# University Club of Kentucky Wildcat Course vs. Lakeside Golf Course: The Lexington Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/university-club-of-kentucky-wildcat-course-vs-lakeside-golf-course/

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Course Comparisons / Kentucky


A golf ball beside the hole on a green. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lexington's golf choice is a study in what public money and university money each buy. The Wildcat Course at the University Club is semi-private, an Arthur Hills design from 1992, home to the Kentucky Wildcats golf teams, one half of a 36 hole facility on 300 acres. Lakeside Golf Course is the city's municipal at Jacobson Park, about 185 acres beside Jacobson Lake, family oriented city golf that happens to hold a state record: the longest par 5 in Kentucky, at more than 600 yards. A golfer with a free afternoon in Lexington is choosing between polish and openness, and both sides of that choice are legitimate.

## The Wildcat: parkland polish with a team to serve

Start with the golf. The Wildcat plays par 71 at 6,680 yards, bentgrass greens, multiple tee boxes, and it is the more parkland of the two University Club courses, rolling through trees along creeks and ponds. The facility's dozen lakes and ponds across its 36 holes mean water is a constant negotiating partner, and the bentgrass surfaces are the clearest quality gap in this comparison. Bentgrass, kept well, is a different putting experience from what a city budget usually sustains, and Hills used the rolling, tree lined ground to build a course that tests the university's own players without turning into a slog for members.

Semi-private access is the middle path the Wildcat walks: not a public walk up, not a locked private gate either. For the full local picture, [our Lexington ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-lexington-ky/) puts both of these courses in the same table, and [the full Kentucky state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-kentucky/) shows how far either travels beyond the city.

## Lakeside: the city's course, and that long par 5

Lakeside opened in July 1970 by the City of Lexington's own account, listed at 18 holes, par 72 and 7,067 yards. Read that yardage again. The municipal is nearly 400 yards longer than the university course, and at par 72 against the Wildcat's 71. City golf is supposed to be the shorter, softer option. Lakeside did not get that memo, and its signature fact pushes the point further: a par 5 of more than 600 yards, the longest in Kentucky. One hole does not make a course, but a 600 yard par 5 on a family oriented muni is a statement. This place was built to be real golf for everybody, not a sampler.

The setting helps its case in a different register. About 185 acres adjacent to Jacobson Park and Jacobson Lake gives Lakeside the feel of a city park round, open and unhurried, where a family can play without the country club atmosphere some golfers simply do not want. Access is municipal and public, Fayette County golf in the plainest sense, and for a Lexington resident playing twenty rounds a year that openness compounds into the strongest argument in this whole comparison.

One more number frames the choice before the verdict. The Wildcat's par 71 is the quieter tell. A par 71 at a university club usually means the architect found one hole where a par 5 did not fit the land and refused to force it, which suits Hills's parkland routing here: the creeks and ponds set the terms, and the card follows. Lakeside's par 72 with a 600 yard plus par 5 is the opposite philosophy, a city course stretching its card to the full standard and then some. Neither is a trick. They are two honest answers to the same Lexington ground, one from a designer's drawing board in 1992 and one from a city's parkland in 1970.

## The verdict

On the golf itself, the Wildcat wins. Bentgrass greens, Hills's parkland routing through trees and water, and a facility built to serve two Division I golf teams add up to the more refined and more varied test, and its par 71 at 6,680 yards asks better questions per yard than Lakeside's longer card. On the day and on value, Lakeside fights back hard: a public tee sheet, a park setting, more total yardage and a state record par 5 that gives a city course a genuine claim to fame.

The verdict, then: the Wildcat for the golfer choosing one special round in Lexington, Lakeside for the golfer building a golf life there. And the concession to the loser is sincere. If every city in Kentucky had a municipal with 7,067 yards, a 600 yard par 5 and a lake beside it, comparisons like this one would be much harder to call. Lakeside loses on polish. It does not lose on merit, and on the right Saturday morning, with the park full and the big par 5 waiting, it will not feel like it lost at all.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.