# Baton Rouge Country Club vs. The Country Club of Louisiana: The Baton Rouge Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/baton-rouge-country-club-vs-the-country-club-of-louisiana/

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Course Comparisons / Louisiana


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Baton Rouge's private golf choice is old city club against modern statement. Baton Rouge Country Club has been in the heart of the city since 1916, hosted a PGA Tour event, and had Arnold Palmer win on its ground. The Country Club of Louisiana opened seventy years later, in 1986, as a Jack Nicklaus Signature design carved through bayou country, and Golf Digest ranked it No. 2 in Louisiana in its 2025-26 Best in State. Both are private. Both are par 72 and just past 7,000 yards at full stretch. The difference is what each club thinks a golf course is for. The city field is in [the best courses in Baton Rouge ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-baton-rouge-la/), with state context in [the best courses in Louisiana ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-louisiana/).

## Baton Rouge Country Club

The club's golf began as a nine-hole course designed by Bernard Sinclair Robson in 1916, and Tom Bendelow expanded it to 18 holes in the 1920s. That lineage matters: Bendelow was the Johnny Appleseed of American golf, and a course that passed through his hands in the 1920s carries bones from the game's first American generation. The club's championship chapter followed. It hosted the PGA Tour's Baton Rouge Open Invitational in the 1950s and early 1960s, and Arnold Palmer won it in 1961 with a record 266. Forty under the old par arithmetic across four days, on a course in the heart of the city. Palmer winning your club's tour event with a scoring record is a permanent asset, the kind no renovation can buy.

The modern course is a Rees Jones and Greg Muirhead redesign from 2007, with greenside bunker work completed in 2015, playing par 72 at about 6,805 to 7,013 yards. And the story is not finished: OCM was appointed in 2024 to create a masterplan for a future renovation. A club founded in 1916 that is still commissioning masterplans is a club that intends its second century of golf to be argued about too.

## The Country Club of Louisiana

The Country Club of Louisiana was among the first Jack Nicklaus Signature courses built in a residential setting, and it shows what Nicklaus's firm did best in that era: a big, complete examination, 18 holes of par 72 over 7,100 yards with a slope of 149. Slope 149 is the highest number on this page and it is not a typo. This course, from the back, is hard in the modern measurable way. The setting is its other argument: carved through bayou country, with live oak and crape myrtle trees and holes running along Selene Bayou, so the residential frame gives way to ground that feels older and wilder than 1986.

The sixth hole replicates the par-3 16th at Augusta National, a tribute shot every member's guest will recognize. Replication is a Nicklaus-era habit golfers argue about, but as a member experience it works: once a round, you play a famous hole's geometry on your own course. The greens were replaced with MiniVerde Bermudagrass in a 2012 renovation led by Mark Meijer, a former Nicklaus on-site architect, which is the right kind of continuity, the original design firm family keeping its own work current. Golf Digest's No. 2 in Louisiana ranking for 2025-26 confirms where the state panel lands.

## The verdict

The Country Club of Louisiana wins on the golf. The Nicklaus examination at slope 149, the bayou setting, and the state panel's No. 2 ranking outweigh the older club's charms, and a golfer offered one guest round in Baton Rouge should spend it on Selene Bayou.

Baton Rouge Country Club's counter is history and place, and it is stronger than sentiment. Palmer's record 266, a Bendelow expansion in the 1920s, a club in the heart of the city rather than developed around one, and a 2024 masterplan appointment that says the next version is coming. A golfer joining for the long term, who values being in the middle of Baton Rouge and playing a course that has hosted tour golf since before the Country Club of Louisiana existed, should pick the old club and feel no need to apologize. The modern statement wins the round. The 1916 club may yet win the century.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.