July 2014

Tee it High in the Vail Valley & Summit County

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Bring On the Funk!

Windsor Gets Fred’s First Course

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Contents 2014

July

In Every Issue 8 Forethoughts

An Easy Call to Make.

By Jon Rizzi

12 ’net Score

Features 28 Lesson

How to chip with your hybrid. By Elena King

30 Lesson

Alpine and vulpine Backhands aren’t just excitement. for tennis.

By Charlie Soule

14 Off the Tee

Golf shades and the perfect Bloody Mary.

17 T he Gallery

Windsor welcomes Fred Funk; King’s Deer reopens; Ravenna’s clubhouse breaks ground; Tonje Daffinrud; Topgolf and more.

96 The Games of Golf

Sidebets 33 F areways

Westminster’s Kachina Grill, Teller’s and Ciancio’s at Hyland Hills. By Gary James

38 Nice Drives

Chrysler 200S and Porche Macan S

By Isaac B ouchard

A tale of two opens

Player’s Corner 25 Tee to Green The rebirth of Fox Acres in Red Feather Lakes. By Jon Rizzi

70

Carding a 50

As the Colorado Open celebrates a half-century, we take a numerical look back. By Denny Dressman

86

Britton Colquitt Finds His Kickpoint

Mad golf skills have helped make the 2-handicap a better punter—and the best stick on the Broncos.

By Sam Adams

90

Valley Changes Course

Architect Rick Phelps’ front-nine renovation is drawing raves from members at the former home of the Colorado Women’s Open. By Jon Rizzi

92 41

COLORADO GETAWAYS

Return to Hoylake

An alumnus of the University of Liverpool golf team revisits his salad days—and the site of this year’s Open Championship. By Tony Dear

Trips to the Vail Valley, Summit County and beyond.

On The Cover Britton Colquitt at Colorado Golf Club.

Photograph by Ryan McKee/Clarkson Creative

Red Sky Fazio Course

4

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

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July 2014 Volume 13, Number 4 publisher

Allen J. Walters editor

Jon Rizzi associate publisher

Chris Phillips art director

Jeremy Cantalamessa editor-at-large

Tom Ferrell

automotive editor

Isaac Bouchard contributors

Sam Adams, Andy Bigford, E.J. Carr, Tony Dear, Denny Dressman, Sue Drinker, Dick Durrance II, Chris Duthie, Amy Freeland, Lois Friedland, Gary James, Ted Johnson, Kaye W. Kessler, Jake KubiĂŠ, Todd Langley, Kim D. McHugh, Bob Russo, Jerry Walters, Neil Wolkodoff digital and social media manager

Kate Stromberg office and operations manager

Cindy P. Nold projects and special events manager

Vanessa Van Horn editorial intern

Marina Beach p r i n c i pa l s

Ray L. Baker, C. Don Baker, Dick B. Baker Advertising Inquiries: cindy@coloradoavidgolfer.com Editorial Inquiries and letters: jon@coloradoavidgolfer.com Customer Service and Subscriptions: 720-493-1729 Mailing address: 7200 S. Alton Way #B-180, Centennial, CO 80112 FAX: 720-482-0784 Newsstand Information: 720-493-1729

coloradoavidgolfer.com Colorado AvidGolfer (ISSN 1548-4335) is published eight times a year by Baker-Colorado Publishing, LLC, and printed by American Web, Inc. Volume 12, Number Eight. 7200 S. Alton Way #A-180, Centennial, CO 80112. Colorado AvidGolfer is available at more than 250 locations, or you can order your personal subscription by calling 720-493-1729. Subscriptions are available at the rate of $17.95 per year. Copyright Š 2014 by Baker-Colorado Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited. Postmaster: Send address changes to Colorado AvidGolfer, 7200 S Alton Way #A-180 Centennial, CO 80112.The magazine welcomes editorial submissions but assumes no responsibility for the safekeeping or return of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, artwork or other material.

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Forethoughts

An Easy Call to Make

T

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

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F O R E T H O U G H T S P H O T O BY T e d M c I n tyre

he punter? Why, when we have a team with the most prolific offense in NFL history, would we put on the cover a player whose very presence on the field represents a failure to score?

Because the Denver Broncos’ Britton Colquitt scores on the golf course. His 2.2 index is the lowest on the team—yes, even lower than Peyton Manning’s 4.8—and he’ll be competing this month with other athletes and entertainers at the 25th American Century Championship at the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course.

Furthermore, as Contributing Editor Sam Adams discovers during his interview with Colquitt (page 86), punting a football and hitting a golf ball have more in common than you might think. Getting an oblong object to stop dead inches of the opponent’s end zone from 50 yards away is akin to sticking a small dimpled orb within a foot of the hole from the same distance—although most of us would be hard-pressed to do either against an onslaught of 230-pound men.

We do, however, face other distractions during a round: slow golfers, hovering “player assistants,” fetching beverage servers and voluble playing partners who constantly curse and use their cell phones.

I can tune out just about every distraction—including the cutest cart girls. But I’m not so good when it comes to others making phone calls, texting and checking messages. And it’s not because I find such behavior obnoxious or incompatible with the “sanctity” of the game.

Like just about every other golfer, I bring my cell phone to the course.

It’s an appurtenance that’s as indispensible as my car keys and wallet. I mute it and stick it in my golf bag—or in the cart compartment—and forget about it.

That is, until others check their phones and I’m immediately reminded of the myriad deadlines and obligations from which golf provides a blissful four-hour escape. My mind then ping-pongs from family issues to work issues and to whatever deadline I’m on. Then, usually while waiting for the group ahead, I check the phone to give myself peace of mind.

Call it a rabbit hole or a black hole, but once I go down it, it gets harder for me to put the ball into the remaining holes on the course.

I’m not alone. A prominent local businessman I once interviewed told me that whenever he took a call during a round, “everything would fall apart.” He stopped bringing his phone to the course because it “ruined too many good games.”

I think I’ll follow suit. The dangers of cell phone use behind the wheel has prompted Colorado to enact laws against distracted driving. The dangers of cell phone use while playing golf has prompted me to impose a personal prohibition against distracted driving—as well as pitching, chipping and putting.

Faced with the choice of whether to keep the phone in my bag “just in case,” I recently elected just to leave the round-killer in the car.

In other words, I punted—and damn proud I did. —Jon Rizzi

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2014 Corporate Cup More than 50 Colorado executives competed in the Audi Corporate Cup June 6-7 at Red Sky Golf Club in Wolcott. The Clarion Partners team of Brian Duffy and Sean Davis (below, with CAG publisher Allen Walters) took first place, and the big winner was the event’s charitable beneficiary, the Colorado PGA’s Golf in Schools program. See more photos like these in our flipbook at coloradoavidgolfer.com/events, and send shots from your own golf tournaments to kate@coloradoavidgolfer.com.

ot? o h ou S Y d t’ Wha

Show UsYour Kits!

“The foxes have had a den on the course the last six years in a row. Sometimes their den is under an old barn in our shop yard. Sometimes they take up residence in drain culverts. This year it’s an old badger den. We really appreciate having them here because they help keep the vole population in check.

Voles can be very damaging to golf courses over the winter months and as the snow is melting. We see foxes on property every day!”

—Derek Rose, Superintendent, Eagle Ranch Golf Course

Do you have a cool golf-related photo to share?

Email it to kate@coloradoavidgolfer.com, along with the story behind it. We’ll post the photos online and publish our favorites in upcoming issues.

Get inside stories and more at coloradoavidgolfer.com

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

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LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

Off theTee

Wear to Play

by Jim Dandy

R

emember when the Oakley-wearing, expressionless David Duval drew comparisons to Darth Vader? At the time, he was one of the few Tour players wearing shades.

Now just about all wear them—except when it’s time to read the greens. That’s when substance trumps style and the glasses move to the top of their caps. Avoid polarized lenses, which are like looking through Venetian blinds and get semi-rim or rimless. You gotta see the ball first, don’t you?

Zeal

Never heard of Zeal? The Boulder-based brand produces very well made, highly regarded shades. The Cota is the one for the links, and Zeal offers a reasonably priced glass—the EOS. Promise, you will be the only one on the course sporting these. $149

Kaenon

Very cool, very large sunglasses. Worth the money in optical quality. Selection is sparse Mentioned first, because they are first: for golf, as the Kore and the SoftKore are the in sales. See ’em on Ian Poulter and Zach only semi-rimless models. $239 Johnson. The highly recommended Iridium lenses are the most popular. RadarLocks Vedalo HD are what the pros wear. $220-$380 The top pilots in the world wear them—at

Oakley

high speeds! Since our speed is regular flex, high kickpoint, 78 mph on the tee, these The stylish Euro-look rocked by DJ, Sergio, should be overkill. Very light and sturdy with and other TMaG Tour players is cool, and so unparalleled optical grind. The Lombardy are the features—Silhouette Optical tech- Stritanium are superb. $329

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Breakfast of Champions

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

Recipe Ballyneal Bloody Mary Ingredients: 4 large tomatoes (skin removed) 1/2 cup onion (chopped) 1 stalk celery 1 green pepper 1 jalapeño pepper 1 cup beef broth 1 tsp. horseradish sauce 1 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp. hot pepper sauce 1 tsp. lemon juice 1 tsp. pure sugar 1/2 tsp. salt Directions:

Blend together first 6 ingredients until liquified.

Add remaining ingredients and blend until mixed completely. Cover and refrigerate. Serve with 2 oz. vodka. Garnish with lemon, 3 pepperoni slices and 3 olives skewered on a yucca stalk.

Note: Telluride Golf & Ski Club’s Tomboy Tavern also makes a memorable Bloody Mary. Get the recipe at coloradoavidgolfer.com

coloradoav i dgo lf e r.c o m

P hotogr a ph by Di c k Durr a n c e I I

The countdown has begun for golf’s oldest major, the British Open. While fans across the Atlantic raise a glass to Pimm’s o’clock on the big day, golf enthusiasts here can mix some Bloody Marys for the early-morning programming.

Appropriately enough, one of the best recipes comes from Holyoke (not Hoylake, site of this year’s Open), where the massive, rugged dunes at Ballyneal Golf & Hunt Club transport you to the British Isles without leaving Colorado.

Bar Manager Amanda Feely’s 30year-old family recipe comes from her grandmother, a gardener who would can and freeze fresh vegetables so she could enjoy the perfect Bloody Mary throughout the year.

The members love it too. “It’s the most popular drink we serve,” Feely says. The 12-ingredient cocktail may appear complicated, but is actually quite simple to blend up at home.

14

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Windsor Brings the Funk

F

ive years have passed since a new golf course opened in Colorado, and it will take at least another two spins around the sun before RainDance National Golf Club debuts in Windsor, just three miles west of Pelican Lakes Golf & Country Club. But when RainDance does open, it will increase the number of golf holes operated by Pelican Lakes developer Martin Lind’s Water Valley Land Company from 27 to 45, creating what he calls a “resort destination for diehard golfers.”

The 7,535-yard course will also mark the course-design debut of eight-time PGA Tour winner and 2009 U.S. Senior Open Champion Fred Funk. The one-

c o l o r a d o a v i d g o l f er. c om

time Ryder Cup player will collaborate with his longtime caddy, Mark Long, and lead architect Harrison Minchew, who spent 25 years with the Arnold Palmer Design Company and counts among his works the site of the 2006 Ryder Cup, Ireland’s Kildare Hotel and Country Club.

The three men, along with Lind, announced their plans at a public event at Pelican Lakes May 26.

As opposed to the seven miles of Poudre River shoreline that border the holes at Pelican Lakes and Pelican Falls, RainDance will only feature water—in the form of a 25-acre lake—on one hole, the 491-yard 15th. Instead, rugged hills and deep arroyos distinguish the site, and changes in elevation—there’s about 180

RAINDANCERS: Fred Funk (second from right) with (from left) architect Harrison Minchew, developer Martin Lind and collaborator Mark Long.

feet of difference between holes 1 and 15, and No. 10 drops more than 100 feet—will be RainDance’s leitmotif. “The property is extraordinary; it’s perfect for golf,” says Minchew. “I’ve been doing this for a long, long time and haven’t seen a site better than this. It’s one of those sites where you don’t want to screw it up. You don’t want to put tattoos on a pretty girl.”

At Lind’s request, Minchew and Funk did the first routing of the course in 2010, “and he told us to be patient,” remembers Minchew, who joined forces with his Ponte Vedra Beach neighbor shortly after setting up his own shop in 2007. Although RainDance will showcase the masterplanned community of the same name, real estate only abuts holes 1, 2 and 4, and

July 2014 |Colorado AvidGolfer

17

theGallery

the homes will sit far from the course. Plans also call for stay-and-play component that will involve onsite lodging and deals with all 45 Water Valley holes.

Designed so it can host a PGA Tour, Champions Tour or USGA championship, RainDance can stretch more than 7,700 yards and will be easily walkable, with rustic, soilbased paths instead of asphalt or concrete.

Funk has made clear his desire to keep things as simple and minimal as possible, but “not in a mundane manner,” says Minchew. “There’ll be a rugged look to the bunkers, but they won’t be super big or super deep, and Fred does not like extravagant green contours.”

Still, Team Funk insists that the “championship” quality won’t come at the expense of the higher handicap player. Even the average golfer will have the opportunity to drive a par4. “We will provide teeing areas and multiple landing areas so that all caliber of men and women players, after a well-hit tee shot, will be able to hit the same club to a green as a Tour player would use playing the championship tees,” says Minchew.

