Cypress Bend Resort, Golf, Spa & Hotel

Cypress Bend Resort, Golf, Spa & Hotel: Impressively located on the banks of Toledo Bend Lake, with the state of Texas just across on the other side. Although in geographical terms one of the "outliers" of the Audubon Golf Trail, Cypress Bend is certainly one of the Trail's most natural, scenic and wonderfully crafted layouts. With the advantage of excellent onsite accommodation, this Resort & Conference Centre offers a fabulously undulating (at times hilly) golf course, which weaves its way through lines of towering pines and alongside the huge lake. In this stunningly natural setting, you will enjoy many dramatically elevated tee-boxes (starting at the first hole), which alternate with elevated greens, as at the closing par-4 18th. Whereas the front-nine takes you through the pine forest and alongside two of the lake's inlets, the back-nine gets you right beside the lake itself and looking across into Texas. The closing stretch from the downhill, doglegging long par-4 14th is as scenic as you could wish for. The downhill par-4 16th is a shorter version of the 14th, also doglegging from left to right into a lakeside green. The signature par-3 17th also occupies a glorious lakeside setting and again requires a shot across a corner of the lake to reach the safety of the green. With no housing anywhere to be seen and an occasional rustic edge to some of the presentation, this is a wonderfully natural and at times dramatic course that's well worth making a detour to play.