Nicklaus Planning a Showcase Course Outside New Orleans

Jack Nicklaus has announced plans for a 630-acre showcase residential golf community in lower Algiers, a few miles downriver from downtown New Orleans, to be the site of the 1988 USF&G; Golf Classic.

“What we want is to make it one of the outstanding tour stops,” said J. Robert Sierra, president of the Jack Nicklaus Development Corp. of Tampa, Fla. “We need a showcase to promote the tournament, and everyone knows the better a facility is, the better players it attracts.”

Nicklaus said at a press conference Monday he will design the 18-hole course at “English Turn” on the West Bank of the Mississippi River where in 1699 two French explorers in a canoe bluffed a heavily armed English ship into reversing and fleeing downriver, giving the area its name.

The community is a joint venture of Classic Properties, a New Orleans development company, and Nicklaus’ firm, which has similar projects underway at Country Club of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Jackson, Miss., and Murietta Valley in California.

Founded in 1958, the USF&G; Golf Classic has been played since 1962 at Lakewood Country Club in New Orleans. The purse for the 1986 tournament, to be aired for the first time on national television, will total $500,000.

“It was time to move on,” Nicklaus said. “Golf is undergoing a major change. It’s gotten big and we need big courses to accommodate the big tournaments.”

Construction is to begin by May 1986 with a completion date sometime in 1988 in time for the tournament, Sierra said. The community will include -- besides the golf course -- tennis and swimming clubs, single-family residences, apartments and offices.

The course will be surrounded by a moat, Nicklaus said.

“The construction will depend on what permits we get and what we’re allowed to do,” he said. “The area is heavily treed and we’ll try to keep as many trees as possible.”

The 72-par course will include more than 7,000 yards of fairways, Nicklaus said. He said it also would have special PGA tournament facilities such as hospitality villas and gallery berms for spectators.

Although the land, purchased from three area families and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, is partially designated as wetlands, Sierra said that would not present any difficulties.

“That land has been dried up for more than 30 years,” he said. “It’s all enclosed by the levee and we don’t expect to run into any environmental problems.”