Blessings Golf Club

Fayetteville, AR Private

Overview

George Thomas conceived of the idea of a “course within a course” when designing Los Angeles Country Club in the early 1920s, creating various tees for different holes that changed the angles of play and even the par values on different days. That’s part of the concept of Blessings in northwest Arkansas, where Robert Trent Jones II built a multifaceted routing that can be played in a variety of different lengths and combinations intended to challenge the game’s best collegiate players (Blessings hosts a variety of NCAA tournaments and was the site of the 2019 National Championships), including one setup with a USGA course rating of 80.9 and a 155 slope. Several holes cross over each other in the manner of old links courses, though there’s nothing linksy about the rural, wooded and sloping property bisected by Clear Creek. When you build a course for an individual owner—in this case John Tyson of Tyson Foods—you get to break the rules. In 2018, architect Kyle Phillips remodeled Blessings to make it more walkable, creating a new first hole, relocating several greens, and shifitng and rebuilding bunkers to increase strategic diversity.

About

Holes 18
Length 7925
Slope 149
Facility Type Private
Year Opened 2004
Designer Robert Trent Jones Jr., ASGCA/(R) Kyle Phillips

Awards

100 Greatest the Second 100
Best Courses in Every State

Ranking history:

Second 100 Greatest: Making its inaugural appearance on our national rankings.
2023-'24 ranking: 144th.

Best in State: Ranked second, 2013-'24. Ranked third, 2011-'12. Ranked inside the top 5, 2007-'10.
2023-'24 ranking: 2nd.

Panelists

Ratings from our panel of 1,900 course-ranking panelists

4.4

100 GREATEST/BEST IN STATE SCORES

Shot Options
7.2604
Character
7.2397
Challenge
7.736
Layout Variety
7.3563
Fun
6.7704
Aesthetics
7.1731
Conditioning
7.4317

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