This approach will also leave substantial native prairie and arroyos between each of the teeing grounds and between the teeing grounds and beginning of the fairways, allowing the course to minimize water use and be environmentally sustainable.

“There truly is no limit for the potential of RainDance on the national stage, now that we have teamed up with Mr. Funk and his talented crew,” Lind says. “I see the day where blimps are hovering and very exciting things are taking place on this property.”

Such ambitions may border on the quix-

Almond Joy

What happens when the golf course in the community in which you just purchased a home shuts down unexpectedly? If you’re Doug Almond, you buy it—or first lease it from the bank that is foreclosing on it in September.

So goes the story at King’s Deer Golf Club in Monument. Almond, an executive who relocated last year to the King’s Deer community, barely got to enjoy the 6,711-yard gem before Nebraska-based Exchange Bank foreclosed on the owners and shut down the course in February. Two months of anxious homeownersassociation meetings later, Almond stepped up.

He and his father, Larry, a North Carolina realestate developer who owns several golf courses, formed Almond Golf LLC, leased the 15-yearold 193.7-acre golf course from a court-appointed receiver and spent more than $100,000 to ready King’s Deer for its reopening May 10.

Back in business with a new bar and restaurant area—and without having to operate under a crippling debt burden—King’s Deer has new energy. And once the foreclosure process is completed, Almond plans to purchase the

18

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

SITE-SEEING: Funk’s RainDance canvas

otic, but the lack of new course openings nationwide should allow RainDance National to make a big splash when it opens in 2016 or 2017. “This opportunity for me is unbelievable,” Funk says. “The land and what we’re working with is going to make a name for itself. I foresee RainDance hosting some significant tournaments in the future.” watervalley.com; 970-686-5828

course for less than $1 million. “Our long-term goal is to be the premier public golf course in our state,” Almond said in a statement sent to the King’s Deer Homeowners Association. “As a fellow homeowner, I know that having a premier course in our neighborhood will add value to our properties and create positive experiences in our daily lives.”

“The community obviously wants the course here, and Doug is committed to making this a five-star facility,” General Manager Jeff Kelly told the Colorado Springs Gazette. “Nobody wants an empty field in their backyard when they’ve bought golf course property.” kingsdeergolfclub.com; 719-559-4500

ROYALLY FLUSH: King’s Deer is back. coloradoavidgo lf e r.c o m

theGallery PERFECTLY RENDERED: Ravenna’s new clubhouse.

A Jewel Box on the Platte Having endured the slings and arrows of an outrageous economy, the seven-year-old Club at Ravenna last month broke ground on the first phase of its long-awaited clubhouse. Although

the club initially planned to have 225 members before starting construction, club developer Glenn Jacks was “so excited about what this clubhouse will add to our beautiful community and golf course, we simply couldn’t wait.” Jacks engaged Centennial-based residential architect Bill Wunderlich to design the 25,000-square-foot

structure. Called “Paradiso,” this jewel box of a structure will feel more like a cozy home than a cavernous cathedral. “The intent isn’t so much to impress people,” Wunderlich says, “but to embrace them and enhance their lifestyle.”

To that end, Paradiso will not focus exclusively on golfers and men’s grille habitués, but rather on the multidimensional lives of members and their families. Plans call for a full-service spa featuring massages, steam room and sauna; a fitness center that’s a hub for nutrition, personal training yoga and exercise classes; a restaurant with a display kitchen; tennis courts, a kids pool and lap pool; and multiple terraces from which to view the stunning red-rock landscape surrounding the award-winning Jay Morrish-designed golf course.

To appoint the exquisitely detailed, intimate interior spaces, Jacks brought on Ann Motokane of Emiko Design, whose vision is “tasteful and understated, a backdrop for members and a place to let them shine.”

Jacks seconds that emotion. “The success of the club and clubhouse will come from hearing the laughter of members sharing a story, a great meal or bottle of wine from their own cellar,” he says. “The promise of Ravenna has always been to help its members live life deeply and well, and this clubhouse continues that promise.” ravennagolf.com; 866-255-6680

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All-American Norwegian Calling it “a milestone in my career and something I will be proud of for the rest of my life,” University of Denver senior Tonje Daffinrud became the first man or woman from the University of Denver golf program to earn First Team All-American honors. The Women’s Golf Coaches Association made the announcement May 29 shortly after Daffinrud finished 10th in the NCAA Championships, where she competed as an individual after the Pioneers failed to qualify as team.

An international business major from Tønsberg, Norway, Daffinrud completed a historic season with the lowest scoring average in school history (72.18), six topfive tournament finishes, the best finish percentage in program history (90.8), and led the Pioneers to their 12th consecutive conference title. She carded two aces: the first en route to a 5-under-par 65 at the Schooner Fall Classic in Oklahoma; the second during her 7-under-par runner-up finish in the Allstate Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate Golf Championship, where she defeated No. 1-ranked Alison Lee of UCLA. “I am so proud of Tonje to be named

DRIVING AMBITION: Daffinrud was indomitable.

as one of the top-10 women collegiate players in the country,” says Lindsay Kuhle, who received the Summit League’s Coach of the Year award a year after earning the same honor in the Western Athletic Conference. “Tonje has set the bar for current and future Denver women golfers.”

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Want to play in the World’s Largest Golf Outing? You don’t have to go any further than Deer Creek Golf Club in Littleton or Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock.

Both are among the 120-plus courses in 28 states managed by Billy Casper Golf, which on August 11 will simultaneously stage a tournament on each of its facilities to benefit Wounded Warriors Project. Now in its fourth year, the World’s Largest Golf Outing has donated more than $1.1 million to the 10-year-old charity, with last year’s event attracting more than more than 10,000 golfers, including a number of recovering soldiers. Players can register as individuals for $70; twosomes for $140; and foursomes for $280. Each entry fee includes a $10 donation to WWP, lunch, an awards reception, on-course contests and prize eligibility.

The event encourages additional fundraising—last year four teams generated more than $8,000 apiece—and rewards teams with the highest contribution levels and best scores. worldslargestgolfouting.com; woundedwarriorproject.org.

theGallery

10,000 Tee Times

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4/30/2014 10:30:24 AM

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

21

Indulgence Made to Order

Golf By Numbers 2

Parker clubs—The Pinery and The Club at Pradera—now belong to Seattle-based Columbia Hospitality, whose modest golf portfolio features such gems as Tartan Fields Golf Club near Muirfield Village in Ohio and TPC Snoqualmie Ridge, a Champions Tour venue east of Seattle. Through the end of this month, Columbia is waiving the initiation on its Summit Membership, which gives reciprocal access to both clubs, lift tickets and “Friends & Family” rates at the dozen hotels in Columbia’s collection. columbiahospitality.com

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years have passed since the Colorado Open had its last amateur champion. Littleton’s Brian Guetz won the event while attending Oklahoma State in 1994—exactly 20 years after Gary Longfellow became the only other amateur to win the Open. If the pattern continues in 2014, Guetz could have a connection to it. He now serves as an assistant coach at his alma mater, where another Colorado product, Wyndham Clark, won Big 12 Player of the Year and led OSU to the finals of the men’s Division I NCAA Championship versus the University of Alabama. Clark, who won 11 events— including the 2010 Colorado Stroke Play and two State 4A championships—while at Valor Christian, intends to play in this month’s HealthONE Colorado Open. Guetz, who won the 2008 event as a professional, won’t compete, but he also counts

DENVER | 191 INVERNESS DRIVE WEST | 303-768-0827 © 2014 Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar. All rights reserved.

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50+ LESSONS & VIDEOS! 22

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

COLORADO COWBOYS: Oklahoma State’s Wyndham Clark and assistant coach Brian Guetz.

coloradoavidgo lf e r.c o m

among his charges defending champion Zahkai Brown, with whom Guetz worked during his time as an assistant coach at Colorado State University. coloradoopen.com

12

days after being named the Summit League’s Men’s Golf Coach of the Year, Eric Hoos resigned from the University of Denver. Erik Billinger, associate coach of the women’s team, replaces him. In 15 seasons, Hoos led the Pioneers to three conference titles (including 2014), nine NCAA regional appearances, nine tournament wins and 17 individual titles.

65,000

square feet of golf entertainment on three levels—including 3,000 of private event space, 102 climate-controlled hitting bays, a 240-yard targetfilled “outfield” range, 230 high-definition flatscreen TVs, a rooftop terrace and topflight restau-

BIG BOX GOLF: Topgolf will open at Easter and Havana.

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rant—are coming next spring to Centennial. It will be Topgolf International’s 21st location worldwide. Billed as the place “where the competition of sport meets the favorite neighborhood hangout,” Topgolf offers golf games for all ages and skill levels and advanced technology to track players’ shots.

The complex anticipates attracting some 450,000 guests—half of whom are self-described “non-golfers”—in the first year.topgolf.com Got a Gallery item? Send it to jon@coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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| LESSONS COURSES

p h o t o g r a p h C O U RT E S Y O F F OX AC R E S

playersCorner

course

Out of the Woods at Last

Purchased by some devoted members, the glorious Golf Club at Fox Acres in Red Feather Lakes has opened to the public. By Jon Rizzi c o l o radoavi dgol f er. c om

FOXY LAYOUT: The beautiful par-3 ninth.

O

f a piece with the surrounding grandeur of Roosevelt National Forest and the Rawah and Medicine Bow mountain ranges, the 459 acres now occupied by the Golf Club at Fox Acres has since 1960 provided its members an alpine idyll two hours northwest of Denver.

The club’s history during this century, however, has been far from idyllic. Initially utilized only by family and friends of founder Ray Stenzel, Fox Acres steadily expanded its residential development and golf-club membership until an equity group purchased it in 2000. The tech bubble soon burst, precipitating a sharp decline in both memberships and home sales, and by 2005, a large developer purchased the golf club and surrounding real estate. He borrowed heavily to expand and promote the club as an exclusive enclave, but the recession soon scuttled that model and led to the erosion of the membership as well as the condition of the course and club. The bank foreclosed in January 2014 and shut-

tered the club.

But the story recently took a happy turn.

Led by managing partners Larry Lyon and Bill Butin, a group of 27 members formed an LLC and purchased both the club and the residential community out of foreclosure. “Once you visit this slice of heaven in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and experience the serenity and beauty of the area, it becomes very apparent how special this place is—and how much the club means to those of us who are passionate about golf and our local community,” says Lyon. “As members, we now feel in control of the future prosperity of the club.”

Lyons’ optimism stems in large part from the presence of Touchstone Golf, the golf-course management firm that the membership group engaged in May to reopen and manage the club’s day-to-day operations and return the extraordinary 6,500-yard John Cochran-designed course to its former magnificence. In just one month, Touchstone restored the playing conditions while re-energizing and growing the membership by 30 percent. During

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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the next several months, the team will continue to upgrade the golf course and many of the club’s amenities.

For golfers, the best part is that for the foreseeable future, the famously private club will welcome public play at affordable rates on a course Golf Digest ranked 17 on its 2012 list of the “Most Fun Golf Courses You Can Play in America.” One round will let you see why. Its fairways and greens bob and weave through thick stands of stately pines and stunning rock outcroppings, skirting fifteen lakes and more than 100 bunkers. The course abounds in undulations and ungulates (moose, elk and deer), creating an unforgettable tableau.

Better still are the stay-and-play packages that give you “24 hours, from the time you arrive, to play as much golf as you can,” says General Manager Matt Renick. The per-player fee ranges from $99 to $149, depending on whether you want to share one of the exquisite club rooms, and covers all golf, room and range fees. “We will also provide a golf cart for your own personal use during your entire stay.”

You might want to eschew the cart for a walk around the fitness trail that traverses the entire property, or avail yourself of the full-service restaurant and tennis and fitness center.

You’re also in gorgeous Red Feather Lakes, where the Cache La Poudre invites whitewater rafting, kayaking and world-class fishing, and the gorgeous 108-foot-tall Great Stupa of Dharmakaya—a

reliquary blessed by the Dalai Lama as one most significant examples of sacred Buddhist architecture in North America—welcomes reflection and enlightenment.

For enlightenment on why you had so many three-putts, Fox Acres includes extensive instruction and practice areas among its many amenities.

And those amenities—particularly the clubhouse restaurant—are getting used more frequently than they have in a long time.

“Less than four months ago, the prospects for Fox Acres looked bleak,” says Managing Partner Bill Butin. “Now, thanks to the support of our dedicated members, owners and Touchstone Golf, our members are excited, membership numbers are up more than 30 percent, and all of us are looking forward to a very bright future.” 970-881-2574; golfclubatfoxacres.com.

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player’sCorner

lesson 1

Switch to a Hybrid How to rescue your short game without a wedge. By Elena King

LPGA Class A Professional Elena King is the founder of ExperienceGolf and the winner of top instructor awards from Golf Digest, Colorado AvidGolfer and the LPGA Central Section. She teaches at CommonGround Golf Course in Aurora and Meridian Golf Club in Englewood. 303-503-0330; experiencegolf.biz.

I

n the ten years since Todd Hamilton won the 2004 Open Championship by chipping with a hybrid, golfers who lack consistency around the greens have opted to follow his lead. And for many, it’s worked. Hybrid clubs usually have between 18 and 22 degrees of loft. By comparison, putters typically have about 4 degrees of loft and wedges can range anywhere from 46 to 60 degrees. The hybrid is designed so that it doesn’t dig into the ground and glides nicely through the grass, and its loft will get the ball to pop up just enough to allow the golfer to negotiate a small or large amount of fringe easier than with a putter.

Shown below are three examples of shots to use the hybrid:

Swing Drill

1

Golf ball rests against the fringe of the green that interferes with the backswing.

