Blue Top Ridge at Riverside Casino

Rees Jones opened Blue Top Ridge at Riverside Casino & Golf Resort in 2009 (some sources date it to 2008), about 20 minutes south of Iowa City. The course is one of his more brawny modern designs, 7,505 yards from the championship tees, 77.2 rating, and a 141 slope. The routing crosses three distinct landforms: a prairie front nine, a river-plain stretch on the Iowa River for the 4th through 6th, and a back nine carved into a hillside with elevation that defies the state's flat reputation. The PGA's GolfChannel feature on hidden Iowa gems flagged it as one of the state's best modern public layouts. Casino-resort pricing puts it in the $-to-$$ band, well below what a Rees Jones design typically commands elsewhere. As an Iowa road-trip stop it pairs naturally with Tournament Club of Iowa and Spirit Hollow as a three-day Eastern-Iowa loop covering the state's best public layouts.