It’s been the year of the Big Rebound in the Big Easy.

Jazz is back. The French Quarter is buzzing. Riverboat casinos are afloat and ready to swallow patrons’ hard-earned quarters and nickels. The Saints even returned to the freshly renovated Louisiana Superdome to win their opening game.
But to say New Orleans is on the rebound also implies that everything will soon be as it once was, which of course it won’t. Today, New Orleans golf is on the mend. And in many ways the healing mirrors the state of the city itself: It’s picking itself up, scraping away the mud and sludge, and slowly opening back up to the world.

Perhaps the most significant ongoing struggle to repair and reopen is taking place at City Park. Before the storm, it wasn’t uncommon to find City Park’s three 18-hole golf courses (known as “Bayou Oaks at City Park”) packed during peak golf season. After all, the park is located smack in the middle of New Orleans and was one of the largest urban green spaces in America. More than a mere golf course, City Park once offered an array of attractions on its 1,300 acres—think Manhattan’s Central Park crossed with Coney Island—including an amusement park, softball and soccer fields, boating, fishing, horse stables, and 26,000-seat Tad Gormley Stadium, which once hosted the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials.

But Hurricane Katrina inflicted catastrophic damages, and City Park sat under eight feet of water for several weeks after the storm. All of its buildings and equipment were lost, and its land was essentially ruined. Today the driving range is open, along with the tennis courts, the botanical garden, Tad Gormley and not much else. What was once a majestic, pleasant gathering place still has the outward appearance of utter misery.

“None of our buildings have been repaired by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), we have no equipment, and we have no staff,” says City Park Chief Executive Officer Bob Becker. “A lot of people thought after a year we’d be back to normal, but we’re not.”City Park used to employ 260 people with golf as its main source of revenue. But after Katrina hit, staff was quickly slashed to less than 30, where it remains today. None of those employees is currently working to repair the golf course.

“We’re in a period where the forest is starting to take over,” Becker says. “It’s over 500 acres and we don’t have anybody to cut it.”

Becker and his team were able to revive the driving range, which has provided some much-needed income. When the range first reopened last spring, eager golfers flocked to the mats, but there was a catch: City Park had no equipment or electricity, so golfers fired away until a staffer blew a whistle, which was the command for golfers to drop their clubs, wander onto the range and scoop up balls before returning to hit again.

“When people are desperate to go out and play golf and have some normality in their life, they’ll put up with some things they normally wouldn’t do,” Becker says. “Eventually we got power, lights and a machine to pick up the balls.”
It took more than $5 million from individual and corporate donors to repair the few amenities that are back at City Park. Today, the struggle to restore the park to its former glory involves FEMA. Becker says FEMA estimated damages to the golf courses at $350,000, despite claims exceeding $7 million. City Park’s estimated damages to the entire property? More than $42 million.

FEMA spokesperson Ronnie Simpson says FEMA has “obligated” $1.5 million to City Park’s golf courses and $8.5 million to the park’s other attractions through October. That means FEMA has agreed to pay the state of Louisiana, enabling contractors to bid on various projects. The lowest bidder wins the job, does the work and is paid from a state account. Finding contractors willing to wade into the bureaucracy and complete the work has not been easy.
“None of our building projects are under way because we can’t get a bidder on the contract,” Becker says. “The actual cash that has come to us so far from FEMA is $569,000 for expenses like equipment, supplies and materials.”
Clearly, City Park has high visibility and, consequently, the capacity to affect the psyche of the entire city. But Simpson still did not know if City Park would take priority at FEMA, which has been swamped with more than 4,800 project requests from Orleans Parish—also known as “New Orleans Proper”— alone.

Many courses were not forced to rely on state and federal reimbursement programs to make repairs. The Tournament Players Club of Louisiana is one such course ready to return to the spotlight. More than 2,000 trees toppled in Katrina’s winds, and water damaged many of the fairways and greens, forcing Louisiana’s 2006 PGA event, the Zurich Classic, to relocate for a year. But insurance and the financial backing of the PGA helped reopen the course last July—six weeks ahead of schedule.

“It’s a good message to send to the community,” says TPC marketing director Pam Vitrano-Buie. “The PGA Tour is still supporting this facility and assisting the recovery of the city and the state.” Another course able to reopen is Oak Harbor Golf Club, which kicked off life post-Katrina last April.  Located just across Lake Pontchartrain in Slidell, La., Oak Harbor and its community took the full fury of the storm, and memories of the old neighborhood remain. “You used to see houses on the lake, but if you drive down that road today there’s two houses standing. It’s basically just flattened,” says Oak Harbor’s general manager, Jamey Clark. “Fortunately our clubhouse was safe, and all our people were safe.”