(Align shoulders and feet with slope of hill when necessary) PHOTOGRAPH S BY J E R E M Y C A N TA L A M E S S A

AT Address:

• Use normal putting grip but choke up on the club because a hybrid’s shaft is much longer than a putter’s, and choking up will give you more control.

• Position the ball off your back foot • Put weight on forward foot

In swing:

• Use your normal putting stroke with a little bit of a downward stroke

2

Long Chip shot uphill to a back pin placement.

It’s as simple as putting from a chipping stance.

3

Find more lessons and helpful tips at coloradoavidgolfer.com .

28

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

• Feel weight on your forward foot from the start of the swing all the way to a held finish. This will encourage the downward stroke The ball sits up in high rough just off the fringe

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player’sCorner

lesson 2

Backhanded Complements Adding “wrong side” shots to your arsenal can salvage a hole. By Charlie Soule Charlie Soule is the manager of operations and lead instructor at Green Valley Ranch Golf Academy in Denver.

He placed 5th in the 2013 HealthONE Colorado Open and earned a 2014 CAGGY award for Best Instructor for Men. 303-371-8700; gvrgolfacademy.com

W

e’ve all run into situations where hitting the ball from a conventional stance isn’t possible. Sometimes we’re forced to kneel next to a bunker, remove our shoes to hit out of water, or take a swing out of a bush à la Victor Dubuisson at this year’s Accenture. One of the shots golfers need but rarely practice is the backhanded iron shot. If you’re up against a tree, next to a hazard, or just can’t address the ball from your normal side, having these shots in your repertoire can save you—and give you a unique shot to talk about when the round’s over.

POP SHOT A low-risk, quick recovery shot that won’t go all that far, this is a great option if

FULL MONTY If you have a clear path and need to advance the ball more than a few feet,

1. Use a lower-lofted iron (4 or 5) so the back of the club won’t knock the ball straight into the ground.

2. Go through your usual setup; just mirror it from the opposite side.

3. Focus on using a smooth shoulder turn to make contact with the ball instead of trying to hit it hard. Improving your position on the course is more important than adding distance.

1. Use a higher lofted club such as a 9-iron or PW. 2. Flip the club so the toe makes contact with the ground.

3. Position the ball in the back of your stance.

4. Swing smoothly with your shoulders to maximize contact.

overhanging limbs impede your backswing or if the prospect of a full swing from the wrong side frightens you.

this is the shot. Definitely practice it on the range before pulling it out on the course.

p h o t o g r a p h s by ej c a r r

Find more lessons, helpful tips and videos at coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

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P h o t o g r a p h c o u r t esy o f K A C H I N A S O U TH W E S T E R N GR I L L

fareways

Not-So-Quiet on the Westminster Front The longtime golf haven generates some culinary clamor.

CITRUSY SEAFOOD: Kachina’s Scallop Ceviche

By Gary James

KACHINA SOUTHWESTERN GRILL Entering Kachina Southwestern Grill at the Westin Westminster, you might expect standard southwest/Tex-Mex fare. You would be wrong. This associate of Sage Hospitality isn’t reliant on hotel capacity. Kachina likes regulars, and word-of-mouth has been building for a year and a half. The decor is impressive, best described as “contemporary Mexican adobe,” and Nikki, our waitress, took the time to thoroughly explain the menu.

She steered us toward “The Chef and the Butcher,” a menu created by Kachina’s in-house butcher, chef and sous chef, who partner with local farmers and co l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

ranchers. A cilantro and cashew pesto with a piquant blueberry and tequila coulis threatened to overpower the Bison Carpaccio starter, but the Grilled Bison Tenderloin got a mouthwatering pucker from sautéed greens in a sweet-and-sour agrodolce and smoked jus.

Off the regular menu, the Scallop Ceviche was refreshing—diver scallops “cooked” in lime juice imparted a heady citrus scent, with tomato, radish, green onion and a pinch of smoked salt—and candied Fresno chiles for a sweet, hot pop. Under Para Mesa (“For The Table”), the Sausage + Cheese featured a chef ’s selection of artisanal meats and cheeses, plus housemade chorizo. The Navajo

Tacos, served on platter-sized Indian fry bread instead of a tortilla, were crazy tasty, notably the Gaucho (slow braised lamb, smoked tomato aioli, Brussels sprouts slaw and cowboy beans).

We found two treasures among the main dishes. Grilled Chicken & Chorizo was a chorizo-stuffed thigh and achiotegrilled breast accented with abuelita chocolate mole, tequila lime cherries and chile-spiced piñon nuts. Filetes a la Plancha was outstanding—beef tenderloin wrapped in speck (a type of prosciutto), cooked to perfection and served with a sweet potato green chile gratin that was drop-dead delicious. We saved room for the Coconut Flan, lighter than the tradiJuly 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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Republic Tequila, Solerno (a potent blood orange liqueur), ginger liqueur—and amped up by a smoked ice cube that imparted its nuance as it melted, making every sip from the first to the last totally different. So I had another. Remember, chemically speaking, alcohol is a solution.

10600 Westminster Blvd.; 303410-5813; www.kachinagrill.com

CIANCIO’S

tional Mexican dessert.

Richard Betts, one of a handful of master sommeliers in Colorado, built the wine list, and there are also dozens of varieties of mescal— tequila’s smoky, spicy sibling—to choose from. I had mine in a spe-

cialty cocktail, the Burro Loco— muddled cilantro, with lemon and ginger beer, served in a copper mug à la a Moscow Mule, but the pure white Sombra mescal gave it a kick that vodka couldn’t. The Diplomat was another delight—in-house aged

experience Colorado High country golf at The Ridge.

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P h o t o g r a p h c o u r t esy o f K A C H I N A S O U TH W E S T E R N GR I L L

WHAT’S THE LOIN? The speckwrapped Filetes a la Plancha.

The Ciancio family has been in the hospitality business for more than 30 years, with 16 of them coming at their location at Hyland Hills Golf Course. The clubhouse facility is beautiful, and Ali, our youthful server, said working for the family was a delight. Donna bought it from her dad when he got sick, and she and her siblings are still involved, as are some of their kids. Ciancio’s is known for Italian cuisine, but Ali also raved about the green chili—no surprise, since north Denver denizens know their Mexican dishes as well.

Ciancio’s is full-service, open to the public seven days a week for

breakfast, lunch and dinner. Entrees on the menu are best considered for special events or parties (the banquet rooms handle over 200 guests), but regulars know the sandwiches (“Sand Wedges”) are the stars. My favorite is the Grilled Sausage & Peppers—a homemade Italian sausage patty grilled with sweet sautéed peppers, topped with mozzarella on a toasted bun with a side of smooth, sweet homemade marinara for dipping.

For an appetizer (or “Approach Shot”), Ciancio’s Italian Nachos provides a nice change—fresh Italian sausage, mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce piled on white corn tortilla chips. Of the Back Nine Burgers, the Double Bogey caught my eye— one 1/2 pound Angus Chuck beef, 1/2 pound of sliced slow-roasted Prime Rib au jus, topped with American cheese and served on a toasted bun—but I was afraid my cardiologist might walk in after his round.

He’s already advised me to play 36 holes a day, so I’m going to buy a harmonica.

9650 Sheridan Blvd.; 303-6578870; ciancio.us

Your humble food scribe is a veteran of the fabulous newspaper biz. One of my biggest influences was the great Ralph Moore, my eighth-grade football coach at St. Anne’s in Arvada who covered golf for The Denver Post to award-winning effect.

Current conditions at newspapers are difficult, and I mourn the recent casualties— especially Post sports columnist Jim Armstrong, whose “Opening Shots” was always a great read; I appreciated the huge amount of work and savvy it required.

These days Jim is the proprietor of Bender’s Sports Bar and Grill, located in the Ice Centre at the Promenade, bringing the same smarts and discipline to his foray into the slightly more fabulous restaurant biz. “It’s something I always wanted to do,” he shrugs. He knows sports. He knows bars (I have fond memories of some legendary sessions at Brooklyn’s). So why wouldn’t he know sports bars? Bender’s offers more sports viewing than any other local bar, and Avs and NHL fans consider it the top hockey hangout (the Ice Centre provides a built-in clientele, and out-of-town guests at the nearby Westminster Westin find a road haven to follow their teams). Great service,

P h o t o g r a p h s c o u r t esy o f ci a nci o s ( t o p lef t ) a n d by g a r y ja mes

CLUB MENU: Ciancio’s at Hyland Hills

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BENDER’S SPORTS BAR AND GRILL

BALSAMIC: Bender’s Special Salmon

lots of memorabilia, fun atmosphere—when the hockey slang starts flying and some guy yells, “Go top cheddar on that tender,” he’s not ordering a cheeseburger.

But he should. Jim has made his mark on the menu, increasing the simple satisfaction of bar food with the help of Chef Nate, his impressive young charge. Consider the wings, as I always do: Jim buys a premium wing and, instead of frying it raw, par-bakes it until fully cooked. He then fries the wing, rendering much of the fat gone and keeping the skin crispy. There’s a number of deli-

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Read more of Gary James’s food and music writing at coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

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P h o t o g r a p h by g a r y ja mes

cious burger options. The Huevos Ranchero, served open face, is smothered in green chile and topped with cheddarjack cheese, pico de gallo, scallions and a fried egg. Order the Hang Over if you crave a cheese overload to salve self-inflicted wounds—it’s smothered in soft, creamy Boursin cheese and a whiskey peppercorn sauce.

But the larger menu has some nice touches.

The Hot Queso appetizer with Mexi beef or chicken achieves the desired solid, smooth consistency, and Reuben Egg Rolls are a finger-food twist on the classic sandwich. Of the sandwiches, the Honey Turkey Bavarian is a winner, with Swiss, bacon and honey mustard on...a toasted pretzel roll. Plus many creative entrees give an edge to Bender’s—my wife loved the Signature Salmon with balsamic glaze and candied pecans; a cohort enjoyed the Teriyaki Chicken with grilled pineapple.

I coveted the Giant Chocolate Chip Cookie à la Mode delivered to another table; too bad I filled up on wings early.

Jim is typically sanguine about his impressive scope. “We try to make everything go good with cold beer,” he explains. “Or just have more cold beer.”

10710 Westminster Blvd.; 303-974-5215; benderssportsbar.com

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niceDrives

P h o t o g r a p h c o u rt esy o f c h r ysle r

CHRYSLER 200S

Getting Hypecast Can the new Chrysler 200S and Porche Macan S possibly meet high expectations? By Isaac Bouchard

N

ew car rollouts have become very carefully orchestrated, and begin long before the vehicles actually go on sale. It all starts with concept cars and spy photos of disguised prototypes.

Closer to release the manufacturers roll out the carefully retouched photographs for public consumption—often to steal the thunder from competitors’ unveilings. There’s usually a big auto show debut too (almost de rigueur for major models), and then comes the launch at some beautiful locale for the automotive and lifestyle press corps. Finally the production machines make it to dealers’ lots, and we see not only how they look on real roads but also how they stack up against the competition. Herein I want to follow two important new vehicles through

38

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

this process and see how well the reality holds up to expectations.

2015 Chrysler 200 S AWD Chrysler hasn’t had a hit in the midsize sedan sector for many years; the last Sebring was a complete dud, in this, the best-selling class of car. A fairly inexpensive revamp turned it into the 200 four years ago, and while it was no longer an embarrassment to its corporate parents, Chrysler started teasing its replacement over a year ago.

Initial spy photos and disguised prototypes gave us the sense the 2015 would be sleek, and use a new, Fiat/Alfa-derived platform, so it could be a nice driving machine too.

At year’s end we saw the crafted PR images and

it appeared as dramatic as anything we’ve seen in this oft-conservative sector (Camry, anyone?).

Then came the official 200 unveiling at the Detroit Auto Show in early January. It looked great under the stage lights, if not quite as daring as the 2-D evidence had suggested. Chrysler bigwigs went on and on about how the 200 would have the best quality interior in the class, the most power, and many unique selling points. It did seem very nice to sit in—though the back was tight for headroom—and I declared it one of the show’s highlights. Fast forward four months and I got behind the wheel of the real deal, right here in Colorado.

This particular 200, a C model in V6 AWD spec, still impressed visually. Its beautifully rendered surfacing, highlighted by lots of curvaceous brightwork and hunky 18x8-inch rims, gave it real colorado avidgo lf e r .c o m

P h o t o g r a p h c o u rt esy o f c h r ysle r

GREAT, WHITE, SHARP: The cockpit of the Chrysler 200

presence. First impression: positive. Here was a car that would do what the last Sonata did for Hyundai: reset shoppers’ internal biases about what Chrysler was about.

The 200’s interior design was dramatic and cohesive. Colors carefully defined the ambiance and such details as the backlit gauges were very cool. The center console was very well laid out for modern tech and the twist knob electric shifter freed up lots of space. The Uconnect infotainment system was fast and intuitive.

But some of the materials aren’t up to the standard I was led to expect: where vinyl meets leather on the seat cushions it’s quite noticeable in texture and color, and the some of the more obvious plastic moldings are shiny and hard.

Mind you, the 200 is still class-competitive, but hype suggested it would be unparalleled, and it’s not. Front seat space and the driving position are fine, the angled headrests not so much, and the rear accommodations do indeed shave the scalp—a shame, as under-thigh support is very good in the back seat.

