![]() ![]() I don’t know whether it’s my quarantine from the gym or a death knell hidden in my 40th birthday cake - but either way, the ball just isn’t flying like it used to. Over the past year, though, I’d been leaking distance throughout the bag - to the tune of 20 yards or so with my driver, and a full club with my irons. I’ve never been a threat to win long-drive titles, but I hit it farther than most 15-handicaps - so my driving has always been the foundation of my meager skillset. ![]() It’s just as well, though, because the design’s repetitiveness wasn’t the only thing hitting home. From the more modest green tees that I settled on, though, its boredom hits like a pillowcase full of nickels, with its few hazards more window dressing than strategically relevant. And like casinos themselves, the tees didn’t fit me generally, I like to play at about 6,300 yards, but the high-intermediate black tees stretched out over 6,500 yards, and the more intermediate-intermediate green tees were just over 6,000.Īt its full length of 7,077, Contraband Bayou must do something right: it hosts the Louisiana Mid-Am later this year, and will host U.S. In a nod to the casino that owns it, Contraband Bayou’s tee colors are metaphors for gamblers: black (for “in the black”), gold (obvious), green (for the color of money), and silver (for the color of the average customer’s hair). There are no blue, white, or red tees at Contraband Bayou. Like the casinos and refineries on all its sides, it sits on this land awkwardly and unnaturally - but it’s too late to do anything about it now. The swashbuckling, heavy-metal image inspired by its name could not be farther from its dull, repetitive design. But no one will take much else away from it, either: even by the standards of its architect, Tom Fazio, Contraband Bayou is formulaic and uninspired. No one can take that away from Contraband Bayou: it’s an actual golf course actually named Contraband Bayou. ![]() “My real goal is just to play a golf course named Contraband Bayou.” Kevin hails from Lake Charles and warned me that the golf course had seen better days. Three weeks later, with a Contraband Bayou tee time less than 24 hours away, I ran into Kevin McArthur at the Korn Ferry Tour event just outside Lafayette, Louisiana. “Today’s his day off.” It was a Saturday. That’s just a sixsome that met up with a fivesome.” I complained at the front desk, but the cashier corrected me: “Oh that’s not an elevensome. I arrived giddy, but 15 minutes before my tee time, the first fairway was slammed full with an elevensome - most of them surrounding a beverage cart to stock up on overpriced domestics. When I learned of Contraband Bayou’s existence in early March, I threw together a quick trip to Houston to play Memorial Park - with a plan to stop at Contraband Bayou on the way home. That knowledge was only the first of many disappointments that Contraband Bayou delivered. Contraband Bayou is, in other words, an actual place, and not a buzzword bonanza contrived during some sleep-starved marketing team’s fever dream. It twists between Lake Charles (the body of water, not the city) to the northeast and Prien Lake to the southwest - beyond which lie Moss Lake, Mud Lake, and eventually the world’s largest mud lake, the Gulf of Mexico. Lake Charles owes its Twentieth Century explosion to several factors, one of which was proximity of reliable oil fields to waterways - among which, I was disappointed to learn, is Contraband Bayou. Today, it’s the sixth-largest city in Louisiana. When the 1940s began, Lake Charles was home to just over 21,000 (about the size of Hammond today) by 1950, its population had nearly doubled. Then the refineries came: the Phillips 66 facility, which stretches over a full square mile along Interstate 10, came online in 1941 Citgo’s refinery - which today is one of America’s largest - followed just three years later. Tucked deep in the swamps of southwest Louisiana, Lake Charles was an afterthought for most of the Twentieth Century’s first half. It’s doubtful that the golf course, the casino that owns it, or many other of Lake Charles’ novelties ever should have been built here. Like the oil refineries that put its hometown on the map, Contraband Bayou is impressive until you look closely and consider the thing’s costs - after which bemusement at the novelty turns to horror, or worse, boredom. What is there to say about Contraband Bayou that I haven’t already written? Which is to say that, past Contraband Bayou’s name, there isn’t much to write. ![]()
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