Here you can learn all about one of the world's best disc golf courses, The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing Disc Golf in New Truxton, Missouri. Perhaps the most expensively-built disc golf course in history, this course has every bell and whistle you could imagine plus a second course on site. Visitors will pay for the luxuries of Eagles Crossing's Championship Course as rounds cost $39 per player (perhaps the highest fee in disc golf), but the course's consistently stellar reviews suggest most players find the cost worth the experience.
The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing is ranked #6 in the most recent World's Best Disc Golf Courses top 100 released annually by us here at UDisc. The rankings are based on millions of player ratings of over 16,000 disc golf courses worldwide on UDisc Courses, which is the most complete and regularly updated disc golf course directory in existence.
Read the whole post to get a full picture of Eagles Crossing's Championship Course or jump to a section that interests you most in the navigation below.
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- Basics: Times in top 100, year established, designers, cost, & availability
- History
- How hard is it?
- What's it like to play?
- Three real five-star reviews
The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing: Basic Info
- How many times has The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing made the annual World's Best Disc Golf Courses top 100 since the rankings were first released in 2020?
Year 202020212022 2023 2024 2025 Top 100? - When did The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing open?
2020 - Who designed The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing?
David McCormack - Is The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing free or pay-to-play?
Pay-to-play. See its UDisc Courses entry for pricing. - When is The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing available to play?
Seasonally with a pause in the winter. Tee times must be booked in advance.
History of Eagles Crossing Disc Golf
Some elements of Eagles Crossing Disc Golf's history are familiar ones: Someone stumbles across disc golf on YouTube during the pandemic and gets deeply interested in the sport. It's a series of events most disc golfers have heard a few times by now.
Other aspects of the course's background are unlike anything else in disc golf history: A course building project with no realistic restrictions on space or what can be done to mold the land into the perfect disc golf course. A financial backer giving his course designer no boundaries and even pushing the designer to think in grander terms – to create the world's best disc golf course no matter the cost. That same financial backer never having played a single round of disc golf but loving the sport all the same.
Those more surprising parts of the narrative all have to do with who the "someone" in Eagles Crossing Disc Golf's story is.
Philip Samuels is the wealthy president of Missouri textile company Universal Sewing Supply and owner of Eagles Crossing Disc Golf. Among his interests are fine art and collecting. To get an idea of both his means and eye for value, look no further than how he bought a pair of the original ruby slippers made for the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie for $165,000 in 1988 and resold them for over $2 million in 2011. He has also made quite a bit of money collecting and selling Pokémon cards though he doesn't play the game.
Samuels said that when he discovered disc golf coverage in the spring of 2020, it spoke to him.
"I had no idea disc golf even existed," Samuels said. "During COVID, it popped up on the screen on YouTube one day, and I started watching it. I got hooked and fell in love with the sport. Of anything that was happening in the world during COVID, disc golf seemed like the most rational thing to me."
He eventually wanted to buy a few discs and searched around online for a nearby retailer. When he decided to head over to disc manufacturer Gateway Discs in St. Louis, he didn't realize he wasn't going to a typical disc golf store. There Samuels met Gateway owner and founder David McCormack, and the two struck up a conversation.
When Samuels learned that McCormack was also an experienced course designer, Samuels mentioned that he had a property not far away that seemed as suited to disc golf as anything he'd seen on video. He'd bought the land intending for it to be a survival retreat location but hadn't been able to obtain the right licensing. At that point, the area was a recreational facility, but he was intrigued by the idea of turning it into a disc golf destination.
In short order, the two went to take a look at the over 400-acre/162-hectare plot with ponds, hills, fields, and woods in Hawk Point, Missouri, about an hour outside St. Louis.
After checking out Samuels' land, the pair headed to Harmony Bends in Columbia, Missouri, so that Samuels could see a disc golf course in real life for the first time. And what did Samuels think upon seeing one of the world's best courses – top 25 since 2020 – created by legendary designer John Houck?