Thankfully, the 200C driving experience is very pleasing—and quite sporting, being broadly similar to a Ford Fusion or Mazda6 in the way it steers, handles and stops. Brake modulation is nice, steering precision excellent, especially the way the helm loads up in a corner, which gives one real reassurance about front-end grip. The Chrysler’s ride is undeniably firm, but damping is excellent, meaning it has commendable poise and really tears up a back road.

The 200C’s powertrain upholds its end as well; combining the 295hp Pentastar V6 and the new corporate nine-speed auto whose programming now seems more sorted—with a slick AWD system that disconnects when not needed co l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

to save fuel—gives us one compelling Colorado car. It feels fast (I’m estimating 0-60mph in under six seconds), yet will return good economy at a cruise. Based on my experience, the Chrysler 200C comes quite close to fulfilling what was promised. It is compelling inside and out, near the top of the class to drive, and well priced at $33,380.

2015 Porsche Macan S When I first saw photos of Macan prototypes testing I wasn’t impressed. Undisguised pictures did little to bolster my enthusiasm, either, though the specification sounding intriguing: twin-turbo V6 stuffed into a crossover the size of an Audi Q5 (from which the Macan derives some structure and electronics architecture).

It would have Porsche prestige, performance and handling in a handy, sub Cayenne-priced package.

Then I saw it in the metal at Detroit and all my design misgivings were swept away. What a looker! In three dimensions the Macan took on new menace, especially at the rear, where the larger rear tires and sloping hatch suggested the captivating derriere of a 911. I couldn’t wait to drive it.

The vehicle I finally got to try in May was the more basic S model. Its 3.0-liter makes due with “only” 340hp and 339lb-ft of torque, as compared with the bigger V6 in the 400hp, Turbo model, but that was ample thrust for a 4200-pound crossover, with 0-60 available in about five seconds. This is one sweet little engine, and one that plays a sonorous—if too quiet—tune, while seamlessly deploying drive through the incredibly slick seven-speed PDK twinclutch gearbox.

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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PLUSH AND POWERFUL: The Porsche Macan S.

And my Macan didn’t have any of the fancy options like electronic damping, air suspension or torque vectoring. Yet it turned in like a sports car, stayed neutral right up to its insanely high limits, and never felt twitchy.

Simply put, the Macan is a crossover that will make average drivers feel like heroes and that accomplished wheelmen will simply be blown away by. There are prices to pay for such performance: the ride is never less than firm, and tire roar isn’t as well suppressed as I would hope (in that way it’s classic Porsche), yet those are minor gripes.

Where the Macan also moves the game on is

in its interior quality. While many other luxurious or expensive SUVs have nice leather or lashings of wood, none convey the sense of solidity of fittings and materials used in the Porsche—and this was a very basic model. And while there are loads of expensive options, judicious choice will net one a very practical (if small) crossover of unmatched provenance for a not-unreasonable price of $63,680. Expectations exceeded.

CAG

Muscle Activa

Read more of Isaac Bouchard’s automotive writing at nicedrivz.com and coloradoavidgolfer.com.

GET STRONGER. HIT FARTHER.

PLAY LIKE A CHAMPION!

Does muscle tightness or pain have a negative effect on your game?

Muscle Activation Techniques may be your answer.

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99 Inverness Drive E. Suite 200, Englewood, CO 80112

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

P h o t o g r a p h s c o u rt esy o f p o r sc h e

As good as the performance was, the real revelation was what happened down a twisty bit of tarmac, for here the Macan resets the bar for what we can expect of a crossover. While I’ve piloted some amazing SUVs that seem to defy the laws of physics when pushed to the edge, none actually felt that comfortable doing so, and it always felt as if the electronics were doing the heavy lifting.

But the Porsche, with its smaller footprint and lesser mass, drives much more like a high-riding Carrera, with intuitive, easy to predict body motions, superbly accurate steering and the most stellar body control of any crossover yet made.

MAT is a method used to identify and correct muscular imbalances to restore range of motion and ensure that you are playing pain-free.

Our Specialists will keep you at the top of your game.

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S P E C I A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

S E C T I O N

c ov e r p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f t h e s e b a s t i a n

2014

The

Sebastian High-Country Class in Vail

2

Iconic areas one epic summer playground

Vail Valley | Summit County

Topnotch Golf | Trendy Bars | Fun Festivals | Culinary Gems

ME ET

SEBASTIAN AN D LET TH E FU N B EG I N.

In the heart of the village, The Sebastian is Vail’s favorite place to sip, supper and stay.

Elevate your game with a Sebastian Stay and Play golf package that includes welcome cocktails at Frost where glass floors, craft cocktails and signature scotches set the stage.

Enjoy daily breakfast with soaring mountain views, and after a long day on the links you can relax at Bloom Spa where steaming pools and hot tubs beckon. Join us for an evening on the town and let us show you all that awaits at Vail’s most colorful new destination.

Prices start at $290 per golfer, per night.

888.433.9115

Aspen

|

www.TheSebastianVail.com

Bachelor Gulch

Cabo San Lucas

Maui

Napa

Scottsdale

Snowmass

Sonoma

Southern California

Steamboat Springs

Tuscany

U.S. Virgin Islands

Vail

Golf | Where to Tee It Up

Vail Valley

425

Featured Courses Adam’s Mountain Country Club Eagle, 888-760-2326 adamsribranch.com Beaver Creek Golf Club Beaver Creek, 970-845-5775; beavercreek.com/golf

Cordillera is back—in spectacular fashion. Since the celebrated reopening of private Club at Cordillera’s three top-tier Valley, Summit and Mountain courses and the injection of Troon Privé’s luxe club service and course maintenance, member numbers have boomed. In two years the club has sold 425 new memberships that include access to on-property swimming, tennis, fitness center and dining. cordillera-vail.com

Sonnenalp Golf Club

Cordillera

Twice the host of the Colorado Open, the delightful Jay MorrishBob Cupp design at Sonnenalp Golf Club has in recent months renewed its greenside bunkers. sonnenalpgolfclub.com The Club at Cordillera Edwards, 970-569-6460 cordillera-vail.com

Country Club of the Rockies Edwards, 970-926-3080 countrycluboftherockies.com

Fly Like an Eagle

K

nown for its winter sports, the Vail Valley—in fact, all of Eagle County—is a summer hotbed for golf. From Vail Golf Club on the county’s eastern edge to Gypsum Creek on the western front, the alpine landscape teems with fabulous courses. EagleVail, Sonnenalp, Beaver Creek, Eagle Ranch, the Cordillera triplets and Red Sky twins invite public and resort play, while private clubs like Adam’s Mountain in Eagle welcome prospective members and reciprocal play from members at other clubs. golfvailvalley.com

On the Tee t Red Sky Ranch & Golf

Club is private, but its stay-andplay relationship with a number of Vail resorts give guests access to its Greg Norman- and Tom Faziodesigned courses, ranked Nos. 1 and 5 by Golf Magazine among Colorado’s best public-access layouts. redskygolfclub.com 44

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

t Adam’s Mountain Coun-

try Club and its Tom Weiskopf course anchor Eagle’s private Adam’s Rib Ranch community. Membership includes golf plus access to the clubhouse, fitness center, spa, guest cottage, fly fishing, pool, clay tennis court and equestrian facility. adamsribranch.com

t A major course retooling that included rebuilt bunkers and greens, new irrigation and an Audubon Society Certification has made EagleVail Golf Club and its scenic Devlin/Von Hagge layout a daily-fee must-play. eaglevailgolfclub.com

Dave Pelz

For golf packages go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

For decades Dave Pelz has been a peerless swing guru to Phil Mickelson and other top professional and amateur golfers. His Colorado-based Dave Pelz Scoring Game School and its sensational 10-hole Short Course is conveniently located at The Lodge and Spa at Cordillera. pelzgolf.com

NEXT UP ON THE #1 TEE: YOU Located in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, both the Tom Fazio and Greg Norman designed courses at Red Sky Golf Club have been consistently ranked among Golfweek and Golf Digest’s top courses you can play. Coupled with world-class lodging at Beaver Creek Resort, now is your chance to play at this coveted club.

STAY & PLAY

FROM $255*

CALL 888-500-5170 OR VISIT REDSKYGOLFCLUB.COM TO BOOK TODAY M E M B E R S H I P O P P O RT U N I T I E S AVA I L A B L E AT N O R T H A M E R I C A’ S # 1 M O U N TA I N G O L F E X P E R I E N C E 2013 Best Courses You Can Play

2013 America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses

#1 and #2 Golf Courses in Colorado

–Golfweek–

–Golf Digest–

–Travel + Leisure Golf–

*Taxes and resort fees not included. Based on double occupancy. One night stay and one round of golf, per person, per night at The Pines Lodge, A RockResort.

Valid from June 6 to September 14, 2014. Price subject to change. Some restrictions may apply. © 2014 Vail Resorts, Inc. All rights reserved.

Red Sky Golf Club’s two spectacular courses afford two completely different treats.

The 7,580-yard Norman Course climbs through stunning alpine wilderness, while the 7,113yard Fazio Course runs through sage covered hills, dense aspen forest and around a highland lake. Members and guests alternate play on the nationally ranked duo. redskygolfclub.com Red Sky Golf Club

Golf | Where to Tee it Up

2

Vail Valley Featured Courses Eagle Ranch Golf Club Eagle, 970-328-2882 eagleranchgolf.com Eagle Springs Golf CluB Wolcott, 970-926-4400 eaglesprings.org EagleVail Golf Club Avon, 970-949-5267 eaglevailgolfclub.com Gypsum Creek Golf Course Gypsum, 970-524-6200 gypsumcreekgolf.com Red Sky Ranch & Golf Club Wolcott, 866-873-3759 redskygolfclub.com Sonnenalp Golf Club Edwards, 970-477-5372 sonnenalpgolfclub.com Vail Golf Club Vail, 970-479-2260 vailgolfclub.net

Priority Vail

G

olf in the Vail Valley is unparalleled, a no-place-else encounter dominated by the up-close, flash drive-filling splendor of the Gore Range.

That’s the amazing backdrop of every course in the valley, all of which offer an enriching, get-your-sanity-back experience. Exclusive clubs abound, yet there’s more than enough public golf to satiate the swing. And even private courses can be accessed—by lodging at a particular resort, talking to a connected concierge, or calling in a favor with a well-heeled friend. golfvailvalley.com

Vail Golf Club

Ride 18

On the Tee t Gypsum Creek Golf Course, a Pete Dye test once known as Cotton Ranch, wants to make golf enjoyable for everyone.

Check out Head PGA Professional Tom Buzbee’s ever-changing programs—like Fun Free Fridays. gypsumcreekgolf.com

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

t Sonnenalp Golf Club’s

t Beaver Creek Golf

Golf Getaway package includes lodging at its sumptuous hotel, a round of golf (and 50% off a second round per day), breakfast on Ludwig’s Terrace and no resort fees. Call 800-654-8312 for current rates.

Club’s Robert Trent Jones Jr.designed layout is available only to club members and lodging guests of Beaver Crek, Bachelor Gulch and Arrowhead. Call 800953-0844 for stay-and-play rates.

For more information go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

Committed to fitness and fun, Vail Golf Club is the first Colorado course to offer a Golf Bike as a way to get around the course. Designed by Florida’s Higher Ground Bicycling, the six-gear bike features hand brakes, carries clubs on the side and can go the same speed as a cart. An 18-hole rental is $15. vailgolfclub.net

the art of

BR AGGING RIGHT S Take one championship Robert Trent Jones Jr. Golf Course with lush rolling fairways and cobalt skies, a handful of old friends, a long anticipated re-match and you’ve got the recipe for a legendary vacation. Here, the decks are sun-drenched, the fi let is prime, the live music is way over par and the potential for bragging rights for the entire next year beckons. Come play, we’ll handle the details.

Book your mountain golf experience with a Stay and Play package starting at $206 pp a night.* Visit us at beavercreek.com/golf or call (866) 829 4432 for offer details.

be av erc r eek .com

*Based on double occupancy at The Pines Lodge, A RockResort, and 1 round of golf pp at Beaver Creek Golf Club. Valid from June 15 to Sept. 15, 2014. Restrictions may apply.

19 Hole

th

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With the full-on return of exclusive Cordillera Golf Club and its three championship-caliber golf courses, members are also enjoying the private enclave’s three stellar restaurants and the culinary skills oaf new Executive Chef Matt Limbaugh. “We make everything we can from scratch, including the cheese,” said Limbaugh, who was hired away from Kelly Liken, Vail’s premier restaurant.

Limbaugh’s latest epicurean feast, southern comfort barbecue, is anchoring The Summit Restaurant, regarded as Cordillera’s prime 19th hole experience. “The Summit offers amazing smoked chicken, ribs, pulled-pork sandwiches and topof-the-world views,” he said. “It’s a wonderful, unpretentious place to kick back with friends after a round of golf.” cordillera-vail.com

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

coloradoa vidgo lf e r .c o m

Stay and Play. Bring your friends, family and teams for memorable experiences.

Photography by Jack Affleck

Book our Stay and Play package to experience a round of golf for two amongst the astounding natural beauty of the Vail Valley with specially held tee times at the Beaver Creek Golf Course. Rates starting at:

$299 Enjoy a variety of mountain activities such as our awardwinning Allegria Spa, mountain biking, or other golf courses in the Valley like Vail Eagle-Vail, Sonnenalp, Eagle Ranch, Cotton Ranch and Red Sky Ranch.

For reservation information, please visit our website parkhyattbeavercreek.com or call 1-970-827-6636.

Refer to code: PLAY14. Terms and conditions apply.

