Atchafalaya is sad

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The Audubon Golf Trail needs to hold their member courses accountable.

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Louisiana? Accountability?

Was never a big “join a club” kind of guy bc you really only play once course… but it sounds like every single public course in Louisiana has gone to shite, according to this board.. glad I joined a couple years back

I played OakWing today, they either ran out of $$$, or DGAF…

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The Island's greens and fairways are in great shape, but all the bunkers on the course are unplayable. When they reopened, they just dumped sand in a handful of greenside bunkers and called it a day. I hope they can address that soon because its really the only thing wrong with the course.

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Courses in South Louisiana, especially public courses should just not have bunkers. They're extremely expensive to maintain if they even can given the weather.

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There has to be other cheaper ways to add penalties to courses. Maybe trees. Someone smarter than me would know.

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Just turn them into ground bunkers, that's way more of a penalty than sand anyway. Sand shots aren't an issue at all for decent players.

As I left on my own accord, I can say what I’d like freely. But I won’t get into personal or company names.

I was the most recent superintendent, as I understand it. October 2018 until November of 2020.

Within 2 months I regretted my decision.

Bills don’t get paid, zero communication, St. Mary Parish wants nothing to do with the place, unless it miraculously could make money. Sure a 600k/yr maintenance budget is great, but when only 300k of that gets paid yearly, it’s just a lie.

Labor was nonexistent when I got there, the ‘mechanic’ was a meth head, most of the employees would just go somewhere and sleep. Turned that around quick, caveat being, most of the labor was contracted through a local company. Said company would charge 1.5x the hourly pay to employees. I’d hire an employee at 9$/hr, we were charged 14.50$/hr. This led to many heated discussions, none which panned out in my favor. Coming from Houston, a 14.50$/hr employee could operate any piece of equipment, most likely repair irrigation, etc etc…not just someone I’m pulling off the street, with no golf course maintenance experience.

The golf course operates out of its own checkbook, St Mary Parish wasn’t responsible for carrying any of the debt, unless certain people went and kissed arse. Shitty week of weather? Hurricane? No income, well good luck there. There were times I was legit concerned the employees might not get paid, but said contracting company was OK with carrying a couple weeks backdated, knowing they’d get their money and then some. I put pen to paper one day and figured out the contracting company was making damn near 60k a year for writing checks.

There were vendors that would not sell. Hard to do anything when you can’t purchase fertilizer and chemicals. Would be told to do it anyways, knowing full well the net terms would not be met within 30 days, hell even 90 days, sometimes even a year. Felt terrible even putting salespeople in that position.

The course layout is great, they just hit at the wrong time, golf took a steep downturn within a few years after opening. No public golf course needs 4.5 acres of greens and close to 155k sq ft of bunkers. That’s lunacy.

Bunker renovation from Hurricane Barry in 2019. I almost blame myself for bringing up the fact that FEMA would may 75 cents on the dollar to restore them because of the disaster declaration. I dealt with this many times in Houston, mostly due to flooding.

The contract for bunkers was awarded to a local general contractor, though the low bid was from a national contractor, with golf course construction experience. Some how the low bid was taken away from this company because of an error and the amount was then matched by the local contractor and awarded.

The local general contractor had less than zero experience in golf course construction, I pitched a fit and was basically told to shut up. Ok fine.

It was quite evident from initial site inspections that these people were in over their heads. A week into the project I could only laugh. Operators never using a mini ex, lack of labor, too much to tell really. Project started in July 2020, I gave up in November and took a job in Fort Lauderdale.

There really are a certain group of dedicated citizens that have been involved with that golf course for longer than it’s been open, I fear though pride has gotten in their way of really making it anything other than a golf course close to home for them.

Jeez. That situation is so pathetic.

So did the parish simply hold onto the money? Did they lie about how much they’d budget for the course?

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it amazes me at the lack of attention this place gets. Like I said, it's a good layout. Some bunkers can be eliminated without any impact to the course aesthetics. Smaller pot bunkers would seem to be easier to maintain?

#2 hole needs a complete redo or trees need to be eliminated to allow airflow and sun.

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The problem is golfers do not realize how much the above will cost. The above is a large investment and this is a course that cannot even pay the chemical bills.