Imagine your TPC Louisiana golf visit starts with accommodations at the centrally-located historic NOPSI Hotel, a melting pot of architectural splendor and culture, and you’re just a short walking distance to the fantastic culinary, lively spirits and amazing music the French Quarter offers. You enjoy some jambalaya and a killer daiquiri, Sazerac Rye or Ramos Gin Fizz while tapping your toes to some blues tunes, then over a nightcap at the hotel’s rooftop bar you talk about how you’re going to attack the TPC Louisiana course right from the first hole on your morning tee time.
Attack might be an appropriate word because one of the famed hazards that will get your attention are the alligators that live in the swamp and occasionally come to sun on the fairways. But seriously, unless you want to try and fish out your errant shot, better judgment calls for you to make your medicine and a drop. Pack a few extra Titleists.
Listen, you’re in good company because the TPC Louisiana hosts The Zurich Classic, an annual event on the PGA Tour.
Speaking of the PGA, the TPC Louisiana is one of 30 premiere private, resort and daily fee golf properties owned, operated, and licensed by the PGA TOUR. Some of its designers include some of golf’s most elite architects – including Pete Dye, Tom Fazio, Bobby Weed, and Arthur Hills, plus PGA TOUR members Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman and Hale Irwin.
Courtesy New Orleans and Company
Courtesy New Orleans and Company
So to test your game on this imposing 7,402 yard track is really a unique opportunity to measure your skills on the same layouts where the world’s best golfers compete.
Set amidst Louisiana’s stately cypress and oak trees, this course features natural wetlands and Pete Dye’s signature “pot bunkers”.
Overall, I must say, this is a very playable course for the average player.
I mean, the TPC Louisiana greens are well-manicured and roll true. The fairways are fairly wide. The trees are not super-imposing. The sand is soft and there’s not a lot of elevation. But on the other hand, gators rule the multiple water hazards and Dye has strategically placed over 100 of his diabolical bunkers throughout the entire layout.
Courtesy TPC Louisiana
But the key is that if you are dialed in with your long to mid-irons you could end up with a low round on a PGA Tour course that you can brag to your friends about for years to come (and of course, no one will know if you embellish your encounter with a gator).
If you have an extended stay, a terrific golf outing is the 36-hole complex known as Bayou Oak at City Park. Designed by the renowned Rees Jones, and restored and re-established after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, sitting on over 200 acres amidst lagoons and historic oak trees, the championship-level South Course measures between 5,054 and 7,302 yards.
As they say in the Big Easy, ‘Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!’- Let the Good Times Roll!
Courtesy National WWII Museum
Remember to visit the WWII National Museum during your TPC Louisiana holiday. There’s a massive banner that every passenger sees as they stroll through Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. And with so many attractions including the richness of the area’s legendary culinary and music offerings, as well as specialty adventures like graveyard, haunted mansion, plantation and swamp tours, what is the leading attraction in The Big Easy?
Well, that massive billboard says it all, “The #1 Attraction in New Orleans – The WWII National Museum”.
And a visit to the massive building that covers six-acres located in downtown New Orleans does a superb job of placing visitors in a specific period of time capturing the sights and sounds, terrors and triumphs of this global conflict about a war that changed the world—why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today.
One of the distinct ways they do this is via a patriotic sound-and-light show.
Courtesy National WWII Museum
“Expressions of America” is a first-of-its-kind nighttime sound and light experience celebrating the power of individual Americans to impact the world around them during a time of monumental conflict. Available exclusively at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans and having made its debut on Veterans Day 2022, it immerses audiences in written words, songs, and personal reflections of the everyday men and women who served our country in every way imaginable during World War II.
With all the exhibits, films and interactive attractions covering all the theaters of war, one could easily spend several days here. One of the highlights is the US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center, the stunning home of seven restored WWII planes. And besides details including authentic and distinct weapons and uniforms along with oral histories about battlefronts from El Alamein in North Africa to the Philippines and the conflict in the Far East, there’s also plenty of material that reflect what was happening on our shores.
Courtesy National WWII Museum
For example, the newest exhibit, The Arsenal of Democracy: The Herman and George R. Brown Salute to the Home Front, draws on personal narratives and evocative artifacts to highlight facets of WWII-era American life through an experiential narrative.
Chances are when you go to catch your flight home, as you pass and look up at that massive banner you will nod your head in agreement about having experienced such a compelling attraction.
