28 / 38
English Turn Provides
Great Golf with a Side
of History
By:
Steve Habel
Teeing it up in New Orleans can provide nearly
as many thrills as a trip to Bourbon Street.
When one thinks of New Orleans, it’s usually for
the 24-hour party scene on Bourbon Street, the
hundredsofworld-renownedrestaurants, themighty
Mississippi River, the arts district, the streetcars or…
heck, just about anything besides golf.
But that’s a huge mistake. While there’s not a
lot of golf in the Big Easy, the courses in the city
and its suburbs are some of the best anywhere
in the South and worth traveling to Louisiana’s
easternmost sectors to enjoy and experience.
On our most recent trip to the Crescent City we
teed it up at one of the area’s top private (but
accessible) courses, English Turn Golf.
English Turn Golf & Country Club was built for
the Tour but is playable for everyone.
The golf course at English Turn was designed
by Jack Nicklaus and was designed to provide
as exquisite a visual experience as it is a great
round of golf. Nicklaus fashioned gallery berms
and spectator mounds all along the course that
were built specifically for the USF&G Classic
(now the Zurich Classic), but the Golden Bear
also knew the track needed to be playable for
golfers of all ability levels the other 50 weeks of
the year.
At English Turn, Nicklaus created 18
unique, championship holes on a course
completely surrounded by the Norman
Canal. Despite being the centerpiece of an
exclusive neighborhood the routing was
not designed to divide residential areas –
each hole here challenges players with its
own personality.
Giant sand and waste bunkers guard many
holes, and numerous grass depressions line the
sculptured fairways. The smallish greens are
notoriously tiered and undulating and some are
wickedly shallow, challenging, yet fair, for the
club member and pros alike.
NWO Golf Links