225BatonRouge.com

Louisiana’s best-kept golfing secret may well be a unique and creative course an hour from Baton Rouge. It escapes the limelight because it’s under lock and key 24/7—even when golfers are playing.

Situated inside of the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the 6,073-yard Prison View “public” golf course draws about 300 players a year, mostly from the ranks of the institution’s staff and their families who live inside the 18,000-acre corrections facility, commonly known as Angola, on the edge of the Mississippi River, 22 miles northwest of St. Francisville.

Maj. Trampus Butler, a third-generation corrections officer at Louisiana State Penitentiary, doubles as the course “pro.” And he’s looking to boost public traffic at the 4-year-old links.

Not to worry about tee times. Inquire about the next available opening, and Butler likely will ask when can you get there. The prices are right: $10 green fee and $10 carts (although this would not be the place to bounce a check). There are a couple of hoops, however. Golfers must:

• provide in advance their driver’s license number, date of birth, gender and race for a background check good for one year.

• surrender at the main prison gate all weapons (your favorite rescue club doesn’t count), alcohol, maps and cameras that happen to be in the car (they are returned upon departure).

• pop the car trunk for a quick inspection.

Think of it as a border crossing. However, there is one potential deal-killer, concedes Butler: No beer is served in the “clubhouse.”

Food and soft drinks only.

Accept those nuisances and you are in for a golfing treat, not to mention bragging rights for a one-of-a-kind golfing experience. Each hole is a delight. All but two of the holes have water, wetlands or native obstacles. The fairways, tee boxes and greens are tended with care and precision, not surprising given that Butler has 5,100 potential groundskeepers at his disposal. Actually, Prison View is cared for by 17 trusties, four whom are horticulturists.

Unlike most nine-hole layouts, Prison View actually plays like 18—the back nine is another course. A par 5 on the front transforms to a par 4 on the turn; greens often are approached differently. A player can make the loop the second time and be faced with a new assortment of hazards lurking.

The potential for heartburn abounds for those who like to play on the edge. Yet the architect of the course, John Ory, insists he designed it with 15 handicappers in mind. One can play it safe and score decently, or take risks for commensurate rewards.

For the “big boys,” each hole has been strategically designed with a penal effect, which seems reasonable given Prison View’s address.

Trampus Butler (OK, the first name was lifted by his parents from the Doug McClure character in the old TV series The Virginian) maintains that, as a scratch golfer, he finds as many challenges as the bubbly Ory, who cracks 100 on a particularly good day.

Selling his 27-year dental practice in Baton Rouge, Ory moved to St. Francisville at the turn of the millennium and went on to become the prison’s dentist in 2001. He was approached by warden, Burl Cain, a non-golfer but a promoter extraordinaire, with a Field of Dreams request: build a golf course.

“Designing the course was the easy part,” Ory remembers. He also had to oversee the construction, and that was like, well, pulling teeth.

It was built by inmates who had no experience with this type of project, and who would never be permitted to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Groundwork, for the most part, came by way of shovels and sweat.

The United States Golf Association told Ory it would have to see it to believe it. Come and look, he told them, when it opened for play in the summer of 2003.

Cain basically wanted the golf course as a perk for the 200 or so staff members and their families who live in a community on the west end of the prison complex. The closest public course was 35 miles away. Having officers stay home to play would also put them close by in case of emergency.

What money was needed came from the employee’s recreation fund—no state tax money went into the project. Ory cobbled surplus government equipment into drainage pipes and other infrastructure. A prison concrete plant supplied cart paths and bridges.

Ory, a fixture at the Baton Rouge Country Club, took his mandate and headed to Barnes & Noble where he found a $75 book on golf course design. He scoured the Web for additional revelations. “I wanted to do it right. It wasn’t going to be some goat ranch with a golf course on top of it.”

The site was a one-time bull pasture, void of hills, water and trees.

The 60-year-old Ory transformed the field with the aplomb of a dentist asking about your vacation plans during a root canal. He constructed a 13-acre pond with tributaries, sand traps galore, scores of flower boxes, two tee boxes per hole, undulating greens, a rolling landscape and a drainage system that rivals ancient Rome.

A 50-foot-high opening tee box at the base of Tunica Hills, 37 bunkers and an “island” green were thrown in for good measure—or meanness, depending on how one is playing. Numbers 6/14 and 7/15 are played in the shadow of D Camp, a guaranteed gallery of guards and recovering gangsters.

An 18-hole layout was never (and never will be) in the cards. “Not feasible,” Ory says. “On a cost versus benefits comparison, it doesn’t make sense.” Thus, his two courses in one concept.

The big debate came over the name.

“Cain Creek Country Club” apparently was out of the question—legislative reaction to that one staggers the imagination. Ory’s first choice was “The Farm,” a nod to the nickname of the once notorious penal colony. Alas, a new golf course in Lafayette had snapped up that moniker. Ory’s backup: “Bull Run,” in deference to the course’s first foursomes, which had been moved to new digs. That didn’t bond with the brass. “Prison View,” a tag that had kicked around long enough to earn default status, won the day.

Prison View received limited and fleeting fame in the year after it opened with a brief mention on ESPN and features in The Advocate, Tee to Green magazine and Golf Digest, the latter under the cheeky headline, “Foursome Prison Blues.”

Ory and Butler are happy with their baby, but not yet satisfied. The fairways are still maturing, and last winter the greens waged a losing battle with nematoids, destructive micro organisms that gave the Tif/dwarf Bermuda grass the appearance of hibernation inside a self-cleaning oven. Butler worked with LSU horticulturists to repair the damage, and the greens are nearly back in shape.

The fairways, seeded with Bermuda 419, were expected to be carpets of beauty by mid-May, the process somewhat slowed this season by April’s cold weather. Snow and sleet on Easter Sunday created colossal pains in the grass.

Butler, 29, who has several duties other than director of Prison View and whose grandfather was the prison’s warden in the 1950s, conducts tournaments, charity scrambles, youth clinics and free golf lessons throughout the year. Resembling John Daly in stature and prowess, he regularly drives the green on the 275-yard, par 4, No. 15.

That may be why he also holds the Prison View course record of 64.