OTHERS TO DISCOVER
Not that Morris has completely cornered the must-play market among the Branson area’s nine courses. And thanks to the short-but-sweet configurations of his Top of the Rock and Mountain Top, you can pretty much cover them all over a four- or five-day stay.
Add Thousand Hills to that short-but-sweet list. After all, it’s dubbed “The World’s Best Par 64” and won a local newspaper’s “best course” moniker for six years running. With nine par 3s, 8 par 4s and a par 5 finisher, it packs plenty of challenge into a relatively compact routing that pushes, in three- or four-hole sets, into narrow, tree-lined box canyons, like the fingery waters of Lake of the Ozarks itself. We hit our first tee shots at Thousand Hills literally blind thanks to dense morning fog, not even discerning the forced carry necessary to clear a diagonal ravine. Some made it, some didn’t — but by the time the mist burned away several holes in, we were rapt with the short but powerful story this layout was telling us, and in some cases (at the 90-degree par 4 16th, for instance) we were holding on for dear par-saving life.
Not far from Thousand Hills is perhaps the area’s most “conventional” parkland track, Pointe Royale, which is ensconced in a residential district that, at one time or another, has been home to perennial Branson singers like Andy Williams, who lived along one front nine fairway until his death in 2012. It’s no retirement community pushover, however; Williams, and many of his crooning contemporaries, kept their games sharp by whiling away their offstage hours on its heaving and tumbling flanks. No. 7 is as stout a straightaway par 5 as you’ll ever want, and the two holes that follow it — a 224-yard downhill par 3 bordered by a dastardly creek up its left side, and a blind, uphill, hit-and-hope par 4 whose clearest target is rank survival — number among Branson’s most memorable tests.
But for the ultimate finale to any Branson blowout, let’s go back up Payne Steward Blvd. and check in at Branson Hills, where former PGA Tour winner and Stewart contemporary Bobby Clampett added some deft design touches to architect Chuck Smith’s brawny circuit through some of the region’s highest hills and deepest valleys. With one tight, tilted and semi-blind tee shot after another, nary a perfectly level fairway lie and greens nestled into hillsides or against rocky slopes, it’s a course with absolutely no let-up; if you get through a secluded stretch of serious, touch-the-sky-type golf from holes 5 through 8 without deep damage, you’re set up for a stellar back nine, with the last three holes loaded with pedal-to-the-metal, go-for-broke drama. I hit three of my best tee shots all week on those three holes (surpassed only by that, ahem, ace a day earlier), and even then I was thankful we were playing a two-man scramble, because every approach, recovery pitch and putt of any distance requires every bit of help one can get. Branson Hills is big boy golf all the way around.
