Best golf courses near New Orleans, LA

The PGA Tour played the New Orleans Open at Lakewood from 1963 to 1988, with names like Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Casper, Ballesteros and Crenshaw all winning at this public track. In addition to this PGA Tour history, the course also hosted the 1966 U.S. Senior Women's Amateur. A recent redesign has modernized the course, which now includes several unique bunkers, including the flame-shaped traps at the 18th, designed to pay tribute to New Orleans firefighters.

English Turn hosted a PGA Tour event (now the Zurich Classic of New Orleans) from 1989 through 2006. The par-72 Jack Nicklaus Signature design features water on 17 of its 18 holes, including the signature par-5 15th island green with strategically placed bunkers.

Bayou Oaks is home to two courses just five miles away from downtown New Orleans. The South course, which tips out at 7,302 yards, was renovated in 2017 by Rees Jones and Greg Muirhead. The shorter North Course, with four sets of tees maxing out at 5,740 yards, isn't a pushover despite its lack of length--water comes into play on eight of the 18 holes.

Metairie Country Club, opened in 1925, was the jewel of New Orleans golf through the first decade of its existence. It was designed by Seth Raynor and possessed variations of his much-studied template holes originally introduced by his mentor, C.B. Macdonald, at National Golf Links of America and other courses. A land swap in 1928 fundamentally altered the second nine routing of holes 14-18, and hard economic conditions and infrastructure challenges in the late 1930s prompted further renovations that compromised Raynor's design, a trend that continued for decades. The club never retained Raynor's blueprints for the course and wasn't sure precisely what the architect had left behind. So, in 2021, they hired Brian Silva to reimagine a pure Raynor course on the property. Drawing on as much experience studying and reviving Raynor's designs throughout the country as anyone over the last 30 years, Silva reproduced vivid versions of the Bottle, Biarritz, Redan, Leven, Road, Eden and others. Though not a historical restoration, Metairie has been completely and imaginatively transformed.

Home of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans since 2007, this Pete Dye design exudes a flair of TPC Sawgrass with some more low-profile design features like hidden bunkers and green complexes that offer options on approach. Dye had help from fellow tour pros Steve Elkington and New Orleans native Kelly Gibson on this 7,400-yard par-72 layout. Consistently ranked in the top 10 of Golf Digest’s Best in State, TPC Louisiana offers a nice mix of challenging short and long holes.

Bayou Oaks is home to two courses just five miles away from downtown New Orleans. The South course, which tips out at 7,302 yards, was renovated in 2017 by Rees Jones and Greg Muirhead. The shorter North Course, with four sets of tees maxing out at 5,740 yards, isn't a pushover despite its lack of length--water comes into play on eight of the 18 holes.