The new cliffhanging par-3 course at Big Cedar Lodge will keep golfers on edge

“Over the top” is not a recommended move in the golf swing. But it can pay off nicely in golf design.

At Big Cedar Lodge, his wilderness resort in the Missouri Ozarks, Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris has never shied away from bold course features. On Payne’s Valley, for instance, a Tiger Woods-designed championship layout, Morris helped dream up a head-turning 19th hole that plays over a lake to a waterfall-backed green ringed by towering limestone walls.

Now, comes further evidence of Morris’s willingness to push golf to the edge.

The name of the project underscores the point: Cliffhangers, a new 18-hole par-3 course that Morris designed with his son, John Paul. In development for six years, it is set to open to the public on July 4.  

Billed by Big Cedar as “the most dramatic par-3 golf course in the world,” Cliffhangers sits on acreage that was originally planned as a practice facility, until the Morrises decided that the site deserved something more dramatic.

Their design is meant to double as an adventure ride, its routing leading golfers along steep mountain trails, across swift-flowing creeks, past waterfalls and into a labyrinth of limestone caves, with a final tee shot played from inside a cavern through a waterfall toward the green.

Cliffhangers is the sixth course at Big Cedar and the resort’s third par-3 course. Other layouts include Ozarks National, a Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw design that ranks 55th on GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the U.S. You Can Play, and Top of the Rock, a Jack Nicklaus design that became the first PGA Tour-sanctioned par-3 course and a host of a Champions Tour event.

Check out more of the course below: