My Old Kentucky Home State Park Golf Course

My Old Kentucky Home State Park Golf Course in Bardstown is one of the most storied public courses in Kentucky, named for the Stephen Foster song and sitting adjacent to the actual Federal Hill mansion that inspired the song. The course opened in 1933 as one of the earliest Kentucky state-park golf facilities, and was completely retooled in 2001 by Fred Rux of Mobile, Alabama, giving the course a second life as a modern state-park championship 18. At 6,351 yards par 71 with a 69.5 rating and 119 slope on Bermuda grass, the course plays as approachable rather than punishing, a layout built for state-park vacationers and Kentucky-bourbon-trail visitors who want a real round of golf without the resort-golf price tag. The signature hole sequence runs 16-17: the par-3 16th is a big, daunting tee shot from an elevated tee across a ravine to a back-to-front sloping green, followed immediately by a semi-blind, severe dogleg-right par-4 17th with creeks at both ends of the fairway. The course received four stars from Golf Digest 'Best Places to Play' in 2004, 2008, and 2009, and was named the #2 public golf course in Kentucky by Kentucky Living Magazine in 2014.