I was up early on Friday to start another road trip to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday. Like most of my visits to the Sunshine State these days, I played some golf but that wasn’t the primary focus of my trip. I’m back in Dallas now and trying to catch up on my reviews. First up is a review from one of Friday’s travel rounds.
I left Dallas about 5am, got a breakfast sandwich along the way and stopped just east of Shreveport, Louisiana for my round of golf. The Golf Club at Stonebridge is in Bossier City and happened to be quite convenient to the route I was taking to Florida. I figured now would be as good a time as ever to check out the course.
Fred Couples and Gene Bates designed Stonebridge, which is the main reason the course caught my eye. I have enjoyed their work over the years and am always on the lookout to play a Couples/Bates design. However, I’ve been a bit reluctant to try a round here because I’ve never been able to get a feel for the layout or the conditioning.
Today I rolled the dice to see what I’d get from Stonebridge. The proshop set me up with a 8:30 A.M. tee time and I teed off a few minutes early. It was a chilly morning and I managed to play in only two and a half hours. Part of me wanted to get out of the cold and another part wanted to get back on the road!
Stonebridge is a residential course where the setting turned out to be more mundane than I hoped. Oh well. The course is routed through a bunch of homes and the fun par-4 5th is the only hole without any homes in sight. The land seems to have been completely bulldozed so I think the course would be a lot better if more natural elements were left during its construction. So, that’s the bad news.
The good news about Stonebridge is that the design is above average and the conditioning was top-notch. I played the blue tees which play 71.2/134/6369 and personally found Stonebridge to be challenging and fair. However, I could see some higher handicaps struggling here. For the most part, the fairways are plenty wide although there are a handful of tee shots that get narrow. As you’d expect from a Louisiana golf course, water is going to be a big challenge. Hazards aren’t always visible and there are a number of forced carries, so be careful.
The front nine has that short par-4 5th, which was fun to play. It is 279 yards from the blue tees (294 from the golds) and is lined by trees. Three bunkers guard the green and leave a small gap to run the ball onto the front edge of the green. The green then curls back around those bunkers and narrows, allowing for multiple ways to play the hole. The back nine has the signature 17th, which is a mid-length par-3 over water. That green has a spine in the center and can leave a tricky shot if you aren’t on the correct side of that ridge.
The cost was $65 which seems a bit steep for this area. Thankfully the maintenance was great and worth the price. The bermuda was going dormant, which lead to very fast – borderline too fast – greens and that overall pale look. The fairways and tees were near perfect and the ball sat up. The greens rolled well and the two bunkers I found had good sand.
Stonebridge is a solid public course in North Louisiana and I’m surprised it isn’t part of the Audubon Golf Trail. My only complaint is that I wish more holes had a wooded look. Assuming the course is normally this well conditioned, I have no problem recommending a round here to someone passing through Shreveport.
Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):