We love seeing local Ozarks kids make it big, and that’s exactly what’s happening down at America’s premier golf destination. This morning on The Starting Lineup, we caught up with Matt McQueary, the Director of Golf Sales and Marketing for Big Cedar golf courses. A Springfield native who graduated from Glendale High School in 2005 and later survived a sports-department internship under our very own crew at Drury University around 2011 and 2012, Matt is now steering the ship for a golf empire that has completely captured the national sports spotlight.

Surviving Volleyball Stats to Booking Travis Kelce Before Matt was taking texts from Kansas City Chiefs superstars, we had him doing stat crew over at Drury University. He hilariously admitted that trying to keep live volleyball statistics was harder than learning Portuguese under pressure. Fast forward to today, and Matt’s Rolodex is a who’s who of sports icons. He shared what it’s like playing nine holes with Travis Kelce—noting a massive shift to “next-level celebrity” status on Kelce’s post-Taylor Swift visit—and taking booking calls from Patrick Mahomes, Nolan Arenado, and Bobby Witt Jr. around the MLB All-Star break.

The Local Advantage: Beating the Resort Rates While private jets are landing in record numbers at the Branson private airport, Matt dropped a vital reminder for our local listeners: you don’t need a billionaire budget to play these world-class courses. Big Cedar offers locked-in local rates all year long for residents in surrounding counties spanning as far north as Springfield down to Northwest Arkansas. While spring and fall fill up months in advance with resort tourists, summer is peak time for locals to call the pro shops, show an ID, and hit the fairways without worrying about public dynamic pricing.

The Evolution of Cliffhangers and What’s Coming This 4th of July We dove deep into the architecture that makes these courses world-renowned. Matt detailed how Johnny Morris and JP Morris originally planned a simple driving range near Tiger Woods’ Payne’s Valley, only for Johnny to get so enamored with the landscape that he expanded it into Cliffhangers—a mind-blowing 18-hole par-3 course where you can tee off right out of a cave with a waterfall cascading in front of you. Even better? Matt revealed that this year, Big Cedar is opening a massive, two-acre St. Andrews-style rolling putting green right over the famous top of the rock sinkhole, alongside a brand-new 9-hole putting course launching this 4th of July.