Course Comparisons / Kentucky
University Club of Kentucky Wildcat Course vs. Lexington area Picadome Course: The Lexington Choice
Lexington's public golf choice is a class argument disguised as a golf argument. On one side, the Wildcat Course at the University Club of Kentucky: an Arthur Hills design from 1992, semi-private, home to the University of Kentucky's men's and women's teams, part of a 36 hole facility on 300 acres with a dozen lakes and ponds. On the other, the course the city now formally calls the Gay Brewer Jr. Course at Picadome: a municipal layout from 1933, short and walkable, one of Lexington's original munis, run by the city in Fayette County. One is the university's front door. The other is the people's course, and it has been since before the university club existed. The full city bench is in our Lexington course ranking.
Wildcat: the modern examination
The Wildcat plays par 71 at 6,680 yards, and the par is the tell. A par 71 at that length, with bentgrass greens and multiple tee boxes, is a course configured for scoring variance: fewer par 5s to lean on, more long par 4s asking questions. It is the more parkland of the University Club's two courses, rolling through trees along creeks and ponds, and as the official home of the Kentucky Wildcats' golf teams it is maintained and set up with competitive players in mind. Arthur Hills built his career on exactly this brief, a handsome, playable, tournament capable course that flatters good ball striking without humiliating the paying customer, and the Wildcat is that brief executed on good rolling ground with water worked through it.
Semi-private is the access word that matters. The Wildcat is not a closed university facility. The public can play it, at a price and on terms the club sets, which makes it the aspirational round in Lexington: the one the Picadome regular books for an occasion, the one a visiting Kentucky fan plays on a football weekend.
Picadome: the city's course, with a double green
Picadome answers with history and with charm of a specific, unreplicable kind. The course dates to 1933, plays par 72 at 6,553 yards with a 70.8 rating and a 131 slope, and keeps one feature no modern architect would dare to build and no golfer forgets: holes 8 and 10 share a double green. A shared green is a survival from an era when land and money were short and ingenuity filled the gap, and playing into a surface that another group is putting on, from another hole, is a small daily reminder that this game was once arranged more casually and more cleverly than it is now.
The human history matches the architectural kind. PGA professional Frank Atkins operated the course for more than 50 years, a tenure that made him a Kentucky Golf Hall of Fame figure and made Picadome a place with a person attached to it, not just a facility. The city's decision to name the course for Gay Brewer Jr. layered a champion's name onto the same ground. Municipal golf at its best is exactly this accumulation: a 1933 layout, a double green, a pro who stayed half a century, and a tee sheet open to everyone in the city. In a state where the Kentucky state ranking is heavy with private clubs, Picadome is the reminder of who most Kentucky golf is actually for.
The verdict
On the golf alone, the Wildcat wins. It is longer in effect than the 127 yards separating the cards, better surfaced, more varied in its questions, and kept at a competitive standard Picadome, for all its slope, does not pretend to match. A good player choosing one Lexington round to test himself chooses the Wildcat, and it is not particularly close.
Pick Picadome anyway if you live in Lexington, and pick it often. It is the walkable city round, the cheaper day, the double green you will describe to people who have never seen one, and the course whose history belongs to the public rather than to an institution. The Wildcat is the better test. Picadome is the better habit. Lexington is lucky that its choice is between a test and a habit, instead of the usual municipal story, which is neither.