"I thought it was very nice but that we could do much better," Samuels said.
By the time the trip was over, the two had agreed to build a course on Samuels' property, and the company president and fine art dealer gave McCormack a clear mandate.
"When we talked about the course originally," Samuels recalled, "I said, 'David, I'm an older guy. I don't need to do anything else. I'm very happy; I've had a very good life. But I'm used to doing things in a proper way. If we're not going to build the best course in the world, I don't want to get started. I'm not even interested.'"
And Samuels wasn't asking his designer to work miracles on a tight budget. In fact, in his words, "there was no budget" – meaning he put no monetary restraints on the project. He wanted the best, and he was willing to pay whatever it cost to get it.
McCormack spent 42 of the next 45 days on the property coming up with a design for what's now called the Championship Course at Eagles Crossing. Upon seeing the initial plans, Samuels' biggest critique was that some holes weren't extraordinary enough. For example, when McCormack suggested one pin placement could have a six-foot/1.8-meter wall filled with earth to elevate the basket, Samuels insisted it should be 40 feet/12.1 meters.
"He said, 'You're just wasting money,'" Samuels recounted. "I said, 'That's your way of thinking, not my way of thinking. If we do it the way you want to do, we'll have a course just like everybody else, and I'm not building a course like anybody else. So we're not going to do it your way. We're going to do it my way.'"
Keep in mind that Samuels has never played a round of disc golf and has seen only a few courses in person. Still, he was confident while planning and building the Championship Course that his experience with close observation from collecting and fine art had made him able to assess courses from afar via video and understand what needed to happen for his course to outdo them.
"I see everything, every little detail," Samuels said. "That's what I was trained for. My eye is just trained that way."
And if there was one thing his eye was sick of seeing in disc golf coverage, it was courses where a lot of holes looked the same – which, to him, was every course to some degree. So, along with altering McCormack's original designs to be bolder aesthetically, he also changed things around to assure each hole was more distinct in terms of landscape and visual experience.
"The thing I was looking for was to try to build something very eclectic that had lots of different types of holes and different terrains and different elevation changes and all kinds of things going on so that when you went around the corner you wouldn't know what you were gonna see next," Samuels explained.
Course construction got underway in August 2020, and by the spring of 2021, the Championship Course was playable (though not finished). Along with using powerful and expensive machinery rarely available to most disc golf course builders, the construction was extraordinary in other ways. It included literal tons of stonework as well as churning up soil on wooded fairways and laying sod to create the much-loved aesthetic of lush green grass growing under canopies of trees. The course's three sets of tee pads are also jumbo sized so players have a consistent surface for run-ups.
Samuels said nonchalantly that the price tag on the course as of the end of 2022 was "over seven figures." Continued improvement and upgrades every year since have significantly added to that tally.
Despite the enormous amount of funding by disc golf course standards, the Championship Course could certainly have been a fiasco. There's no way around it: Having a wealthy backer who knows disc golf almost exclusively through videos liberally changing the designs of someone deeply involved in the sport for decades doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
But, almost amazingly, McCormack and Samuels' joint efforts cooked up something fantastic.
The first time Eagles Crossing Disc Golf caught the attention of a large number of disc golfers was when the Championship Course (its only course at the time) hosted an OTB Skins Match in August 2021 that featured elite and popular pros Simon Lizotte, Eagle McMahon, James Conrad, and Nate Sexton. When Lizotte talked about the course in a vlog the day before the Skins Match, he called it "the best course I've ever played" and "the full disc golf experience." After the skins match, McMahon named the course his favorite in the world.
The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing's presence in the top 10 of the World's Best Disc Golf Courses for the last four years is another big testament to its quality. Courses earn their place in the top 10 based on ratings of disc golfers with UDisc and not the opinions of UDisc's staff.
