A Place That’s Different
in a State That’s Different
Carter Plantation Golf Course
Springfield, Louisiana
Date: November 17, 2019
Greens fee: $50
Louisiana happens fast. Interstate 55’s scenery doesn’t change much from Jackson down to its southern neighbor, but past the state line, the world morphs quickly. The land is flatter. The soil is sandier. But the accents change quickest of all. An untrained ear generally won’t distinguish between the southern accent’s state-specific dialects, but no more than a few miles past the state line, south Louisiana accents are harder to miss than mosquitos in a swamp.
The contrast between Mississippi and Louisiana is pronounced by more than just how people speak — it’s reflected in what people in those two states are saying. Mississippi and Louisiana are among the few states that hold statewide elections in years immediately preceding presidential cycles; their racial demographics are similar (Louisiana’s population contains the second-highest percentage of African Americans of any state; the only state with a larger portion of African Americans is Mississippi), as is the distribution of their demographics between urban centers and large swaths of rural countryside.
Water guards the right side of the green at Carter Plantation’s second hole.
But in November 2019, these two seemingly similar states took strikingly different paths in their statewide elections. In Louisiana, voters narrowly re-elected Governor Jon Bel Edwards, a white moderate Democrat cut in the pattern of white moderate Democrats who stood toe-to-toe with Republicans in a reddening South as recently as 20 years ago. Up the road, though, Mississippi voters rejected a gubernatorial bid by Attorney General Jim Hood — another white moderate Democrat with a political profile that is largely undistinguishable from Edwards’. These results are even harder to square with the fact that Mississippi’s population consists of a higher percentage of African Americans — a fact that, in racially polarized electorates, ought to make Mississippi the Democrat-friendlier of the two states. But clearly, it’s not.
There’s something different about Louisiana. And when it hits you, it happens fast.
. . .
Carter Plantation is actually not a plantation, but rather an insensitively named subdivision about five miles southwest of Hammond (side note: before naming anything a “plantation” in the Deep South in the Twenty-First Century, ask yourself why). Appropriately, it falls within Livingston Parish, one of only two parishes in the swath from metro Baton Rouge to New Orleans that voted against Edwards in November 2019 (the other anti-Edwards parish, Ascension Parish, went for Republican Eddie Rispone by 4.6 points; Edwards lost Livingston Parish by nearly 41 points).
Like a lot of real estate developments in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there had to be a golf course. But the development made one fortunate decision, at least, when it chose David Toms, the former LSU star and 2001 PGA Championship winner, to design the course. Toms clearly wasn’t given the property’s best land, but he also made the most of the land he was given. The routing moves in a series of loops around the property — allowing for houses to be built on the edges.
Picking the land first and designing the golf course second is the very definition of “preconceived,” but Toms saved a potentially forgettable course with a fun, imaginative set of green complexes. They’re protected less by bunkering than by closely mown roll-off areas, which both repel poor approaches off the green and allow high-handicappers to get up and down using a putter.
That would’ve been fine, if I hadn’t forgotten my putter at home.
On some nights, after the kids go to bed, I unroll my putting mat and roll a few before bedtime. Usually, I take the putter back to the bedroom with me afterward. Usually. But the night before heading to Carter Plantation, I left it leaning casually against a dining room chair — where it remained, 140 miles away, right about the time I got to Carter Plantation’s practice green.
I panicked. Maybe I could go Robert Streb and putt with my 60-degree? I tried a few and quickly picked up the basics of the technique, but with even less touch than I show with a real putter. So I walked back to the pro shop, metaphorical hat in hand, to ask for…well, for whatever they’d give me, short of buying a new putter. I explained my predicament. “Do you guys have an extra lying around that I could rent, or…?” (emphasis on the “or…”). The old man behind the counter quickly picked up a demo model from the Odyssey display, and for the collateral of my driver’s license and credit card, it was mine for four hours. (Note: when in need, always ask the pro shop for help; whatever you’ve screwed up, they’ve seen it before.)