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Lifestyle | Living Well

Vail Valley WHERE TO STAY

An Eden for skiers, Vail’s frozen landscape transforms into a verdant utopia in summer. Vail’s ersatz European village is a pedestrian-friendly buffet of more than 100 stores, premier restaurants, luxury lodges and more, all served by the nation’s largest free bus system. It’s where you want to be this summer. visitvailvalley.com

The Sebastian-Vail

A New Standard In 2013, Travel + Leisure named The Sebastian-Vail the second-finest resort in the continental United States. Pretty heady stuff, considering the also-ran nameplates included Ritz-Carlton, Waldorf Astoria and Four Seasons. Opened in 2010 in the heart of Vail Village, The Sebastian’s 100-room hotel and 38-private residence club ooze distinction, sophistication and luxury. thesebastianvail.com; 800-354-6908

Just Do It

T

he Vail lifestyle is all about pursuing and doing. For some that’s ascending a craggy peak or hiking one of the many loops near Eagle’s Nest and catching the early-morning or late-afternoon light dancing off the iconic Mount of the Holy Cross. For others, it’s negotiating the butt-bouncing single track of the Grand Traverse. Or splurging on the latest, zaniest fashion. Or identifying that perfect ingredient infused in a soon-to-be-discovered, Zagat-worthy dish at Restaurant Kelley Liken. Or surrendering to the rapture that comes with hearing soulfully played jazz. Or perhaps it’s experiencing a healthy, harmonious balance from filling your lungs with pure mountain air. Quite likely it’s all of the above. visitvailvalley.com

Sonnenalp Hotel

Old World Elegance

Stop & See t Labor Day weekend brings Gourmet on Gore, a cu-

t Come summer, the ridges,

linary festival of the best food and libations in the Vail Valley.

Highlights include a Friday night restaurant-to-restaurant tour, “open-air tastings,” live music and much more. gourmetongore.com

Vail Mountain teem with

52

slopes and tree-lined chutes of bikers, hikers, zip liners and other high altitude thrill-seekers. For an even bigger buzz, ride the Eagle Bahn gondola to the top and enjoy an FAC picnic with friends. vail.com

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

t The 12-week-long Vail Jazz Festival paints the

town with the sweet sounds of swing, salsa, bebop, blues, Brazilian and more. This year’s 20th anniversary event will attract 20,000 spectators, 150 artists and 40 performances in five venues. vailjazz.org

For golf packages go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

For 35 years the impeccably appointed Sonnenalp Hotel has served generations of patrons with world-class service, lodging, dining and spa in the finest European tradition. Mere steps from Vail Mountain, the award-winning resort is also the only Vail hotelier to offer its own golf course, the 18-hole layout formerly known as Singletree. sonnenalp.com; 866-284-4411

Mountain Must-Do

Photo by Jack Affleck

Of all the big-grin events in Vail, one stands above the rest: Oktoberfest.

Scheduled for the first and second weekends of September, Oktoberfest is a celebration of all things Bavarian… and a wonderful excuse to don silly hats, wear leather pants, drink stout brew and overindulge in bratwurst.

Beaver Creek Village hosts the first weekend (Sept. 5-7) then the tradition moves to Vail Village for an end-ofsummer finale (Sept. 12-14). Break out the lederhosen and beer steins, warm up the yodeler and we’ll see you oompah dancing and singing at the world’s most popular party. visitvailvalley.com

C R E A T E

M E M O R I E S

Classic 18-hole golf course, public welcome.

970-479-2260 vailgolfclub.net OPERATED BY VAIL RECREATION DISTRICT

Download our FREE App with course information, yardages, book tee times and more.

co lo r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

Enjoy a magnificent meal and view at Happy Valley Grill in the Vail Golf Club. www.happyvalleyvail.com

4:07 PACE OF PLAY

So you can enjoy the rest of your day

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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Lifestyle | Living Well

Vail Valley WHERE TO STAY

34

In the 34 years since its ski resort opened to the public, the enclave known as Beaver Creek has become synonymous with plush accommodations, five-star dining, quaint shopping, art galleries and recreational amenities. It is, quite simply, the ideal locale for a buddy trip, couples weekend, family reunion or corporate retreat. beavercreek.com

Spa at Park Hyatt Beaver Creek

Highly Decorated Talk about extraordinary. Last year the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa received reader’s choice awards from Condé Nast Traveler (Top Resorts in the West) and Travel + Leisure (Best Family Hotels), an editor’s choice award from Forbes (Best Hotels & Spas in the World) and several other prestigious distinctions. beavercreek.hyatt.com

Eager for Beaver Creek?

F

or a ski resort, Beaver Creek certainly majors in summer fun. Explore the cool Western artifacts at SaddleRidge’s museum, hike a “Fourteener” with a knowledgeable Beaver Creek Hiking Center guide, ride the chairlift and hike Royal Elk Trail to Beaver Lake for a picnic, or have your picture taken at the top of Strawberry Park Express overlooking the Gore Range. Easy access to bike trails, river floats, fly-fishing and even disc golf make this world-renowned ski resort a summertime paradise. You can’t beat the world-class shopping and restaurants. beavercreek.com

Westin Riverfront

Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa at Beaver Creek Mountain

Stop & See t The Beaver Creek Wine

t The popular Beaver Creek

t Edwards, located just four

& Spirits Festival (Aug. 8-10 ) features winners of the San Francisco International Wine and World Spirits Competition. It also showcases local culinary talent, exclusive wines and outdoor venues. beavercreek.com

Art Festival (Aug. 2-3) spotlights some of the country’s best artists and crafters. Meet the amazing talent that displays fine sculptures, paintings, jewelry, photography, ceramics and more. artfestival.com.

miles west of Beaver Creek, is the fastest growing community in Eagle County. It’s also home to Riverwalk, known for its finedining bistros, ice cream shops, theaters, galleries and boutiques. visitvailvalley.com

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

For more information go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

The Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa at Beaver Creek Mountain is located in the heart of Vail Valley. Links-loving guests enjoy direct access to Red Sky Golf Club, Eagle Vail Golf Club and Beaver Creek Golf Club.

This vaunted property is home to the 27,000-square-foot Spa Anjali and the fine-dining Mexican restaurant, Maya. westinriverfrontbeavercreek.com

and

Sonnenalp Hotel

Balata

You

Events at Sonnenalp Golf Club

belong here.

Sonnenalp - a long-standing legacy of exceptional service, hospitality and quality.

The family-owned Sonnenalp Hotel provides beautiful accommodations, unparalleled service and an exceptional location in the heart of Vail Village. Just a short 15-minute drive west, the Sonnenalp Golf Club offers an award-winning course with incredible views and challenging play.

Sonnenalp Hotel on Gore Creek

Golf Getaway Package Enjoy one round of golf per person, per day at the Sonnenalp Golf Club during your stay, as well as other great amenities. For rates and availability visit sonnenalp.com or call 800-654-8312 to speak with a reservations agent.

Sonnenalp Golf Club is a semi-private club with limited public tee times available • Balata Restaurant open to the public Golf Memberships • Social Memberships • Trial Memberships Sonnenalp Hotel

20 Vail Road,Vail, CO 81657 970-476-5656 • 800-654-8312 www.sonnenalp.com

Sonnenalp Golf Club

1265 Berry Creek Road, Edwards, CO 81632 970-477-5375 www.sonnenalpgolfclub.com

Lifestyle | Living Well

2

Two things to know about Vail Village: One, it’s absolutely ideal for staging festivals, which it does throughout the summer in incredibly fun fashion; two, this sumptuous, pedestrian-friendly town is a veritable treasure trove of outdoor stores and boutiques that offer unique apparel, jewelry, sporting goods, kid stuff, souvenirs and art.

Plus, a free bus to nearby Lionshead Village provides additional credit card-melting opportunities.

Valley Victuals t Open Table, Urban Spoon, Gayot and Trip Advisor all agree: Sweet Basil is a superb dining experience. The line-out-the-door bistro also has earned accolades from Wine Spectator, Fodor’s Travel, Zagat Survey, Gourmet, the New York Times and The Denver Post. Gourmands revere Executive Chef Paul Anders, whose culinary skills were honed at the Brown Palace Hotel and The Broadmoor. sweetbasilvail.com

Decking It Out t

For more hot spots go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

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Seek out Pepi’s Restaurant & Bar, the intimate fine-dining eatery that’s renowned for its luscious Austrian cuisine and mouthwatering elk, lamb and veal dishes. Pepi’s offers live music every day and the warm-weather patio—Vail’s largest outdoor deck—is a favored lunchtime locale. Open since 1964, the award-winning restaurant is centrally located and is just steps from Vail Mountain, great shopping and the Gerald Ford Amphitheater.

Reserve a table well in advance. pepis.com

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

It’s All That In nearby Edwards, the 56-room Lodge & Spa at Cordillera is regarded as one of the world’s most luxurious retreats. The spa is sublime, and foodies thrill to the resort’s twin restaurants (including the amazing Mirador), which readers of Condé Nast Traveler gave the state’s top ranking for superior cuisine and service. cordilleralodge.com

Lodge and Spa at Cordillera colo r ado avidgo lf e r .c o m

PLAY WELL

#2 Western Resort Condé Nast Traveler, 2013 Readers’ Choice Book your summer golf getaway to Beaver Creek’s award-winning Westin Riverfront, offering unparalleled access to Vail Valley’s top courses, plus relaxing mountain treatments at Spa Anjali.

Summer rates start at $189 per night for a spacious studio suite.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO MAKE A RESERVATION, VISIT WESTINRIVERFRONTBEAVERCREEK.COM OR CALL 1.866.949.1616

126 Riverfront Lane, PO Box 9690 Avon Colorado 81620

©2014 Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Preferred Guest, SPG, Westin and their logos are the trademarks of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., or its affiliates. For full terms & conditions visit westin.com.

Lifestyle | Living Well Longest Season-Best Value Mountain Course

3

Women know the three Ss to an awesome vacation: sunshine, spa and shopping. Combine the two by swim-suiting up and lounging at the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa’s sparkling outdoor pool (or one of five hot tubs), followed by a treatment in the resort’s Allegria Spa and some power shopping in pedestrian-only Beaver Creek Village, where stores filled with clothes, shoes, art and souvenirs await. beavercreek.hyatt.com

Allegria Spa at the Park Hyatt

The Right Angle t Fly fishing in Beaver Creek is a Nikon-prompting experience that’s ideal for men, women and kids. Wet- and dry-fly opportunities for rainbows, browns, cutthroats and brookies await at Gore Creek, Eagle River, Colorado River and other freestone rivers and tailwaters. Fully licensed guides and schools are readily available, many offering more than 30 years of expertise. Get hooked on casting, catching and releasing.

Vote for Gore t

Book Online for Best Rates 970-524-6200

gypsumcreekgolf.com 58

For more hot spots go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

If you bag one of the Gore Range’s behemoth peaks (or even if you don’t), celebrate at the Gore Range Brewery, a favored locals hangout in Edwards that is beloved for its casual atmosphere, burgers and hand-crafted brews. (Spring for the lager steamed mussels or coconut and curry shrimp, accompanied by a thirst-slacking draft of Fly Fisher Red Ale.) gorerangebrewery.com

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

Good Music Scheduled in September, the Rendezvous Music Festival at Beaver Creek is a unique and intimate two-day experience. The RMF blends outstanding entertainment, food and wine to create a one-of-a-kind event in Beaver Creek, one of the world’s most vibrant and compelling mountain settings. Included on this year’s playbill is Jackopierce (Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce), a dynamic, acoustic-steeped duo that has sold 500,000 records and toured three continents, nine countries and 44 states. rendezvousbc.com

Jackopierce color ado avidgo lf e r .c o m

Cocktail Hour

One of the best travel tips is follow the locals. In this case, they’ll lead you to the Lobby Bar at the Westin Riverfront Resort & Spa at Beaver Creek Mountain.

Ranked tops by residents, the Lobby Bar is hands-down the craziest happy hour scene in the Vail Valley, offering handcrafted cocktails, drink specials and live music in a step-lively atmosphere. Also on tap: Colorado microbrews, an extensive wine list and a nice variety of small plates and appetizers. The Lobby Bar at the Westin is Beaver Creek’s best après-anything place. westinriverfrontbeavercreek.com

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

Vail Valley’s Most Exclusive Golf and Ranch Estate Community e New Custom Homes starting at $1,050,000 e 4-Acre Homesites starting at $337,500 e Private Tom Weiskopf designed golf course e 100% refundable membership deposits e Most complete package of family amenities including spa, fitness center, private fishing, member cottages, swimming, basketball, hiking, tennis, hunting and mountain biking

Home of Adam’s Mountain Country Club Located 12 miles south of Eagle/Vail Airport AdamsRibRanch.com | 866.520.2622

FIND OUT WHAT MAKES US WILDLY LUXURIOUS

Keystone Resort’s impressive 36hole golf facility has helped this four-season property become one of the America’s most revered.

One of the layouts, the River Course, was important in affirming Keystone’s place among the country’s elite. “Our philosophy is to design golf courses that stir the spirit, exceed expectation and defy understanding,” said Michael Hurzan, who co-designed the course with Dana Fry. River Course at Keystone

Golf | Where to Tee it Up

36

Summit County FEATURED COURSES Breckenridge Golf Club Breckenridge 970-453-9104 townofbreckenridge.com Copper Creek Golf Course Copper Mountain 970-968-3333; coppercolorado.com/golf Keystone Ranch Golf Course Keystone 800-464-3494 keystoneresort.com The River Course at Keystone Keystone 800-464-3494; keystoneresort.com Raven Golf Club at Three Peaks Silverthorne 970-262-3636; ravenatthreepeaks.com

Reach the Summit

A

ll perching around 9,000 feet above sea level, Summit County’s golf courses (including Mount Massive in Lake County’s Leadville) can cause you to pull too much club. Factor at least one club difference from what you’d play on the Front Range. Also, a higher lofted driver can get you more yards off the tee, and so will a higher spinning golf ball. If you’re comfortable switching equipment, go with the different driver, but play your usual ball because the extra spin could wreak havoc on your short game.

Keystone Ranch

Classic Rocker

On the Tee t The 7,413-yard Raven at Three Peaks rates as one of

Colorado’s top mountain courses.

Designed by Tom Lehman and Hurdzan-Fry, the rolling layout has earned celebrity for its design and snowcapped panoramas. ravenatthreepeaks.com 62

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

t The 6,886-yard, HurdzanFry-designed River Course at Keystone orients along

t Copper Creek Golf Course and Leadville’s Mount Massive Golf Course vie

the path of the Snake River and through thick stands of lodgepole pines. The views and elevation changes are aweinspiring. keystoneresort.com

for the “highest in North America” title. Copper’s claim is a 9,863-feet-above-sea-level tee box; all nine of Mount Massive’s holes sit at 9,680 feet.

For golf packages go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

Since opening in 1980 as Summit County’s first course, the Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed Keystone Ranch Golf Club has withstood the test of time. Three different styles—parkland, mountain and marsh—give the course a rugged. pioneering feeling. keystoneresort.com

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Located in Silverthorne, 70 minutes up the hill from Denver, the Raven at Three Peaks’ spectacular setting is surpassed only by the quality of its golf and service.

The stirring Hurdzan/Fry collaboration with Tom Lehman offers wide fairways, lickety-split greens and abundant wildlife in the form of deer, ospreys and eagles.

The Raven has earned numerous accolades from local, state and national golf publications, including this one. Come see why. ravenatthreepeaks.com

The Keystone Effect t

Your wedding day requires invention, creativity and an unforgettable stage. That what defines Keystone Resort’s acclaimed wedding venues.

Encompassing the romantic, the unexpected and the magical, Keystone offers myriad opportunities to express your individual style. One of its more popular venues is the verdant Keystone Ranch golf course, where romance blends with the Colorado frontier and the rustic elegance of an historic homestead. keystoneresort.com

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www.ravenatthreepeaks.com

970.262.3636 Groups Rates Available for 12 or more Players 64

For golf packages go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

Raven Three Peaks

Forever More The highly photogenic Raven Golf Club at Three Peaks brings to weddings the same exceptional standards of guest service you’ve come to expect on the golf course, with gourmet cuisine, luxuriously appointed reception and ceremony areas, and an attentive banquet staff to handle most every need. Additionally, the club can arrange stay-andplay and tournament packages for family and guests. ravenatthreepeaks.com.

A mix of links and mountain style holes crafted

by Pete Dye and son Perry are the striking hallmarks of 6,094-yard Copper Creek Golf Course, the anchor summer amenity at Copper Mountain Resort.

Designed to accommodate the novice yet provide a stern test for the accomplished golfer, Copper Creek is enhanced with spellbinding views of Copper Mountain and 10 Mile Range, natural alpine terrain and signature railroad-tie bulkheading that present golfers with ball-repelling challenges. coppercolorado.com/golf

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

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Keystone Resort

Lifestyle | Living Well

10

4

Summit County WHERE TO STAY

Beaver Achiever

Solidly built on an “exceed their expectations” mantra, Beaver Run Resort & Conference Center provides guests with the highest levels of service. Its sprawling, serene campus, located three blocks from historic Main Street, counts among its amenities a full-service spa, indoor and outdoor pools, six hot tubs, tennis court and a fitness center where you can earn that hearty buffet breakfast at the resort’s restaurant, Spencer’s. Beaver Run’s recent accolades include a 2013 and 2014 TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence. beaverrun.com

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The Key to the County

Hit the Breck

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oating on Lake Dillon ranks among Summit County’s quintessential summer pursuits. So does biking around it, especially because the trail leads along the Snake River to Keystone Resort’s myriad attractions and activites. There’s golf, of course, and the fun restaurants and shops in River Run. But there’s also horseback riding, summer snow tubing, chairlifts up Keystone Mountain. Of note, fat-tire aficionados will love Keystone’s Bike Park and its mountain-bike terrain rated from greens to blues to blacks, as well as more than 100 miles of single track. keystoneresort.com

Breckenridge’s rich mining history and friendly local vibe is so contagious, you might make plans to move here. But before you do, take a step back in time by walking along Main Street, past authentic 100-year-old buildings, and start exploring the town, its hundreds of shops, restaurants and store fronts, and your future neighbors. Then you’ll really be hooked. breckenridge.com

Local Knowledge t Frisco’s laid-back hospi-

t Generally regarded as

tality complements its natural beauty. Explore Frisco Bay Marina at Lake Dillon and Main Street’s boutiques and restaurants.Hike and bike the Summit County’s path system. And, yes, there’s so much more. townoffrisco.com

Keystone’s best après-ski bar and grill, the hip but casual Kickapoo Tavern is famous for build-your-own burgers, singular appetizers, attentive servers and a prime location in River Run Village. kickapootavern.com

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

t With over 200 quaint shops lining Main Street, there’s no shortage of shopping in Breckenridge .

From handmade soaps to funky women’s fashions to sporting goods to authentic Navajo weavings, Breck has it all. breckenridge.com

For more information go to coloradoavidgolfer.com

Breckenridge

Mountain Must-Do

Keystone Resort brings the wonders of Appalachia to the Rockies with the 18th Annual Bluegrass & Beer Festival. Scheduled Aug. 2-3 in River Run Village, the event again will feature down-home cooking and mountain jams. More than 30 Colorado microbrews will help fuel live music on three stages. Among the confirmed 2014 performers are Peter Rowan, The Deadly Gentlemen, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, Larry Keel Experience, The Railsplitters, Missed the Boat, Drunken Hearts, Wood and Wire, Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys, Finnders and Youngberg and more. Don’t miss the Friday night kick-off party with Band of Heathens at Warren Station. visitvailvalley.com

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July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

67

Cocktail Hour

Consistently rated one of the best decks and beach bars in the west, the festive Pug Ryan’s Lakeside Tiki Bar at the Dillon Marina adds some island flavor to the Rocky Mountains. The 17-year-old institution pairs spectacular nautical views of Lake Dillon with fun food, fresh craft beers and frozen Rum Runners. To satisfy diners’ appetites for a greater and fresher variety of comestibles, a custom-built, 28-foot Tiki Kitchen trailer debuted last summer to great response. The sunny deck and covered tent area both provide ideal vantage points to watch sailboats, kayaks, ospreys and eagles work the water as the sun slowly drops in the sky. pugryans.com Pug Ryan’s Lakeside Tiki Bar

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

coloradoa vidgo lf e r .c o m

Carding a

As the Colorado Open celebrates a half-century, we take a numerical look back.

By Denny Dressman

coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

50

S

Years

Skill and steady nerves distinguish the best golfers—such as those who compete in the Colorado Open. But for all who step onto a tee box regardless of ability level, the sport is, above all, a game of numbers.

Among them: par on each hole, par for the course, total yards from each tee box, driving distance, greens in regulation, putts per round, your handicap, the course rating, and—the ultimate number—your score.

And so, as the Golden Anniversary Colorado Open draws near, numbers that span the first half-century of tournament competition are a fitting way to tell the history of this storied championship, which will be played for the 50th time July 24-27—and for the 11th straight year at the 7,250-yard, par 71, championship course at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club.

The numerical journey across

28

Number of years the Colorado Open was played, from its inception, at Hiwan Country Club in Evergreen.

Bob Kirchner, 92 as the 50th renewal unfolds, was president-elect of the Craig Hospital Board of Directors when he conceived the idea of a state open golf championship in 1963.

“The tradition was that the presidentelect would be in charge of the major fundraiser for Craig each year,” he recalls. “It was always a dinKirchner ner with a guest speaker at a downtown hotel.”

Kirchner followed the stolid custom, but afterward thought, “There has to be a better way.” c o l o r a d o a v i d gol f er. c om

6 decades begins with…

Hiwan Golf Club opened that year on the site of the former Johnson Ranch.

And the adjacent Hiwan Ranch, which stretched from Evergreen to Bergen Park, was in the beginning stages of development as a mountain home community.

Long before the word synergy was popularized, Kirchner recognized the mutually beneficial potential of promoting golf in Colorado, exposing golfers to the fledgling course at Hiwan to market nearby homesites, and creating a new source of support for the hospital, which at the time was still located at its original site in Lakewood.

Kirchner had a connection—his wife, Barbara Buchanan Kirchner, was part of the family that owned Hiwan Ranch. He posed a question: “Why don’t we donate the use of the golf course, and proceeds, to benefit Craig Hospital?” The response from all circles was enthusiastic.

“Craig was nationally known, more than locally known,” Kirchner says. “Craig needed some local exposure. Hiwan did, too. And golf in the state needed something.”

Jim English Sr., who was Low Amateur at the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, recalls playing in something referred to as “the Colorado Open” or “the state open” in the late 1950s. “But it was a minor thing,” English says, “compared to what the Colorado Open became; really minor.”

Kirchner approached Bill Bisdorf, who was the pro at Green Gables Country Club and a leader in the Colorado Section of the PGA, and told him he was thinking of starting something he wanted to call The Colorado Open. Kirchner wanted to know if Bisdorf and other area golf pros would play in the tournament.

Bisdorf ’s answer: “If you’ll guarantee you’ll have it for at least three years.”

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

71

50

Years

9

fifth in ’72. He last played in the Colorado Open in 1992, the first year the tournament was held at Inverness Golf Club.

“I played pretty good the first round,” he says, “but in the second round my hips locked up. It was the only time I ever missed the cut in the Colorado Open.”

Now in his mid-eighties, the first Colorado Open champion is afflicted with neuropathy and barely able to walk.

Number of times a score over par won the Colorado Open, including the first seven and the 21st and 23rd tournaments in 1984 and 1986—all played at Hiwan.

Bill Bisdorf

Bill Bisdorf won that first Colorado Open in 1964 with rounds of 71-72-79-72—a 14-over-par total of 294—on a Hiwan course that, in its early days, was as raw as every other new golf course.

“Rocks were barely imbedded, recalls English, who finished second by six shots and was the Open’s first Low Amateur. “You literally could make sparks fly with your golf clubs.”

Recalling pro Buzz Bolas, who showed up with a new set of clubs, English says: “They weren’t new very long.”

Bisdorf credits English for his place in history as the Colorado Open’s first champion. They had gotten to know each other in the mid-1950s, Bisdorf says, when they played in the Kansas City Open. As the two players at the top of the Hiwan leaderboard after three days, they were the final pairing in the final round of the first Colorado Open. (There was no 36-hole cut in the first Colorado Open.)

“We got to the 15th tee the last day,” Bisdorf relates, “and I said, ‘I ought to leave.’

“Jim said, ‘What do you mean?’

“I told him, ‘My ankles are all swelled up. My knees are all swelled up.’

“The fairways were clumpy,” Bisdorf explains, “and the rough was clumpy. The grass hadn’t

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

filled in yet. Every time you put your foot down, you twisted.

The ball did the same thing.

“Jim said, ‘crawl the last four holes! You’re going to win this tournament!’”

Somehow, Bisdorf persevered.

The first Colorado Open was, in Kirchner’s words, “a very meager start.” Officially, Bisdorf received no prize money; there was no announced purse.

“But a few of us put up a few bucks,” Kirchner reveals, “so the pros had something to play for.

Pros don’t play for golf shop credit.”

Bisdorf would win twice more, in 1965 and 1967, and both times the winning total was over par— testament to just how tough Hiwan played. He also finished second in ’66 and ’75; and tied for

Hale Irwin

12

strokes over par was three-time U.S. Open champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member Hale Irwin’s score when he won Low Amateur honors in the 4th Colorado Open at Hiwan in 1968.

S i xte e n year s later, 1984 Low Amateur Steve Elkington finished 10 over. He turned pro the following year and in 1995 won the PGA Championship and the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average on the PGA Tour.

From the beginning, Hiwan’s greens were treacherously fast, notes Gary Potter, a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and unofficial Colorado Open historian, offering an example from Year One. “Frank Dalpes Sr., the pro at Willis Case Golf Course back then, seven-putted the first green in 1964,” Potter cites.

Bill Loeffler, who played in the Open for the first time when he was only 16 years old, recalls

vividly how his first appearance began.

“I got in that year because I won the State Junior Amateur title,” he relates. “I remember starting on the 10th hole. I was playing with J.D. Taylor, the pro at Valley Country Club, and Paul McMullen, the pro at Aurora Hills.

“They both hit their second shots within five feet of the pin, and I thought to myself, ‘Uh-oh.

They’re both really good.’

“One four-putted, and the other three-putted. From five feet!

When we got on the 11th tee, Taylor said to me, ‘Welcome to Hiwan, kid.’”

Not much had changed by the time the young Australian, Elkington, then a member of the University of Houston golf team, won Low Amateur a decade later.

“The golf course in those days had a fierce reputation for the fastest greens in the world—

Hiwan Golf Club

even quicker than Augusta,” Elk says. “I remember the first hole in practice, I putted right off the green and back into the fairway.”

Tour pro Willie Wood, currently a Champions Tour player with two tournament titles in his first three years on the senior tour, won the Colorado Open the year Elkington and his 10over won Low Amateur honors.

