The wrong golf debate
The City Park back-and-forth has framed golf as a proxy for the larger “status quo vs. dream-big” argument
Baton Rouge has been arguing about golf at City-Brooks Park. It may be arguing about the wrong thing.
The backdrop: A public survey released as part of BREC's City-Brooks master planning process showed the golf question—keep it, shrink it or remove it—as the most contested issue among 1,084 respondents. Several questions appeared designed to build consensus around conclusions already taking shape. On golf, Sasaki designers punted: keep it, but reduce the footprint and add programming.
What nobody said: The debate has framed golf as a proxy for the larger “status quo vs. dream-big” argument Baton Rouge has been having with itself for a decade. But that framing treats golf as a monolith—and the game isn't one anymore.
What's actually happening: The traditional 18-hole, four-hour municipal round is fading (or 9-hole in City Park's case). What's replacing it doesn't look like a golf course—it looks like a lighted par-3 with a bar attached, food trucks, a social scene and a $25 green fee. That format is drawing younger demographics in Austin, Phoenix and a dozen other cities where recreational golf was supposed to be dying.
The opportunity: A compact, activated, evening-friendly golf experience adjacent to the clubhouse-turned-café that survey respondents overwhelmingly want isn't a compromise. It's potentially the most youth-friendly amenity the park could add—low-barrier, high social value, and economically self-sustaining. BREC's own data shows runners, joggers and passive users are the park's greatest constituency—not golfers. A reimagined golf experience doesn't threaten that. A lighted par-3 with a bar and food trucks likely amplifies it, drawing evening crowds that overlap naturally with the trails and gathering spaces the survey's non-golfing majority said it wanted.
The bottom line: Mike Polito, chairman of the BREC Commission, frames it as a generational question. "The decision is not mine," he told RedEye, adding that those in their 20s, 30s and 40s—the generations who will inherit the park's future—should own it. That generation isn't choosing between golf and no golf. They're choosing between old golf and something better. City-Brooks could be where Baton Rouge figures that out.