But the hurricane buried several of Oak Harbor’s low-lying holes underwater for more than a month and rendered its irrigation system useless for several weeks. After floodwaters drained, the exposed greens were scorched by the September sun, leaving the course in desperate need of damage control. LinksCorp, which owns and operates Oak Harbor and 17 other courses around the Southeast, provided extra staff and funds for repair work. Workers re-sodded tee boxes and greens, hauled away toppled trees, and scraped away muck and mud. The hard work was appreciated by locals eager to have one of their old haunts back.

“We had a bunch of people who came in and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re open’ in those first couple of months,” Clark explains. “We’ve also got one of the nicest practice ranges in the area. People might not have four hours for a full round golf, but they’ve still got to get their golf in.”

As one of America’s favorite passions, diversions and distractions, golf has its place as a cog in the city’s recovery machine. New Orleans needs golf as golf needs New Orleans. Clark may have said it perfectly: People have got to get their golf in. But this is a city with many needs and little money. It seems that for every TPC or Oak Harbor, which had either the PGA or a large corporation to expedite revival, there’s a City Park.

Or an Eastover.

Eastover Country Club, located on the northeast side of town, remains closed today. Jeff Cohen, a New Orleans native and founder of the golf and travel company bigeasygolf.com, vividly remembers the television images during those first days after the storm when news helicopters provided dramatic shots of his favorite childhood course.“You look for landmarks, and you can’t see any,” Cohen says, taking a long breath. “Then all of a sudden, there’s a shot of the pro shop and water is up to the roof.”

The one-time home of state championships and celebrity-amateur events, the Hurricane buried Eastover in 10 feet of flood water for more than two weeks. “It hurts seeing [Eastover] down,” Cohen says. “They were such good guys. I always said it was the kind of place where you’d want a camera in the pro shop, just to watch what was going on.”

Eastover may be down, but don’t count it out. At least one man has taken it largely upon himself to work, unpaid, to restore the course.

“We’re going to get this thing back going,” says Jimmy Headrick, Eastover partner and PGA-affiliated golf pro who has lived in New Orleans for 31 years. He spent his 31st year in a FEMA trailer.

“I’m doing this out of my love for the course. I want it back.”

The course lost acres of turf grass and all of its greens. The goal is for nine holes to open by January 1, 2007, and the full 18 holes by fall. Headrick says he recently hopped on a Turfcat for the first time and cut the driving range.

“I felt like Forrest Gump,” he quips. “Golf is going to come back in New Orleans. There’s a lot of people who care about golf here.”

Headrick says roughly 15 percent of Eastover’s membership was Asian American. The club also hosted the New Orleans Korean Golf Association Championship each year. He believes membership will come back in full force once Eastover reopens.

“Our Asian members truly love the game of golf. Fanatics, even,” Headrick says. “That’s the beauty of New Orleans. It’s tied into everybody. Now you have golfers who are playing wherever they can. Golfers are a resilient bunch, and they want to find a home course. Eastover can provide a home base.”

Headrick doesn’t expect his home base to be a FEMA trailer for much longer. He should be out by the end of the year, and after that he says he’s not going anywhere.

“I lost two jobs and a house, but it’s all about resolve,” Headrick explains. “You don’t walk away after 31 years. I’m going to play my hand out and see what happens.”

Meanwhile at City Park, Becker is seeking partners to provide labor and raise money. He spoke with local law enforcement about sending prisoners over to mow and repair the grounds, and discussed a potential fund-raising partnership with the Fore!Kids Foundation, a nonprofit organization that conducts golf-related events to raise money for children’s charities. While the outlook is still grim, there is no plan to pull up the stakes and officially close any of the courses at City Park.

“The only talk has been whether the public sector can provide services for a population that’s about half the size of what it was before,” Becker says. “There are people who say we can’t afford a City Park anymore. We don’t take that approach. Instead, we’re taking the approach that we’re recovering, it’s going to take awhile, and we’re going to keep plugging away.”

They scuffle, they toil. They cope with setbacks and bureaucracy. They plug away. It’s all part of the Big Rebound in a city struggling towards the day when it can again simply be known as the Big Easy.