Wood’s score: three over par. coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

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50

Years

18

Number of PGA Tour winners who either won the Colorado Open or were Low Amateur.

1

Number of players who have won the Colorado Open as both an amateur and a professional. (Guetz, also as a professional, the 44th at Green Valley Ranch in 2008)

Phil Mickelson

“My recollection is that I played the Colorado Open only once,” Steve Elkington says. “The whole idea at the time was going somewhere to play in a pro tournament. It was a wonderful tournament, a place that embraced young players starting their careers.

The list of “young players starting their careers” at the Colorado Open is indeed impressive. Hale Irwin, Peter Jacobsen, Steve Jones, Bob Tway, Corey Pavin and Phil Mickelson all won Low Amateur honors during the Hiwan years, along with Elkington.

Colorado Open champions who also won on tour include Dave Hill, Larry Mowry, Dan Halldorson, Al Geiberger, Mark Wiebe, Jonathan Kaye,

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

Kevin Stadler, Fred Wampler, Bill Johnston, Steve Jones and Willie Wood.

And the list of tour notables who played at least once during the first 49 Colorado Opens is long and distinguished, among them Sam Snead, Billy Casper, Dow Finsterwald, Fred Couples, Mark O’Meara, George Archer, Bruce Devlin, Tommy Aaron, Bob Goalby, Don January and Dave Stockton.

To date, only two amateurs have won the Colorado Open: United pilot and Colorado Golf Hall of Fame member Gary Longfellow of Lakewood took the 11th Open at Hiwan in 1974; and 20-year-old Brian Guetz of Littleton won the 31st at Inverness in 1994.

Brian Guetz

“The two wins were totally different experiences,” says Guetz, now assistant golf coach at his alma mater, Oklahoma State University. “Being so young and sort of dumb the first time, I didn’t realize how big it was when I won as an amateur in 1994. I didn’t realize the history and rich tradition.”

When he shot nine under par to beat Bill Loeffler by three strokes at Inverness, Guetz was 20 years old and couldn’t make OSU’s golf team. “We had three future Walker Cup players and a couple of guys who’d play on the pro tour,” he remembers.

“I qualified for the Open at Lone Tree in 1993, and finished in the top 25. That automatically qualified me the next year. It was pretty cool because my dad (Mike) caddied for me. Right

after I won it, I got a call from Gary Longfellow. He said it was great to have another amateur champ. It was really nice of him to reach out to me.”

Fourteen years later the youngest champion in tournament history set the Colorado Open record for longest time between championships when he won in a playoff. By then he was married, a father, and working as a pro in Scottsdale, Arizona.

“In the first one, my dad was with me,” Guetz reflects. “The second time I was a dad, and my little girl was right there with me. To this day the Colorado Open is the tournament that’s most near-and-dear to my heart.

I played in it every year until I quit playing competitively. Two of my players (from OSU) are going to play in it this year.” coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

50

Years

Inverness

5 Number of sites for the Colorado Open in its 50-year history. Following Hiwan: Inverness (1992-97), Saddle Rock (1998-2000), Sonnenalp (2001-02), and Green Valley Ranch (2004-present).

Bob Kirchner ran the Colorado Open for its first 11 years, resigning after the 1974 tournament to begin a threeyear commitment as chairman of the 1978 U.S. Open, the third national championship to be played at Cherry Hills Country Club. (Andy North would edge Dave Stockton and J.C. Snead by one stroke with a one-over-par 285.)

Kirchner’s successor was Tony Tyrone, a successful mutual fund manager who became Hiwan’s manager after retiring. During Tyrone’s tenure at the Open’s helm, the purse increased from $25,000 in Kirchner’s last year to $100,000 in the tournament’s last nine years at Hiwan.

Through the efforts of advertising executive Ed Sweeney, who won the Senior Flight seven times in nine years from 1983 through 1991, the Open was

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

Saddle Rock

Sonnenalp

televised for four years in the mid-‘70s with Coors as its lead sponsor and the late Bob Martin, known as the voice of the Broncos, as the lead commentator.

According to historian Potter, himself a Colorado Open regular for more than a decade and father of the 1985 Low Amateur, Matt Potter, Tyrone grew the Open’s purse with an innovative combination of money-raising activities and the marketing acumen of Ronn Spargur, who promoted the tournament from the mid ’70s through the late ’80s.

Besides lining up small sponsors, Tyrone heavily promoted amateur flights for players with different handicaps and the ProAm, increasing the entry fees generated by both. He also encouraged what became known as The Italian Open, an outing conceived by attorney Al Carmosino for North Denver’s Italian community that was held annually, usually at Lakewood Country Club.

Tyrone also implemented the Colorado Open Marathon, the novel idea of Carter Mathies (co-Low Amateur in 1977) and his brother Mike, in which teams competed to play the most holes possible in one day and lined up pledges for their efforts. “All four

of us would tee off at the same time on par threes,” Potter recalls of one fast-play tactic. The Italian Open and the Marathon were good for about $50,000 a year in support for the Open, Potter says.

But as the ’90s dawned, so did sweeping change. The International at Castle Pines became an annual stop on the PGA Tour in 1986, stealing the spotlight.

And The PGA Tour established the Hogan Tour, forerunner of today’s Web.com Tour, as the developmental “satellite” circuit for the young players who had been the prime participants in the Colorado Opens of the ’70s and early ’80s.

By 1991, “Craig Hospital didn’t want to be the beneficiary anymore,” Kirchner recalls.

FirstData Corporation became the Open’s first title sponsor, and the championship moved to Inverness in 1992. When Inverness Hotel and Conference Center was sold, the Open didn’t fit into the new owners’ plans, so it had to find a new home. The City

Hotel and the Singletree residential development and its adjacent golf club in the Vail Valley.

He agreed to host the championship. It sustained the continuous operation of the tournament when that seemed uncertain, but only delayed the ultimate crisis.

’03

The turning point year for the Colorado Open—the year the tournament was cancelled at the last minute for lack of a sponsor, and the year Pat Hamill, president and CEO of Oakwood Homes, rescued the championship and secured its future.

Pat Hamill

of Aurora had recently opened Saddle Rock Golf Course, and hosting the Open seemed a good way to promote the new course.

Saddle Rock hosted the Open from 1998 to 2000, after which event again became an orphan.

It returned to the mountains when German investor Johannes Faessler acquired the Sonnenalp

Born in Grand Ledge, Michigan, a Lansing suburb more than 1,200 miles from Denver, Pat Hamill was five years old when Bob Kirchner started the Colorado Open.

He graduated from the University of Denver in 1981, when Dave Hill won his second of a record four Colorado Opens at the 18th edition of the tournament. coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

50

Years

20

years after starting as a two-day event at Fox Hollow Golf Course in Lakewood, the Colorado Women’s Open has gone big time.

T

he Bing Crosby Pro-Am be-

gan as the iconic entertainer’s personal get-together–The Clambake–in 1937. It was only 18 holes, and Sam Snead won the $500 first prize.

That idea – a golf tournament pairing a pro and an amateur in teams of two – lives on 77 years later, not only in the annual Pebble Beach AT&T Pro-Am, but also in the Colorado Women’s Open, which will be contested August 27-29 at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club.

There’s a connection, too.

Pat Hamill, the visionary CEO of Oakwood Homes who rescued the Colorado Open and its cousins, the Women’s and Senior Opens, in 2004, has played in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am three times.

(He made the Sunday cut with tour pro Matt Every as his partner in 2013, meaning they were among the top 25 of 125 teams.)

Looking to spice up the Colorado Women’s Open six years ago, he suggested adding a component modeled after Bing’s original event. Colorado Open Golf Foundation CEO Kevin Laura bought the idea on the spot, and now it’s the only tournament of its kind for women anywhere in the U.S. Total purse is $75,000 with $15,000 of that at stake in the Pro-Am. “We have 36 teams,” Laura says, “and we have a waiting list of pros who want to be paired with an amateur partner.”

Three-quarters of those amateur partners are men, usually representing tournament sponsors although individual amateurs with handicaps of 6 to 18 are allowed if they’re willing to pay the hefty entry fee.

(Hamill and his pro partner, Katie Kempter of Albuquerque, finished second last year to the team of Ashli Bunch and Dick Myers.) The teams play best-ball, while the 36 pros Paige Mackenzie finish every hole to

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

Emily Talley

have their scores count in the overall championship competition along with the 84 pros who aren’t in the Pro-Am. “I had a lot of fun with that,” says 2013 overall champion Becca Huffer, a Heritage High grad who will return for her seventh Colorado Women’s Open.

“It’s a nice change of pace. It’s fun when you have someone cheering for you to make a putt, cheering you on.”

Another change, made last year, has further enhanced the stature of the Colorado Women’s Open by positioning it to attract a large number of players who aspire to the LPGA tour. Laura moved the women’s tournament to August (which necessitated moving the Colorado Senior Open to May).

“We strengthened the women’s field by having the tournament when there’s no Symetra Tour tournament,” he explains. (The Symetra Tour is the ladies’ equivalent of the men’s Web.com Tour, the development circuit for players who aspire to be regulars on the LPGA Tour.)

“In the past, we would have three or four players break par,” Laura says. “Last year, we had 14 finish under par. It really attracted more strong players. By holding the tournament when there’s no other tournament, we get a lot of the players who want to stay sharp and play another tournament against top competition.”

In a way, the Women’s Open is Becca Huffer walking in the footsteps of the Colorado Open of the ’70s and early ’80s by attracting future tour players. Paige Mackenzie, who won as an amateur in 2006, now plays on the LPGA Tour, and is a studio analyst on the Golf Channel. Winners have come from Australia, Denmark and Thailand as well as nine states. Defending champion Huffer is now a full-time a Symetra Tour player, too.

The only Coloradan in the top 11 last year, Huffer is expected to be joined by 30 to 40 Symetra players, Laura estimates. Among those likely to compete with Huffer are Cheyenne Woods, Tiger’s niece, and Madison Pressel, sister of 2007 Kraft Nabisco champion Morgan Pressel, the youngest winner of an LPGA major in history at 18 years, 313 days. —D.D.

And he founded Oakwood Homes LLC in 1991, the year Bill Loeffler won the last Colorado Open played at Hiwan.

So where was he when the 40th Colorado Open was about to be played at Sonnenalp in 2003? “I have a place in Vail,” he replies, “and DU’s then-golf coach, Eric Hoos, was staying with me when they announced they weren’t going to have the tournament.”

That might have been the end of the Colorado Open, but the avid golfer in Hamill wouldn’t let that happen.

Within months he acquired the championship’s dubious assets (name, logos, trademarks, records and past rights to use players’ names) and accepted responsibility for its daunting liabilities.

He refunded 2003 entry fees to all players; paid off outstanding prize money owed from previous play; and made whole every creditor. In all, it cost around $200,000, but it restored the reputation of the Colorado Open and earned the trust and confidence of players, vendors and prospective sponsors going forward.

“It needed to be done to restore the integrity and brand of the Colorado Open,” Hamill says matter-of-factly.

“When you look back at all the great people involved in the Colorado Open, and all the great tradition, it was worth saving.”

Hamill has never played in the Colorado Open, but says of golf: “I love the sport and the tradition of the sport.” He plays to an eight handicap, and says, “I try to have a club in my hand every day,” though he usually plays an actual round only twice a week.

His Oakwood Homes is the largest master-planned community developer in Colorado, and Green Valley Ranch is one of Oakwood’s creations. Hamill owns Green Valley Ranch Golf Club, site of the Colorado Open since 2004, so it’s logical to assume that the Green Valley Ranch connection is at least in part similar to Kirchner’s original Hiwan synergy: a smooth way to promote a land development.

Not so, Hamill emphasizes. Oakwood is big enough that it doesn’t need to exploit the Colorado Open.

“When we got the tournament,” he emphasizes, “I had not pre-determined where it would be. I formed an independent committee to select a site for the tournament, and they recommended Green Valley Ranch. I wouldn’t have chosen that. I didn’t want it to seem self-serving.”

To ensure the independence of the Colorado Open, Hamill established the Colorado Open Golf Foundation, and made The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch the beneficiary of the Colorado Open, administered through the foundation. When The International was squeezed off the PGA Tour tournament schedule, Hamill hired Kevin Laura from the staff of The International to be the Foundation’s CEO and, eventually, tournament director.

Today, the Colorado Open Golf Foundation also operates the Colorado Senior Open (the 15th version of which took place in May) and the Colorado Women’s Open coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

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50

Years

15

Colorado Senior Opens have “officially” taken place, and for the players and fans the excitement never gets old.

G

ail Godbey could be called

the Colorado Open’s Great Uncle.

He’s the father of both the Colorado Senior Open and the Colorado Women’s Open—cousins, so to speak, of the tournament that will be played for the 50th time in late July.

A product of Denver grade schools, South High and the University of Colorado, Godbey has been involved in golf tournaments dating to the Frontier Airlines Invitational in the 1970s and the Denver Post Champions of Golf Senior Tour event in the 1980s. He was executive director of the Colorado Open in the early 1990s when he saw the need to serve women and senior players.

The women came first.

“There were no women’s flights in the Colorado Open,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘There’s a big void here.’ So I established a women’s flight in 1992.

“That first year it took days and a lot of phone calls to round up 20 women to play. The next year we had over a hundred. Word spread. We had three flights, by handicap. In 1994 it was obvious.

We needed a Women’s Open.”

By contrast, the Colorado Open had included a senior flight from its founding year in 1964. Gene Root won it three of the first four years; Jim English Sr. five times between 1977 and 1982; and Ed Sweeney seven times between 1983 and 1991.

