a ravine and triple bogey land. Good thing the sweeping views (including a green on the par 3 17th that’s essentially Branson’s golf version of an infinity pool) and brilliantly rhythmic design made my score secondary at best.
From the get-go, Ozarks National is Big Tournament worthy, which is fortunate since it will host the rebooted Champions Tour’s Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf each April — which returns after a successful run at Buffalo Ridge (Top of the Rock, the stellar Jack Nicklaus par 3 course that cascades over manmade waterfalls and around a natural limestone sinkhole just below Big Cedar Lodge itself, will still host the week’s celebrity shootout). It will assume the throne of Missouri’s best public course. And soon.
Speaking of best, back over the hill, next to a clubhouse whose locker room is adorned with some of the game’s biggest names (take a jaunt downstairs to check it out), and where the grill fare includes the best burnt ends flatbread I’ve ever had, is where Mountain Top burned its dramatic visage into my brain forever — both because of my ace on the fifth hole, but also because, other than Crenshaw and Coore’s sublime Preserve at Bandon Dunes, I can’t think of a more perfectly conceived and executed par 3 routing, especially one with 13 holes. It’s the stylistic flip side of Ozarks National, emerging from the landscape only after Gary Player got the Morris’s go-ahead to blast away at the limestone cliffs and make the thing as visually stunning and pinch-yourself fun as possible. Distances from the tips range from 82 to 200 yards, 66 to 114 from the forward set. The best bet is to mix tees up as you go, buying into a shot-to-shot rhythm all your own, because there’s some mighty “swing” music to be heard from the first uphill hole, to the stirring middle section that runs down and up a rocky peninsula, to the final quartet that can demand anything from a mid-hybrid to a flip wedge from the tee. Greens are surprisingly large and fraught with tricky shelves and slopes, and the views are delicious, as you’d expect. It’s pure Mountain Top magic and an apt same-day lead in, or follow-up, to a round at Ozarks National.