In 2023, a second course, Wild Times at Eagles Crossing, opened for play at Eagles Crossing Disc Golf. A much more wooded course than Championship, it's getting the same no-pinched-pennies approach. Fairways through the woods are being sodded, stairways and switch back trails traverse inclines, and top-notch tees are in place.
To keep its two massive courses in the pristine condition disc golfers expect when paying nearly $40 for a round, along with maintaining the complex's rental cabins (and forthcoming rental villa), pro shop, and camping/RV areas, Eagles Crossing Disc Golf likely employs more people than any other primarily disc golf-focused facility.
"The success of Eagles Crossing is due to our dedicated team, and we cannot express enough gratitude for their hard work and commitment," Samuels told us. "From our groundskeepers to our outstanding hospitality staff, each member has played a crucial role in maintaining the excellence of Eagles Crossing."
In Samuels' mind, all that work is going toward a single goal: Providing the best disc golf experience possible at what he believes is the world's finest disc golf destination.
"We intend for this [facility] to be maintained at the highest level," Samuels said. "We're not there yet, and it'll take some time. But this is the premier course as far I'm concerned, and I don't expect anybody to catch us."
How Hard Is the Championship Course at Eagles Crossing Disc Golf?
The Championship Course at Eagles Crossing has three layouts, and all of them are best suited for skilled, experienced disc golfers. Here's how they stack up in terms of length, difficulty, and more.
| Name | Distance |
Technicality | Overall Difficulty | Par Rating | Scoring Average | |
| Shortest Layout | Red Tees | Very Long | Highly Technical | Very Challenging | 204 | +9 |
| Mid-Length Layout | White Tees | Very Long | Highly Technical | Very Challenging | 249 | +18 |
| Longest Layout | Blue Tees | Very Long | Highly Technical | Very Challenging | 284 | +25 |
You can see more about these layouts by checking out Championship Course at Eagles Crossing on UDisc Courses.
To learn more about what the categories for distance, technicality, overall difficulty, and par rating mean, check out these posts:
What's It Like to Play the Championship Course at Eagles Crossing Disc Golf?
When we talked to the former course professional at Eagles Crossing, Anthony Angel, his summary of what disc golfers who take on the Championship course can expect was simple and bold.
"Take the best holes from every course in the United States, and that's Eagles Crossing," Angel said.
Whether or not every one of the course's holes bests your current personal favorites, Angel's statement underlines two things this Missouri marvel has in spades: variety and excellence. You'll find most every sort of challenge imaginable to disc golfers on the Championship Course at Eagles Crossing. There are uphill and downhill shots, open and wooded fairways, multiple water hazards, and a number of baskets in positions that can make putting nerve-wracking. Additionally, many fairways feature plenty of out-of-bounds (all clearly marked, of course) to make sure imprecision is duly punished.
There are also multiple sets of tee pads, the red, white, and blue, each harder than the next, with the blue tees offering one of the highest UDisc ratings – 284 –for scoring par on any layout among the world's top 100 courses.
And all of that is on land designed and reserved for no other purpose than disc golf. Tee time reservations are mandatory much of the year, too, so you're unlikely to be rushed by groups behind or slowed down by groups ahead.
Of course, almost nothing great comes for free. Eagle's Crossing is one of the most expensive courses to play in the world. A single round costs $39 according to the latest information added to the UDisc directory. It'll be up to you to decide whether the experience seems worth the price, but it may help you make up your mind to know that Samuels doesn't plan for the course to turn him a profit.
"I don't put any money in my pocket," Samuels said. "It all goes back to the course. It's just a matter of if you want to play a really nice course with people that really want to maintain something fantastic for you to play on...[but] if you want it, you gotta pay for it."
Three Real Five Star Reviews of the Championship Course at Eagles Crossing Disc Golf
Three five star reviews of Eagles Crossing from disc golfers on UDisc:
Note that the publication date of this post reflects the last time we made minor updates to it. Some information has not changed since its last major update in 2024.
