Eagle Ridge Golf Course at Yatesville Lake State Park (Louisa, KY on 08/26/18)

The last round of our weekend was at Eagle Ridge Golf Course, which is one of the Kentucky State Parks Golf Trail courses. The trail is made up off 18 (I think) courses throughout the state and seems to be Kentucky’s twist on the popular Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, down in Alabama. Eagle Ridge and Yatesville Lake are about a half hour south of I-64, on a divided highway. It isn’t the most convenient course to get to, but if you do happen to make the trip to Eagle Ridge then buckle your seat belt because the course is an extreme experience!

The 1st tee shot has you thinking about just dropping a golf ball up by the green!

When we checked in the lady running the proshop asked us not to judge the course if this was our first round, ha! She said that if we decided to come back and play, to judge the course then. She went on to say that many golfers don’t come back and sent us to the 1st tee. How about that for an introduction to Eagle Ridge?!

Of course, then we play the 1st hole and everything the proshop told us made sense! At 402 yards, the 1st hole isn’t exactly long. However, it is heavily tree-lined with a fairway and green that fall off in all directions, into oblivion! You have to hit two straight shots just to find your golf ball. I was thrilled to have a 20 foot par putt to begin my round. You could easily lose a sleeve of balls, just on the first hole!

It doesn’t get any easier the remainder of the round, either! The course is laid out over very severe terrain with huge elevation changes and deep ravines. What results is a target golf experience with scary looking shots and one of the more dangerous cart rides you’ll probably encounter during the year. Arthur Hills and Steve Forrest designed the course and I found myself wondering exactly how they were able to put one hole onto the property, let alone eighteen of them! They definitely had to be at their best to get this course built.

Usually, I’ll take a paragraph to touch on exactly what makes a course difficult. Well, I really only need one sentence to describe what makes Eagle Ridge tough! Here it is: Pretty much everything makes Eagle Ridge tough! We played the tips which play 6,630 yards. From there the course plays as a par-71. The rating and slope aren’t on the scorecard, which is definitely a bit strange. From what I found online the rating is 70.8 and the slope is a whopping 144!

The biggest struggle at Eagle Ridge will likely be keeping the ball in play. The fairways aren’t exactly wide and have plenty of slope in them. Off the fairways the ball will take one hop and head down the mountainside. If you miss your line or your distance, then you will be dropping, so you’ll want to bring a lot of golf balls and hit whatever club you can keep in play the best.

My game has improved in recent months and I only missed three tee shots during the round, two of them ended up deep into the junk where I couldn’t even look for the ball. You also have blind shots with trouble lurking, downhill yardages to judge, forced carries, uneven lies and a modern amount of slope in the greens. My one gripe about the design is that I think additional steps could have been taken to make the course (relatively) more playable. I would have preferred that some of the forced carries be reduced, bunkers moved to more strategic areas (to keep golf balls in play) and the greens made flatter.

Even considering the course’s immense difficulty, I think you can walk away happy that you played Eagle Ridge. I know I did! In order to do that you need to approach the round in a way that emphasizes the focus on the course and not your score or how many golf balls you lose. My favorite moments during my round were the nerves on multiple shots, trying to calculate the proper yardages and the views of the course from many elevated areas. Speaking of those holes with elevation change, there are three holes that stand out at Eagle Ridge.

The 2nd hole gets your attention early with a tee shot that drops a couple hundred feet, I’d guess! At 414 yards it is one of the longer par-4’s at Eagle Ridge but it certainly doesn’t play like one because it is so much downhill. I hit my 3-wood in hopes of keeping it in play and it went close to 300 yards! My drive hung in the air forever! If you hit a good drive then you may be able to take advantage of a short iron approach.

I think the 4th is probably the most interesting hole on the course. It is a beastly par-5, playing 582 yards. It has two forced carries, one from the tee and another on the layup. The layup is where things get really crazy though! There are two sections of fairway available for layups, a small section about the size of a green and a “normal” size area. Each section is its own little target and in order to get to the second, larger fairway you need to judge the massively downhill shot just right for the distance and line. It is a very demanding layup!

The signature par-4 13th. Potentially driveable!

While I think the 4th is the most interesting hole at Eagle Ridge, everyone is going to play the course to see what the par-4 13th is all about. The 13th is the course’s signature hole and is 335 yards from the tips. It doglegs slightly left and has another crazy elevated tee, so driving the green isn’t out of the question. Trouble lurks so laying up isn’t a bad decision, although I struggled trying to gauge that distance too. My best guess is that it might play 30 to 40 yards shorter down to the fairway, without any wind.

We paid about $30 to ride on a Sunday morning and it turned out to be a good value. The bermuda grass fairways and tees were short and full. I was a little surprised to find bermuda here but if I hit the fairway, it pretty much guaranteed a good lie – with the ball sitting up! Some spots that don’t get a lot of light, low areas and edges of the tees and greens were fair at best. The rough was fair was well with a mix of grasses that affected shot choices, especially around the greens. The greens were full and smooth, rolling at a medium pace. The bunkers were the curious part of the maintenance as they looked neglected for months. They were thin with all sorts of weeds and grasses in them.

My final verdict on Eagle Ridge is that it is worth a play! Sure, it is difficult to get to and difficult to play, but because it is such a roller coaster ride I think you’ll look back on the round here with plenty of excitement. If you have some free time driving along I-64 then I’d put this one your list.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):

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