I’ve got a bunch of reviews to post, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible. I was in a family wedding in the Midwest over Memorial Day Weekend and got there a bit early to see relatives and of course, play some golf. I drove to South Dakota from Virginia (yes you read that right), taking a day and a half to complete my drive. And, I got bored Tuesday on the I-70 in Missouri!

I pulled off the interstate to get some gas and called one course that looked interesting. But, they had league play that evening. I found Lake of the Woods on the map and decided to just stop by. My lack of planning worked perfectly as the course was quiet. I leisurely took under 3 hours to play and was back on the road without much of a delay.

I’ll start out with the maintenance – besides the tee boxes, the course was in great shape. The tees were just average, but everything else was top notch. Central Missouri has received a ton of rain recently so Lake of the Woods had a super green look. The fairways were full and the greens rolled as well as anything that I’ve played all year. The sandy patches you’ll see in the pictures were just for ball mark repairs. There was a nice collar cut around the greens and as an added bonus, the fairways are Zoysia so you’ll have your share of perfect lies. It was a good value for the less than $30 twilight fee.

Lake of the Woods is a parkland style design that requires accurate drives and precise irons. At 6,378 yards the course isn’t the longest, but the fairways proved tough to hit because of semi-blind landing areas, minor slopes, and angles off the tee. The greens had small tongues where pins could be tucked so I didn’t get many irons close. The course is a municipal course, and a solid one.

The course is a par-71 with only three par-5’s so in order to score you’ll need to take advantage of the shorter par-4’s. There are six par-4’s that play 365 yards or less. Although, a par on the 468 yard par-4 13th will be an impressive accomplishment, if you can pull that off! I played the blue tees which have a rating of 69.7 and a slope of 127. Overall, I found the course to be playable as I was able to pitch two errant tee shots back into play. The course isn’t as narrow as it looks from the pictures. The biggest challenge here might be picking lines off the tee and matching the distance.

I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Lake of the Woods based on what I saw. The course has plenty of great looking holes, can be walked, and is convenient to the I-70. The only drawbacks might be that I didn’t see a range and that the 11th hole is goofy. It is a 575 yard par-5 where the fairway runs out into a hazard, so I couldn’t hit my driver. The bigger hitters probably can carry that hazard though.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):