Irvine, CA- The Country Club at the Golden Nugget, designed by Todd Eckenrode – Origins Golf Design, which opened for play in 2015, continues to receive rave reviews from both resort guests and course critics. Located on the banks of Prien Lake and the Calcasieu River in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the resort course was named as a 2015 Top-10 New Course by Golf Digest magazine.
Capitalizing on existing features, including extensive river frontage, groves of mature Loblolly Pines and isolated sandy knolls, the course offers variety on each hole, guaranteeing guests a distinctive golf experience. In various locations the site occupies what was once actual riverbed. Decades of dredging in the nearby Calcasieu River coupled with the deposit of sand and silt from shipping channels, slowly transformed the land into what would emerge as one of the nation’s top-ranked new golf courses. During the construction phase massive amounts of soil were imported, bringing the golf features above flood levels and accentuating the remnant features of the site. “As we went up and up, the views just kept getting better and better,” said Golf Course Designer Todd Eckenrode. “It validated the routing of not only the riverfront holes but also the interior holes which now hold spectacular views across both course and water.”
The hub of the course revolves around a pine-studded sandy hill with four holes playing in and four holes playing out of sandy higher ground. Interior holes have large waste bunkers to navigate and the canal on these particular holes serves as a natural link to the river holes.