That solved one problem, but it didn’t help with another: the course’s length. Carter Plantation’s yardage isn’t per se problematic, but its teeing options are awkward: the blue tees (5,693 yards) and gold tees (6,548 yards) have nearly 900 yards difference between them. I split the difference and decided to play the longer golds on the front and the shorter blues on the back. That helped take some of the bite out of the length; so did the fairways’ firmness — remarkably firm for November in the South, which normally is a blast; but they were so narrow that anything but a perfect line off the tee took a few massive bounces and rolled out into the rough or, worse, a fairway bunker.
The par-5 fourth hole (514 yards from the tips, 473 yards from the golds) embodies all these problems. Its fairway curves right and then left, like an inverted “S,” with trees on the right guarding the inside of the first curve off the tee. For a player who hits a fade, the trees are no issue; but for a player who only draws the ball (hi, how are you?), the trees dictate a tee shot toward the left side of the fairway — where the ball is destined to bound across the firm surface into trouble. From there, the green is guarded on its left by water and on its right by a series of bunkers that close in on the green over the fairway’s last 40 yards or so — effectively requiring a draw (or forcing a fade player to start her ball over the water). So not only does the hole strip away a player’s strategic decisions, it also forces the player to hit two different shot shapes on the same hole. Outside David Toms, not a lot of players visiting Carter Plantation are likely to have that weapon in their arsenals.
Carter Plantation’s best hole is the short 14th — a par-4 that can be played off the tee with anything from a driver to a 7-iron.
The back nine was more fun — in part, undoubtedly, because I started playing from shorter tees at the turn. A couple of the holes became driver-flip wedge exercises (the 317-yard 10th, for example, as straightforward a par-4 as ever there was), but not all of them were formulaic. The 14th hole is the shortest par-4 on the course (330 yards from the tips, 269 yards from the blues), but it offers more options than any other: a landing area between the beginning of the fairway and a pair of generously spaced pot bunkers, or the stingier plot of ground between the pot bunkers and two dramatic, sprawling greenside bunkers — or, for the truly delusional, a narrow chute of short grass that a perfectly executed drive can ride all the way onto the green. It does everything right that the fifth hole does wrong: it doesn’t demand a shot shape, or even a line of play. But especially when the course is firm, its risks and potential rewards couldn’t be higher.
Even when Carter Plantation is showing its residential roots, though — like at the long, downhill par-5 13th hole (608 yards from the tips, 566 yards from the blue tees) — the course is more fun than not. Fairway bunkers guard the far edges of the landing zones from both the tee and the second shot, requiring a player to debate a layup — but the firm, bouncy fairways complicate the decision. The eventual wedge shot into the green is flanked on both sides by sand traps and reinforced in back by water (mandatory Tommy Raynor-style fountain included), all of which turns a technically simple shot into a visually harrowing moment.
Carter Plantation’s short 17th hole is guarded on three sides by water, reminiscent of the comparably short, penultimate hole at TPC Louisiana.
Even from shorter tees, Carter Plantation changes its pace so often — alternating between long and short holes — that a routine never really develops, keeping a player enjoyably uncomfortable. It wasn’t until the 18th tee that I realized I’d be finishing in just over three hours.
True to the form of never letting the player get truly comfortable, the 18th is a long, dogleg-left par-4. Short of the green after my approach, I half-shanked a pitch into the right rough, but followed it up with my only good chip of the day — perhaps a foot from the hole. Suddenly, I realized that I’d left the putter back in the car — but then again, I’d broached the possibility of putting with a wedge just a little more than three hours before. I tapped in with my 60-degree.
. . .
If Louisiana is different, its golf courses frequently aren’t. The land is flat, so the courses are often uninspired — a counterintuitive reality, given that the state’s people are perhaps America’s least run-of-the-mill. Carter Plantation breaks the mould: a residential course that offers fun and, occasionally, character. It stands as evidence that, if Louisiana’s voters can defy the southern political norm, then perhaps its golf courses occasionally can do the same.
. . .
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