Abita Springs Golf Club

There aren't a lot of choices to play golf near Abita Springs, Louisiana but fortunately the one course near our campground is a fun one.

Mondays and Wednesdays are Seniors and Ladies Day at the golf course so you can play a round of golf for $25 with a riding cart. When Denny and I arrived for our tee time there was a crowd of men ready to tee off who I'm sure were locals taking advantage of the good price and the fact that Wednesday was the warmest day that we had had for a week, although that wasn't saying much. It was overcast, cold and breezy and I was prepared for a miserable day with my tight muscles and sore back.

Indeed both Denny and I started off playing poorly (it was COLD!) but eventually the wind died down and the sun started trying to peek out of the clouds and the two of us settled down to hit a few good shots. This was the first golf course I've ever played where the green were brown; whatever grass they use for their greens apparently goes into hibernation and changes color. Very strange and hard to find the greens when you are playing a strange golf course for the first time. The course itself is a bit short with the yardage on the hole markers and score cards in no way matching where the grounds crews have set the tee markers. So picking a club to hit was a guessing game off the tee although there are the standard yardage markers along the sides of the fairways after you hit your tee shot. Denny played the white tees at 6065 yards with a slope/rating of 124/69.3 while I played the red tees at 4645 yards with a slope/rating of 112/66.8. We were surprised to see that all of the men playing in front of us were playing from the "senior" tees at what we thought was a relatively short golf course.

I have to say Denny and I will need to return to this course to play it again due to the cold weather, the fact that we had torrential rains the night before which made the golf course very boggy (it was cart-path only that day) and the greens were "dead". The course was actually in good condition otherwise and it was obvious the players fixed their ball marks on the greens and their divots in the fairways, which can be rare. The two of us managed to stay out of the sand traps which was good because all the sand traps were mini-ponds due to the rain. There are a lot of ponds and lakes and creeks on this course so you should be prepared to lose a ball or two when you play here.

Once the sun finally came out Denny and I settled down to play some better golf so we'll put this course on our "we'll be back" list.