RIDGEDALE, Missouri — Branson, in the heart of middle America nestled in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains, seems an unlikely place for a top-drawer golf destination. But so is the remote prairie of Nebraska, where Sand Hills and its far-flung neighbors attract golf’s cognoscenti.
However, Missouri does happen to be the "Show Me" state and the Branson area certainly has a great deal to show and a pile of people to which to show it, as 10 million visitors flock each year to the town of 11,000 for amusement parks, old-timey shopping, restaurants and 100 live shows each week.
While Branson proper has a handful of notable golf offerings, the area was put on the golf map by its next-door neighbor, Big Cedar Lodge and its force-of-nature billionaire owner, Johnny Morris. Big Cedar has three 18-hole courses, all designed by architecture royalty — Buffalo Ridge (Tom Fazio), Payne’s Valley (Tiger Woods) and Ozarks National (Bill Coore andBen Crenshaw). And there are three par-3 courses — Top the Rock, Mountain Top and Cliffhangers.
And it doesn’t appear as if Morris is finished developing the area. Fazio was seen on site recently, scouting land for the possibility of building yet another Big Cedar course.
Morris, who is the founder and CEO of Bass Pro Shops, didn’t set out to be in the golf business. He bought what is now Big Cedar Lodge in 1987 after the original site had been built in the 1920s by Missouri businessman Jude Simmons and Frisco Railroad executive Harry Worman as a fishing lodge. It became Devil’s Pool Guest Ranch in 1947. Morris envisioned the site as a fishing camp for Bass Pro Shops employees.
Today, Big Cedar occupies about 4,600 acres of not only golf but an abundance of outdoor and nature activities such as fishing, boating, hiking, along with spa and wellness offerings. The Lodge has 262 guest rooms among a collection of lodges, cottages and log cabins.
Top of the Rock, a nine-hole par-3 designed by Jack Nicklaus, opened in 1996 and was Morris’ first taste of golf.
Fazio says he was among those who convinced Morris to purchase Branson Creek Golf Club, which Fazio designed in 2000. Morris followed the advice in 2013 and renamed it Buffalo Ridge, even going so far as to bring in a herd of buffalo to live outside the course’s fence line, which makes for easy photo ops for the golfers. Morris and Fazio worked on Buffalo Ridge, exposing some rock formations and installing a number of water features, apparently out of Morris’ affinity for waterfalls, which can be found on each of Big Cedar’s courses.
Coore and Crenshaw designed Ozarks National, which opened in 2019. Payne’s Valley is the first Woods-designed public access course and was partially built on the site of the former Murder Rock Golf Club, of which John Daly was associated. Payne’s Valley opened in 2020 with the Payne’s Valley Cup, a televised match with Woods and Justin Thomas taking on Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose.
The three 18-hole regulation courses are consistently ranked among the top eight courses in Missouri.
Big Cedar added its second par-three course — Mountain Top, a 13-hole walking-only layout — in 2017. In July, the 18-hole Cliffhangers opened — a rollicking par-3 course on the side of a mountain conceived by Morris and his son, John Paul.
With the opening of Cliffhangers, there are 11 options where to play in the Explore Branson collective. While Big Cedar’s venues garner the most attention, five of Missouri’s top 10-ranked 18-hole courses are part of the collective, including the top four — Ozarks National, Payne’s Valley, Buffalo Ridge, Branson Hills and LedgeStone. Thousand Hills, The Pointe and Holiday Hills are the other non-Big Cedar 18-hole courses.
The 77-year-old Morris started Bass Pro Shops in 1972 selling fishing tackle out of the back of his father’s liquor store in Springfield. He created a catalog two years later and opened his first brick-and-mortar store in 1981. The company’s flagship store and corporate headquarters is located in Springfield and covers 150,000 square feet. Adjacent to the store is the 350,000-square-foot Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and (33,000-gallon) Aquarium.
Today, he’s worth an estimated $9 billion. He acquired Cabela’s — another outdoors store and Bass Pro Shops’ chief rival — in 2016 for about $5 billion, a move that was said to double the company’s business. Between the two, there are about 180 locations nationwide. Morris also owns White River Marine Group, which manufactures and distributes a number of brands of boats, even yachts.
Morris is said to be nothing less than a dynamo by those who work with him and for him. He’s a constant visitor to whatever construction project is underway at Big Cedar and something always seems to be in some stage of building or another. At the moment, the Lodge at Top of the Rock is under construction on the edge of the "Cathedral of Nature," which came to be in what is now known as typical Morris fashion.
In 2015, a sinkhole developed at what was then the expansive driving range at Top of the Rock, which had been designed by Arnold Palmer. Instead of taking measures to mitigate the hole, Morris decided to excavate the whole range. Some 82,000 truckloads of dirt later, a massive limestone formation was uncovered that features a 210-foot canyon. Morris has the idea that someday visitors will be able to tour the canyon and the rock formations.
Speaking of Top of the Rock, Morris somehow convinced the PGA Tour to host the Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf at Big Cedar and conduct part of its — official — tournament on the par-3 course, the first time such a thing occurred in Champions Tour history. And it wasn’t just a one-off. The tournament ran from 2014-19.
Morris would very much like to attract the USGA to the Ozarks and bring a national championship of some sort to Big Cedar. Anyone who has ever hosted a USGA event at a place not named Oakmont, Winged Foot or Pinehurst, can attest that the process takes a great deal of diplomacy and, most of all, patience.
Whether Morris can wait for those wheels to turn sufficiently is anyone’s guess. But it seems that no one who knows him would take the other side of that bet.
