English Turn Golf and Country Club

The verdict

English Turn was built with a single purpose: to give New Orleans a Tour quality course, and it has worn that role since it opened. Jack Nicklaus took flat, low lying land in the river bend that sailors named English Turn, where the Mississippi swings back on itself south of the city, and engineered a championship layout out of ground that offered almost no natural elevation. The shaping is all his: raised greens, defensive mounding, and water laced through the routing so that nearly every hole asks a question over a hazard. From 1989 the PGA Tour came each spring, and the course held up against the best for more than a decade.

For the traveling golfer, the draw is championship pedigree on the doorstep of one of America's great cities. This is a country club rather than a resort, so access is more considered than a daily fee course, but the reward is a genuine Tour test you can pair with everything New Orleans offers off the course. It is not a scenic mountain or coastal round; its character is strategic and watery, a test of nerve and shot shaping rather than of views, and that, combined with the city beyond the gates, is exactly why it belongs on a Louisiana golf trip.

The holes worth the trip

English Turn is a course built on water and angles. Because the land was so flat, Nicklaus created interest with bold earthmoving and with hazards that frame nearly every shot, so the round is less about carrying ridges than about choosing the right line over and around water. The fairways are defended by lakes and lagoons that run alongside and across the holes, and the player who flirts with the hazard for a better angle is rewarded while the one who bails out leaves a longer, harder approach. It is classic Nicklaus strategy: the course gives you the option and then makes you pay for the wrong choice.

The closing stretch is where the championship character shows. Water tightens around the greens, the wind off the river swings the ball, and the player protecting a score has to keep producing committed shots when the safe miss has shrunk to almost nothing. The greens are raised and well bunkered, so a missed approach often leaves an awkward recovery, and putting surfaces that have tested Tour fields demand precise distance control. From the back tees, with the wind up, it is a serious examination of ball striking and nerve.

From a sensible set of tees, though, English Turn is fair and rewarding rather than punishing. Play within yourself, respect the water, and take the safe side when the angle does not justify the risk, and the course gives you room to score. It is the kind of layout that gets better the more you understand it, which is part of why it served so long as a Tour venue and why it remains the championship round to build a New Orleans golf trip around.

Where to stay nearby

The obvious base is New Orleans itself, twenty five minutes north across the river, where the French Quarter, the Garden District and the Warehouse District offer hotels for every taste and some of the best food and music in the country. Staying in the city lets you combine championship golf by day with everything that makes New Orleans worth the trip after dark, with the course an easy morning drive away.

For a fuller Louisiana golf trip, pair English Turn with the state's Tour venue, the Pete Dye test at TPC Louisiana in nearby Avondale, which took over the New Orleans event when it left here. From the city you can also run east along the Gulf to the secluded Tom Fazio golf at Fallen Oak near Biloxi for a coast and city week.

Looking for a base? See our recommended hotels and resorts in and around New Orleans.