Belterra Casino Golf Club

Belterra Casino Golf Club is a Tom Fazio design carved from the rolling hills of southeastern Indiana along the Ohio River, featuring bentgrass from tee to green, 56 strategically placed bunkers, and over 2,200 trees framing the layout. Named among the top casino courses in the United States by Golfweek, it offers a challenging par-71 test conveniently located between Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington.

Belterra Casino Golf Club in Florence, Indiana is an 18-hole course designed by Tom Fazio, Beau Welling, and Dennis Wise and opened in 2001 on the Ohio River in Switzerland County — a 6,925-yard, par-71 resort course at the Belterra Casino Resort that Golfweek ranked among the top 20 casino golf courses in the United States in 2007 and that exploits the dramatic topography of the southern Indiana hill country to create elevation changes, Ohio River views, and natural landscape beauty rare in resort golf at a casino property. Tom Fazio's involvement with the Belterra Golf Club brought his design philosophy — the integration of natural landscape beauty with strategic playing challenge, the creation of courses that feel contextually appropriate to their settings — to the Ohio River bluffs of Switzerland County. Beau Welling and Dennis Wise, who collaborated with Fazio on the course's design and construction, brought technical expertise to complement the principal architect's vision on terrain that the southern Indiana hill country's dramatic topography provided as the primary design resource.

The combination of elevation changes, the Ohio River proximity, and Log Lick Creek winding through the property gave the design team the natural features they incorporated as the course's most memorable elements. Each of the 18 holes was created to highlight the natural surroundings of the Belterra property: the course winds through more than 2,200 trees that were preserved during construction, over lakes that were created as water features throughout the routing, and across terrain whose elevation changes provide both challenge and the scenic views of the Ohio River that give the course its most distinctive visual moments. The par-71 configuration — one hole short of the standard par-72 — gives the Belterra course its slightly unconventional rhythm while the 6,925-yard length from the championship tees provides the competitive scale appropriate to a resort course hosting the full range of guests at the Belterra Casino Resort.

Switzerland County's position in the far southwestern corner of Indiana — on the Ohio River across from Kentucky, in a landscape of rolling hills and forested river bluffs that bears no resemblance to the flat agricultural terrain of most of Indiana — gives Belterra Casino Golf Club its most powerful geographic asset. The Ohio River valley at this point retains the natural character of the pre-settlement landscape to a degree unusual in the heavily farmed Midwest, with the forested bluffs, the river's width, and the absence of urban industrial development creating a backdrop for golf of remarkable natural beauty. The Belterra Casino Resort's Ohio River location serves a market that includes both the Cincinnati, Ohio metropolitan area — accessible via Interstate 275 and the AA Highway in Kentucky — and the broader tri-state region of southern Indiana, northern Kentucky, and southeastern Ohio where the Ohio River serves as the cultural and geographic spine of a closely linked regional population.

Golfweek's top 20 casino golf course ranking placed Belterra in national company for resort golf at gaming properties, confirming that the Fazio design team's work on the Switzerland County bluffs had produced a course whose quality justified the resort investment and rewarded the golfers who make the journey to Florence for the combination of casino entertainment and championship hillside golf.