Course Comparisons / Kentucky

Griffin Gate Golf Club vs. Kearney Hill Golf Links: The Lexington Choice

Lexington offers two senior tour tested courses that could not be more different in ownership. Griffin Gate is Rees Jones at a Marriott resort, play limited to guests of the hotel. Kearney Hill is Pete and P. B. Dye for the City of Lexington, a municipal links in northwest Fayette County that hosted the Senior PGA Tour for eight straight years. Resort polish against city owned Dye. If you think the resort course wins on presentation and the muni wins on price, you are half right about both, and the golf itself complicates the rest.

Kearney Hill: a Dye, owned by the city

Start with the municipal, because its resume embarrasses most private clubs. Kearney Hill opened in 1989, Pete Dye working with his son P. B. in a Scottish links style, deep sand and grass bunkers, sparse trees, open rolling terrain, and wind as a prominent factor per the city. The Senior PGA Tour played here from 1990 to 1997, eight events, with Gary Player winning twice. Tim Clark won the 1997 U.S. Amateur Public Links here. The U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links followed in 2007, then the Girls Junior PGA in 2018 and the 100th Kentucky Open. That is a championship calendar most resort courses would trade their clubhouse for.

The course runs 6,625 to 7,062 yards at par 72, with a lake waiting at 15, 16, and 17, the kind of finishing squeeze Dye loved, water held back until the match is decided and then applied all at once. Golf Digest ranked it among the top 10 courses in Kentucky per the city. It is open year round except Christmas Day. A Dye with this pedigree, at municipal access, is the strongest value argument in our Lexington town ranking and one of the strongest in the whole Kentucky state ranking.

Griffin Gate: Rees Jones and the resort day

Griffin Gate opened in 1981, Rees Jones designing Bluegrass parkland by Newtown Pike at the Griffin Gate resort. It hosted Senior Tour events in its early years, including the Bank One Classic on the Senior PGA Tour and Champions Tour, and it was voted one of Golf Digest's top 75 resort courses in the United States per PGA.com. It plays par 72 at 6,784 yards. Jones returned to oversee a major bunker renovation as part of a 40 million dollar resort renovation, the kind of capital cycle a well backed resort can run and a city course cannot.

The catch is access, and it is a strict one. Play is limited to guests of the Marriott Lexington Griffin Gate Golf Resort and Spa per PGA.com. You do not book a tee time at Griffin Gate. You book a room, and the golf comes with the stay. For a visitor doing a Lexington weekend, that is convenient, one property, course outside the door, Rees Jones parkland in horse country condition. For a local golfer, it is a closed door, which is an odd thing to say about the less decorated course in this comparison.

On the golf, we give it to Kearney Hill. Dye in links mode, wind up, bunkers deep, a lake finish with championship history behind it, beats competent resort parkland most days of the week. Griffin Gate's best point deserves its due. Condition and ease. A recently renovated Jones course attached to a full service resort will present beautifully, and the resort day, spa, dinner, golf, is a product Kearney Hill does not sell and does not try to.

Verdict. Staying at the resort, play Griffin Gate and enjoy a polished Rees Jones round without leaving the grounds. Making a golf decision rather than a hotel decision, play Kearney Hill, the city owned Dye that hosted eight senior tour events and two USGA public links championships. It is not close on pedigree, and the fact that anyone in Lexington can book it remains the best sentence in Kentucky public golf.