Colorado Golf Club

Favorite Hole

No. 8, par 4, 313 yards

The eighth hole makes one of the more severe uphill climbs on the CGC property, but the burden of the trek is offset by one of the more tantalizing short par 4s in the Coore & Crenshaw catalog.

The green sits on a left-to-right angle and has a high, small back-left shelf. In firm conditions, the only reasonable place from which to attack the back-left pin is the far right side of the fairway, where Coore & Crenshaw smartly placed a bunker. It’s difficult to resist pulling driver and pushing up toward the green, but when approaching this small, severe, and heavily bunkered green, spin control is an appealing asset.

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Overall Thoughts

One of my favorite aspects of seeing many golf courses in a single architect’s portfolio is recognizing similarities as well as unique twists across properties. I have played numerous courses by Coore & Crenshaw and always look forward to visiting a new one. The days before bring a mixture of excitement over potential discoveries and the comforting prospect of meeting up with an old friend. During a recent Club TFE weekend chat and on a mailbag podcast with Garrett, I tackled the question, “If you could play only one architect’s work for the rest of your life, who would it be?” Coore & Crenshaw immediately sprang to mind for me. Their designs are elegant and understated—the kind of courses you’d die to play every day. They have a malleability about them that allows you to enjoy success when you play well, while also delivering a stern test on off-days.

Colorado Golf Club, one of the duo’s more challenging designs, has hosted numerous championships and features forced carries throughout. On Coore & Crenshaw’s playability scale, it leans more toward the skilled end.

One reason for this is its land. The design incorporates dramatic ridges that influence play on holes 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 18, as well as a beautiful, somewhat flatter meadow that houses the remaining holes. The routing establishes a rhythmic flow between these two sections of the property, spending time in each but never staying for too long. Alternating between these two landscapes enables Coore & Crenshaw to vary the holes and create memorable points that you come back to later. Though some might overlook the meadow holes, their inclusion provides a variety of landscape and a breather for walkers. These holes, while flatter, aren’t “flat”—they have gentle rolls and are dotted with creeks and washes that function as strategic features.

Another advantage of Colorado Golf Club’s varied topography is that Coore & Crenshaw are able to play with sightlines. Blindness, a trait common to many great golf courses, is plentiful at Colorado Golf Club, creating a thrill and activating your subconscious mind while you’re standing over shots. This theme encourages multiple rounds at CGC, as the initial outing can be somewhat disorienting. C&C waste no time introducing blindness: the tee shot on the par-5 first hole is completely blind. After teeing off over a ridge, walkers are treated to a breathtaking reveal, as the rest of the hole tumbles down to a green set against the distant Colorado foothills. This type of blindness generates a sense of adventure, something you go to a place like the Denver area to find.

With its large landforms, pine trees, and native grasses, Colorado Golf Club reminds me of another Coore & Crenshaw design: Bandon Trails. The resemblances are particularly pronounced between the meadow sections of both courses (at Bandon Trails, that section contains holes 3-7 and 14-17). These two designs, developed within a year of each other (2005 and 2006), belong to an impressive stretch of C&C’s career, which includes Friar’s Head (2002), Old Sandwich (2004), We-Ko-Pa (2005), and Sugarloaf Mountain (2006).

In addition to the aesthetic kinship with Bandon Trails, Colorado Golf Club bears familiar hole motifs from the pair’s portfolio. Unlike their contemporary Tom Doak, with whom they will always be compared and contrasted, Coore & Crenshaw regularly employ certain hole designs, and Colorado Golf Club is home to a few of them:

No. 4 – par 4 – 499 yards

The fourth hole introduces CGC’s valley floor and interacts with the wash that defines the low area of the property. The design concept is a C&C staple: a long par 4 with a fairway canting toward bunkers on the left, and a green that tilts away from the player and has a kicker slope on the right. Play close to the fairway bunker and gain a flatter lie and the best position to take advantage of the green complex’s contours; play up the right for more safety and face an uneven lie and an angle from which it’s hard to stop your ball. Other examples of this type of hole in Coore & Crenshaw’s portfolio include the 18th at Sand Hills, 15th at Streamsong Red, and 13th at Trinity Forest.

No. 6 – par 3 – 250 yards

This long par 3 features a massive mound short right of the green that corrals and propels shots toward the green, and is particularly useful for front-right pins. This adapted-Redan idea is also used on the third hole at Sand Valley.

No. 14 – par 4 – 327 yards

Another excellent short par 4 at CGC, the 14th boasts C&C’s signature lion’s-mouth green—perhaps the firm’s most familiar green concept. It works beautifully on short par 4s because it creates both ideal and poor lines around the green. Aggressive tee shots attempting to get close to the green must find the correct side of the bunker in order to find a straightforward pitch. Other C&C lion’s mouths can be found at Sand Hills (No. 8), Warren Golf Course (15), Chechessee Creek Club (12), and East Hampton (2), to name just a few.

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In addition to these Coore & Crenshaw standards, Colorado Golf Club also has a number of unique hole designs that stand out:

No. 10 – par 4 – 464 yards

On this blind tee shot, knowledgeable players can hug the inside of this dogleg left and find a line of charm that dramatically shortens the approach. The second half of the hole all falls away, and so does the green. CGC’s firm playing surfaces make this approach delightfully fast. A wonderful hole that simply plays along a distinctive piece of ground.

Hole 11 – par 3 – 214 yards

One of the wildest greens I’ve seen on a regulation golf course by Coore & Crenshaw, the 11th has a tiny left plateau that is extraordinarily difficult to hold. In contrast, pins in the low-right section offer both a direct path or a bank shot off of a sideboard. The mid-iron approach can be either wildly fun or extremely demanding depending on the day’s hole location.

Hole 16 – par 5 – 585 yards

The drive on the double-fairway 16th hole is one of my favorites in golf because of how it tests your appetite for risk. If you want to make a 3, it’s best to play up the right, where you’ll find a shorter approach from a better angle. Yet this choice carries some risk, as the landing zone is about 10 yards narrower than the one on the left. Whereas Coore & Crenshaw’s strategies are frequently subtle and concealed, this tee shot is blunt and in your face, and that’s part of its charm. It forces you to commit to a decision. In this way, it’s strikingly similar to the tee shot on the Channel hole at the Lido, but actually goes further with the strategic element by rewarding the dangerous play with not only distance but also helping contours at the green. Analytics may tell players to hit it left every time, but note that Lukas Michel played to the riskier right fairway every round on his way to winning the 2019 U.S. Mid Amateur.

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2 Eggs

Colorado Golf Club’s stellar architecture is accentuated by ideal playing conditions. A critique might center on the number of forced carries and the difficulty they present to a less-skilled golfer. As with most Coore & Crenshaw designs, however, every characteristic of the course responds to its environment: the carries, often over washes, are inherent to the landscape.

Course Tour

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