Willowbrook Golf Course

Origins

Willowbrook Golf Course opened in 1955 in Lakeside, a town about 25 miles east of San Diego, on flat ground in the valley below the foothills of the Cuyamaca Mountains and along the San Diego River. The course was built as part of Willowbrook Estates, a manufactured-home community that still surrounds the property, giving the club an unusually close relationship with its residential neighbors from the start.

Design Philosophy

The site is flat, with tree-lined fairways and three small lakes worked into the nine-hole layout. Rather than building a full 18-hole footprint, Willowbrook was designed as nine holes that can be played twice using two different sets of tee markers, a common approach on constrained, municipal-style sites that lets golfers complete a full round without doubling the acreage needed. Playing the white and blue markers front and back nine produces a 5,926-yard, par-72 round rated 68.5 with a slope of 123; playing the yellow and red markers produces a shorter 4,956-yard round rated 68.1 with a slope of 118.

Development

In 1981 the course was redesigned to the layout and yardage still in use today. The club credits this work to "Jack L. , one of the American Society of Golf Course Architects' fourteen founding members in 1947, died in 1958, twenty-three years before the redesign.

The more likely architect is his son, Jack L. , who had worked alongside his father on Coronado Municipal Golf Course in San Diego Bay during the 1960s and, by 1979, was practicing on his own as Golf Course Architect and Vice President of Halsey Daray Golf, continuing the family's Southern California design work into the following decade.

Today

Willowbrook operates on a pay-and-play basis with an optional annual membership (priced at $125 for a single and $150 for a couple in 2026) that reduces green fees. Two affiliated clubs run regular competitive play: the Willowbrook Men's Golf Club, affiliated with the Southern California Golf Association, holds tournaments on the first and third Saturdays of each month, and the Willowbrook Ladies Golf Club, affiliated with the San Diego Women's Golf Association, plays every Tuesday. The property also includes a pro shop, chipping and putting greens, and the Willowbrook Grill, a full-service restaurant that caters outings and tournaments and overlooks the first tee from its patio.