New Orleans gets into swing of things

Caddie's Role: Going to New Orleans. It sounds like you are going to the Twilight Zone, to Timbuktu, to a place where no rational human would want to go. New Orleans is an interesting place, and you know you are somewhere different when you touch down in the Louis Armstrong International Airport. I had a window seat, and the final approach to the airfield was over water along the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the 24 miles of suspended concrete that is one of four main arteries to the city. I had seen images of miles of cars, bumper-to-bumper in their exodus from this wretched place at the end of August last year.

There is frequently a raised eyebrow from people when you say you are going to a place that has been embossed in people's minds due to a recent tragedy there. "You are going to New Orleans," people exclaim, with images reminiscent of another flood disaster in Bangladesh more vivid in their minds than of those you would expect to see from the most advanced country in the world.

I remember being in Malaysia when the first Gulf War broke out. Kuala Lumpur is largely Muslim, and I was not sure just how a "foreigner" was going to be received. I felt the same when I arrived in Louisiana.

Perhaps I would be seen as just that: an outsider, a nosey intruder into a place that had developed an isolated mentality.

My taxi driver from the airport looked jaded when I asked the question he has probably been asked a squillion times this year, "How are things going?"

Of course, it has a different resonance in the Deep South, it is more than just a conversation starter. I suspected things hadn't been going great for my driver even before Katrina, and they have got progressively worse, and on this particular day he was clocking up his 12th hour on the road and I wasn't his last passenger.

The Big Easy had a Big Welcome for golfers, and to a large degree their porters too. These people, who had obviously felt abandoned after the floods, had a new perspective on life. I cannot recall how many spectators, marshals or volunteers who made a point of thanking Retief Goosen, as he strode by them on the course, for coming to their ravaged city and supporting them. Small gestures go a long way in Cajun country.

Our driver brought us to the course on Monday morning, and I bent his ear a little about what it was like in the aftermath of the hurricanes. He was a fireman, and described having to rescue people under the watchful eye of armed guards; it was anarchy.

We ascended a flyover on General De Gaulle Boulevard and got a good vista of the Algiers district which had not been hit hard. Nonetheless, there was a huge amount of blue tarpaulin roofs gleaming in the stark southern sunshine, constant reminders of the brutality of nature.

We drove by the Lakewood Country Club, the original host of the tour event here. The clubhouse had been ripped apart by Katrina, and the land was barely recognisable as a golf course. It was destined for a redesign, and space was being made for retirement condos.

We were told of the TPC course where the event was held last year. They just got one go at it before the hurricane engulfed it. Like so many constructions in this low-lying land, it was dependent on a levee system, and once it failed the course was washed away.

As you continue around the city you start to realise there are seemingly more Fema (Federal Emergency and Management Association) trailers than permanent houses. These are the government-supplied "caravans" that were given to those who were fortunate enough to get them after their homes were washed out or severely damaged.

I met the course superintendent of a couple of municipally-owned courses in the city, and when he returned to the city to bring supplies to friends who had stayed throughout the storm he was a little shocked. The city smelt like rotten meat. He was greeted with gunfire. He carried a .357 strapped to his chest and had a shotgun behind the seat of his truck. He drew his gun six times on people trying to get the supplies in the back of his pick-up.

These public courses are definitely going to struggle to recover with the already huge strain on public resources. However difficult it is for the country clubs, the municipals are not looking at a bright future. There were dead sharks and sea trout and other saltwater fish around these inland courses when the flood water finally drained.

New Orleans hosted the Zurich Classic and lifted the spirits of its inhabitants, who have not had a huge amount of diversion from the drudgery of dealing with the aftermath of a devastating hurricane backed up by a less destructive one. There was a sense of carnival for the golf fans in the area. To the outsider, there was also a sense of fragility where the next puff of strong wind to blow over the Big Easy may well turn this Cajun country into the Big Queasy.

The weekend had the city on a tornado watch, probably not a huge cause for concern given what they have been through. They had more rainfall early on Sunday morning than they had had for two months. When we arrived at English Turn on Sunday there was debris scattered everywhere.

The weather in New Orleans seems to be fairly extreme; there were numerous trees uprooted by the mild storm (by local standards). It is an extreme place, situated on the periphery of the United States. Its inhabitants' sense of being abandoned is a statement of what the city meant to the rest of the country. New Orleans has got an edge to it; I wonder what Timbuktu is like?