Golf at Angola?

Its par for the course

By Michael Dobie | Staff Correspondent

July 18, 2004

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ANGOLA, La. - Robert Rabun is wizened and wiry. He's not sure how long he's been imprisoned in Angola, or even how old he is. But he remembers the day he was drafted out of the prison hobby shop for a new job assignment -- to work on the prison's golf course.

"Golf course in the prison?" he responded. "Like I'm seeing things. Just the way I'm thinking: A golf course?"

Three years ago, Angola embarked on one of the most unusual construction jobs in corrections history. The nine-hole course, which uses two sets of tees to play as 18, was carved out of a bull pasture, built with inmate labor, and funded by proceeds from the prison's rodeo and from the recreation fund of the 200 Angola workers whose families live on the prison's grounds.

Prison View Golf Course is not finished, but it is playable, and it's the latest brainchild of warden Burl Cain, who says the course will improve morale for the residential staff members and keep them closer to the prison and more available for emergencies. Cain also plans to include golf in the visitors tour.

"Groups are something we really get a lot of," said prison dentist John Ory, the man charged with building the course. "We'll bring in groups to play golf, let 'em tour the prison, feed 'em lunch ... They'll get to see Angola, they'll leave with a different impression of Angola than they had, they'll leave some money behind for greens fees and the carts."

Ory, who spearheaded the project with Officer Jason Giroir, insisted that the course meet USGA regulations. The fairways have Bermuda 419 grass, the rough is common Bermuda, and the drains beneath the greens have the requisite layers of sand and gravel. Angola's horticultural class planted the trees and shrubs. Each hole is identified by its distinctive vegetation; the first hole is Crepe Myrtle. No. 9 is Pinehurst-inspired Azalea.

Ory read a book on golf course construction and consulted two local greens superintendents, but he, Giroir and their team of inmates essentially worked by trial and error.

"They would come out and I'd say, 'Isn't this a beautiful day to build a golf course?'" Ory said. "Some days, I'd get some responses I don't want to put in print."

The inmates had their doubts.

"Did we? Indeed. Yes, indeed," Rabun said. "Before we got the drains in the ground, we thought we were going to lose it, because at the time when it rained, it would flood the ground. We would come to work every morning and all that we had done was destroyed."

The course is filled with neat touches -- a man-made 17-acre lake, a hole with an island green, a pot bunker reminiscent of the best British courses. The complex includes a clubhouse, driving range, practice green, practice sand trap and a 11/2-acre turf farm.

Inmates are not allowed to play the 6,100-yard, par-72 course. That doesn't bother them, Rabun said with his trademark cackle, because none played on the outside. But they had a hand in every aspect of its construction, from driving the tractors and bulldozers to fertilizing and mowing the greens and fairways.

"We've come a long way," Rabun said. "This ain't never going to be what you call an ordinary golf course, because we work the machines."

Then he laughed as pride kicked in: "I mean, we work the machines."

Rabun sat in an old aluminum golf cart, his thin voice battling the blustery breeze. He's serving a life sentence for murder, but he isn't sure whether he arrived at Angola in 1970 or 1971. He thinks he is 49 years old. He looks older. Some days, Giroir picks him up for work at 3 in the morning and brings him back at 6 in the evening, or later.

"Ain't nothing wrong with working outside," Rabun said. "It's the heat in the summertime, and it's the cool weather in the winter time, and there ain't no trees big enough to hide in."

He still finds it hard to believe what they did to that old pasture.

"I'm proud of what we did, yes indeed, yes, proud, happy, or however you want to say," Rabun said. "They believe now that there's going to be a golf course in prison."