Holiday Island (Island Course)

Par 60 layouts get dismissed before the first tee shot, and that's a mistake. The Island Course at Holiday Island is a short-par design — heavy on par 3s and shorter par 4s — that rewards precision and course management over raw power. Bring half the clubs you think you need and twice the attention to distance control.

Holiday Island sits in Carroll County in the Arkansas Ozarks, a planned residential community built around Table Rock Lake in the far northwest corner of the state. The terrain here is genuine hill country: limestone bluffs, dense hardwood forest, and elevation changes that make every yardage estimate a negotiation. That Ozark topography has a way of making even modest distances feel earned.

A round here is unlikely to test your driver, but it will absolutely test your short game, your club selection, and your patience with deceptive pin positions and sloping greens that the hills naturally encourage. For locals and lake-house visitors alike, it offers a genuinely playable afternoon of golf in a setting that the Ozarks do effortlessly well.