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The Not-So-Big Easy

Click here to visit GolfDigest.com
Audubon Park in New Orleans blooms as a prime short course


10/01/2002
Edited By: Matthew Rudy, Golf Digest magazine

Visitors to New Orleans have traditionally been single-minded in their approach to the Big Easy. New Orleans is about food, drink and nightlife (and the annual confluence of those things at Mardi Gras). New Orleans has never been about golf. Sure, the suburban, private English Turn hosts a PGA Tour event, but the course is a half-hour from the French Quarter, and it takes some arm-twisting by your hotel's concierge to get you a tee time.

Audubon Park Golf Course won't change New Orleans' golf status all by itself, but more than $6 million in renovations have thrust it out from the shadow of its next-door parent, the Audubon Nature Institute and Zoo. Golf has been played at Audubon, an old World's Fair exhibition field, since 1898. Encroachment from the surrounding park and decades of indifferent maintenance had pounded flat the cramped, 5,800-yard course.

Architect Denis Griffiths transformed the 81-acre plot into a clever 4,189-yard, par-62 course with 12 par 3s, four par 4s and two par 5s -- including the spectacular par-5 18th, which is protected on the left by one of four lagoons installed to improve drainage. The design encourages fun, speedy play, but the scenery makes hurrying hard. Locals crowd the running paths around the course enjoying the scenery and shade offered by the majestic old-growth oaks.

Audubon doesn't make the standard short-course concessions to conditioning and strategy anymore, but it has kept the charms. You don't need a tee time, and you'll spend less than $20 to play. Head pro Stan Stopa stocks a variety of rental sets for clubless visitors. And remember, this is New Orleans: A Peacemaker -- the fried shrimp and oyster hero from the Acme Oyster House, a short streetcar ride away -- is the best halfway-house snack on the planet.

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