The Wetlands Golf Course

The Wetlands Golf Course is quietly tucked away from roads and housing, just outside the historic Cajun city of Lafayette. A member of the Audubon Golf Trail, this is a layout that will certainly appeal to big-hitters. Built in the mid-2000s on open and flattish terrain, the course measures almost 7,300 yards from the back tees, and is characterised by generally good-width, lightly bunkered fairways, lined by not overly penal rough.

Although at first sight a relatively easy-going course, the course name gives away its most important line of defence. Interlaced with small lakes, reed-lined ponds and wetland areas, water is brought into play on about half the holes. On several others out-of-bounds threatens, especially on your rightside from the par-4 10th tee to the par-3 13th green, a stretch of holes that follows the layout's northern and western perimeter.

Accurate approach play is needed to hit some of the smaller greens. Others closely hug the water's edge, not least at the double-green of the 9th and 18th holes. Without too much mounding or landscaping, the flat environment provides many opportunities to look across the course and out onto rural, but not especially dramatic surrounding countryside.

Pick of the holes: the most attractive holes on this good-length, open layout are those that combine the threat of water with the best of the bunkering, like the par-4 12th and short, doglegging par-4 17th.