Lakewood Golf Club: Cypress, Flame Bunkers, and Twenty-Six Tour Sundays

Citywide Spotlight awards Lakewood the fourth Outdoor Diamond because it is the public-access course in New Orleans that still carries the weight of a Tour house. From 1963 through 1988 the New Orleans Open lived here. Nicklaus won. Watson won twice. Trevino, Casper, Ballesteros, Crenshaw, and a list of other serious men walked these fairways when the club was private and the city came out on Sunday. In 2003 the New Orleans Firefighters Pension Fund bought the property and opened it to daily-fee play. Ron Garl later rebuilt the bones: new tees, greens, and contour, the old parkland character kept, and bunkers that pay a quiet tribute—flame-shaped hazards in red sand on the eighteenth, a fleur-de-lis, a fireman’s seal. Katrina took hundreds of trees. What remains is more open than the old garden club, framed still by cypress and live oak, water in play, and a finishing hole named, with a straight face, Fire in the Hole.

The land is West Bank flat, six miles or so from downtown, a fifteen- to twenty-minute drive across the bridge depending on the hour. Fairways sit among houses and trees. The course plays to seven thousand yards from the gold tees with a slope that can humble a good player when the wind is up. Multiple sets of tees let a traveler choose dignity over theater. The short-game practice ground is one of the better ones in the metro. Walking is allowed. The difficulty is less theatrical than English Turn’s lakes and more a matter of placement, long approaches, and greens that still expect a true roll.

Best season is the same as the rest of the parish: late autumn through early spring. Summer is for the devoted and the dawn tee time. After a round, Algiers and Gretna offer lunch; the return to the Quarter or Uptown is short enough that the day can hold both golf and a proper evening.

The clubhouse is a working golf house—pro shop, dining, a covered patio, a bar—more practical than palatial. Some years the literature has spoken of a larger house still to come. What matters is that the shop will rent you clubs, the staff will put you on the tee, and the course still looks like a place where championships happened.

Choosing Lakewood over a city park eighteen is a choice for history you can play. You gain Tour ground, a renovation that respected the original garden character, and fees that belong to a daily-fee club rather than a resort. The graceful cons are the residential edges, the summer heat, and a clubhouse that does not pretend to be a plantation inn. Condition varies with season and staff, as it does at every public-access course that hosts a lot of play. Call the shop. Ask how the greens are that week.

Lakewood is awarded because memory and a playable modern routing live on the same property. It is a course for professionals and serious amateurs who want the old New Orleans Open under their feet without needing a member to sign the ticket. Play it when the weather is kind. Take the tees that let you finish. Look at the eighteenth bunkers and understand you are on ground that once belonged to the Tour.