John Olive

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

But the senior flight was discontinued in 1992, and by 1998 it was apparent to Godbey that it was time to rethink that exclusion.

“We had a lot of good players over 50 who just couldn’t win against the young bucks,” he says. “I had three major sponsors— First Data, MCI and Information Gail Godbey Handling Services. I went to them and proposed a Senior Open. They all thought it was a good idea.

They all saw benefit for their businesses.”

The response from golfers told Godbey he had read the situation correctly. “We filled it in five days,” he says. “It was immediate.”

Amateur John Olive, now a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, won the inaugural two-day event at Plum Creek Golf Club with a 2-under 142.

The Heritage at Westmoor Ron Schroeder in Westminster hosted the next three editions (2000, 2001 and 2003) and in 2001 added a third day.

The 15th Colorado Senior Open was played in May, and 57-year-old Ron Schroeder of Montgomery, Texas collected the $8,500 first-place check with a two-under-par 214 total for three rounds. He was the only player to finish under par.

Defending champion Doug Rohrbaugh (Carbondale) tied for second with fellow Coloradan Mike Northern (Colorado Springs). They finished even par (which was enough to win it for Rohrbaugh a year earlier).

Over the years, two past Colorado Open champions later won the Colorado Senior Open—1995 winner Mike Zaremba (in 2005), and three-time Open titlist Bill Loeffler (in 2009). Colorado Springs native R. W. Eaks, who has won four times on the PGA Champions Tour, won the 2011 HealthONE Colorado Senior Open in tournament record 15 under par.

Fittingly, in 2010 “Great Uncle” Godbey received The Robert M. Kirchner Award for “having contributed greatly to amateur golf, professional golf and tournament golf” in Colorado. –D.D.

(the 20th anniversary is this August). HealthONE has been the title sponsor of all three Opens since 2004, and negotiations are underway to extend that sponsorship beyond 2015. The combined purses for the three total $250,000.

3

Number of Colorado Open championships won at different sites by one player.

(Bill Loeffler, the 28th at Hiwan in 1991; 30th at Inverness in 1993; and the 40th at Green Valley Ranch in 2004) “The Colorado Open was always the tournament you built your summer around,” says Loeffler, who played in the championship an astounding 35 times (the last in 2012). “There was always a great field. I loved it. It was the major of the year.”

Each of Loeffler’s three championships is memorable for a different reason.

“When I won in 1991, it was the last year at Hiwan,” he begins. “It was the last tournament my dad

Bill Loeffler

watched me play in. He couldn’t walk the course anymore but they gave him a cart so he saw a few holes.” (Bill Loeffler Sr. had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and died the following November.)

“I played poorly (as defending champion) at Inverness the next year,” he continues, “and I was very upset. The next year (1993) I was at the height of my ability. I had worked at Inverness as an assistant pro under Tom Babb. I knew the course very well. I was colorado avidgo lf e r .c o m

50 very much in control the whole way. It was a comfortable win.”

Eleven years later Loeffler found himself at yet another new venue for the Open— Green Valley Ranch—and again he had some history with it.

“I had walked the property with Pat Hamill a few years earlier, when they were planning the golf course,” says Loeffler, who at the time owned and operated two courses in Highlands Ranch (Highlands Ranch Golf Course and The Links). “We were trying to build our golf course business at the time, and were thinking about being partners.” It didn’t happen, but Loeffler had gotten a look at the undeveloped terrain.

“By 2004,” he continues, “my game was going back and forth. I was busy with our business in Highlands Ranch. I was getting older. I thought I was near the end.”

It all came together, though, in a very close finish. “My number was 10,” Loeffler says. “I thought if I got to 10-under, I’d have a chance.”

It took 11-under—just to make a playoff.

Five others tied, two shots back.

“It was a very emotional win,” Loeffler says. “I was totally shocked.”

Loeffler’s win earned him an exemption into that year’s International at Castle Pines Golf Club—a brilliant incentive to restore faith in the Open after the previous year’s cancellation. Subsequent Open champions Wil Collins (2005) and Dustin White (2006) also punched their tickets to Castle Pines, with Collins making the cut.

6

Number of sudden death playoffs to decide the Colorado Open champion—all decided on the first extra hole.

Two of Loeffler’s three titles were won in sudden death (in 1991 at Hiwan with a birdie, and 2004 at Green Valley Ranch with a par).

“You hear guys say on TV that you have

Years

to be aggressive in a playoff and go for the birdie,” Loeffler says. “I always thought if I didn’t make a mistake, the other guy would have to do something special to beat me.

Kevin Stadler That might not work now, but it worked for me.”

With his father Craig on the bag at Sonnenalp in 2002, Kevin Stadler did something special in his professional debut. In a playoff with PGA Tour veteran Gary Hallberg and Nationwide player Brian Kortan, the 22-year-old Stadler set up his win with a towering 250-yard 4-metal approach to the par-five 18th on the first hole of sudden death to set up an easy two-putt birdie.

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July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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50

Years

The most recent of the six playoffs—which earned Guetz his two Colorado Open distinctions—was the largest in the Championship’s history. An impressive four-man field also included Boyd Summerhays, son of former tour pro Bruce Summerhays and brother of current tour player Daniel Summerhays; University of Illinois golf coach Mike Small, one of the top players in his state; and defending Colorado Open champion John Douma, another Scottsdale pro.

“I lucked into the playoff,” Guetz says. “I bogeyed the last hole and thought I was out of it. I was hanging out with my daughter, Riley, who was two-and-a-half, figuring I was done. But Boyd bogeyed the last hole, too, to drop back into a tie with the three of us.

“We all had birdie putts on the first playoff hole, but two of them were pretty long. Boyd and Mike Small made pars. Douma had a putt about a foot behind me, so I got a good read. It was on the exact same line, so I had a crystal-ball look. He missed on the high side—rimmed it. So I knew exactly where to hit it, and it went in, dead center.”

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15,100

Number of youth golfers who have participated in The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch programs since the Colorado Open championships began benefitting the program in 2005.

The Mission Statement of The First Tee reads: “To impact the lives of young people by providing educational programs that build character, instill life-enhancing values, and promote healthy choices through the game of golf.”

The children served by The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch since 2005 range in age from five to 18 years. They are 84% minority, and almost 77% qualify for free or reduced lunch assistance in their schools.

More than 3,700 have enrolled in programs at The First Tee Learning Center, located

CHECKING IN: 2013 HealthONE Colorado Open winner Zahkai Brown with members of The First Tee of Green Valley Ranch.

on the back side of Green Valley Ranch Golf Club, beginning with 24 participants in 2005 and reaching 649 last year. Another 8,000plus are involved in a variety of outreach programs. And school programs, which began only three years ago, already have engaged more than 3,300 others.

“They are doing a tremendous job,” Kirchner says appreciatively. “It’s very meaningful to me.”

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50

Years

Colorado Open Scorecard More notable numbers from the first 50 years

1

Number of nations represented by Colorado Open champions other than the United States: Canada, Dan Halldorson of Brandon, Manitoba, 1-under in the 19th Open in 1982. (Australia is represented by Steve Elkington among Low Amateur winners.)

8

Number of states besides Colorado whose golfers have been Colorado Open champions: Arizona 9, Utah 4, Florida and New Mexico 2 each, and Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma and South Dakota 1 each.

Wil Collins of South Dakota

22

26

Number of Colorado golfers who have won the Colorado Open.

Most strokes UNDER PAR by a Colorado Open champion (Derek Tolan at Green Valley Ranch in the 45th Open in 2009).

4

Most Colorado Open victories by one player: Dave Hill (the 8th, 13th, 14th and 18th, in 1971, 1976, 1977 and 1981).

Zahkai Brown

666

Number of golfers who have earned prize money in the first 49 Colorado Opens – from Jim Blair and Bill Loeffler (each more than $112,000) to Jim Love ($25).

14

Number of holesin-one recorded in the first 49 years of the Colorado Open. The most recent: Zane Zwemke on the 182yard 5th in 2012.

Derek Tolan

$4,253,000

Total combined purse for the first 49 Colorado Opens. Golden Anniversary purse: $125,000; champion’s share: $23,000.

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Colorado Open Championships!

From Hiwan to HealthONE, for the past

50 years

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coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

Mad golf skills have helped make the 2-handicap a better punter—and the best stick on the Broncos.

By Sam Adams | PORTRAIT by Ryan McKee/Clarkson Creative

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G

Golfers are

SOLID FOOTING: Colquitt at Colorado Golf Club

co l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

labeled “athletes” with some reluctance. So are punters in football. Don’t tell that to Denver Broncos punter Britton Colquitt, who is a pure athlete at heart—and a real good golfer.

How good? He’s reached celebrity status. Colquitt received an invitation to play at the American Century Championship this month at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in Nevada. The tournament showcases a galaxy of sports greats past and present.

Some in the field, like Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice, are pretty good golfers. Others, like Hall of Fame basketball player Charles Barkley, are not very good—but they show up for the fun of the event.

Colquitt’s bosses, head coach John Fox and general manager John Elway, are in the field. Elway has participated every year at the celebrity tournament, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

“What’s crazy is, it’s been on my bucket list ever since I knew about it, one day to play in it,” said Colquitt, his ever-present smile lighting up a dark corner of the locker room at his home club, Colorado Golf Club. “It’s come true a lot sooner than I thought.”

Colquitt believes he will give a good account of himself in Tahoe. He is a 2.2 handicap, “though my game doesn’t always show it.” His best score is a 73, but Colquitt continues to work hard on different facets of his game with hopes of reaching his No. 1 goal—to shoot par for the first time ever.

“It changes for me,” Colquitt said. “I really wanted to narrow down my irons and ball-striking. Lately I’ve felt myself hitting it pretty good off the tee, then I end up being about 100 yards or less . . . that’s one of those places where you’re so close you don’t even know what to do. The trouble with that shot is, it’s all feel.

When it’s feel, you just have to do it a lot.

“Of course, with golf every round there might be something different. Now it’s putting. I was putting great, but lately I haven’t been happy with it.

“Really, it’s a little bit of everything. My putting might be on and my driving might be in the woods. I’m hoping to be firing on all cylinders in Tahoe.”

Colquitt, 29, will have his older brother Dustin on the bag for the Tahoe tournament. Dustin Colquitt is the Kansas City Chiefs’ punter. Last season he beat out his younger brother for Pro Bowl honors in the AFC, although Britton had a statistically superior season.

Their father, Craig, was punter for the Pittsburgh Steelers on two Super Bowl championship teams, and his brother Jimmy punted for the Seattle Seahawks. Punting is a family business —all four Colquitts plied their craft for the University of Tennessee— even though Britton also showed his athletic prowess as an allstate soccer player, while playing other positions on the football team at Bearden High School in Knoxville.

At 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds, Colquitt played safety and wide receiver—and was really good at both positions, according to July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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BIG BOOT: Colquitt is Denver’s all-time leader in gross and net punting average.

his father. The threat of injury to their youngest son kept Colquitt’s father and mother, Anne, on edge.

“Defensively, his instincts were great,” Craig Colquitt said. “It was fun to watch. What ended it for me was, as a wide receiver Britton would go up for the ball.

I was always afraid that eventually something would happen.

“In a playoff game, a guy tackled him from behind, between the knees and Britton buckled over. I went straight to the coach and said, ‘Next year he’s punting—and punting only.’”

Unfazed by the family’s fear of injury, Britton went back to wide receiver in his senior season.

“I knew it would be my last chance to do something athletic, and then it would be punting from there on out,” Colquitt said.

“By the time I got to college, the level of competition had jumped so high … I knew I couldn’t run routes with those guys, whereas in high school I could.

“So it was easy to be ‘just the punter.’ But it’s nice when you have all these great athletes saying they wish they were you, that they wish had your position. It reinforces that I can let go of the ‘athletic’ term and just be a punter.

“When it comes to punting and kicking, it is a skill. It’s fun to see some of these big guys trying to kick a ball. They hit with their toes, trying to punt. The timing and mechanics of it, if you’ve never learned it, really, it’s so much like golf.”

Craig Colquitt taught his sons how to punt and how to play

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golf. Britton took to golf a lot quicker—and with more passion—than Dustin.

“Dustin is not as serious about golf as his younger brother is,” Craig Colquitt says. “He talks during your backswing, your ball may disappear . . . he’ll be an interesting caddie in Tahoe.”

On the other hand, Craig says, “Britton’s one of those people that can physically do anything.

I’m not surprised by the golf.”

Golf, Britton says, has helped his punting—and vice-versa. He draws similarities between the two sports from his golf bag.

“Dustin and I talk about different punts and refer to them in golf terms, using different clubs in the bag,” Colquitt says. He describes his NFL-best 67-yard punt at Atlanta in 2012 as a “3wood or driver.”

Colquitt puts the comparison into a historical perspective as well. “A lot of people talk about the ‘rugby’ punt, and ask what happened to the ‘coffin corner’ punt,” he explains. “Well, back in the day golfers didn’t have the 60-degree club. Now all these pros are hitting high and sticking it.

“That’s kind of what the rugby punt is, because you’re closer—almost at an uncomfortable position. If you’re punting from your own 38, it’s uncomfortable. A professional punter definitely can hit it into the end zone. Well, if you don’t want to worry about that, pull out your 60-degree—which essentially hitting that rugby punt—and try to hit it high and stick it inside the 10-yard line.

“I guess the next biggest thing I learned, and it came from golf, is not to try to kill it. Most guys look smooth and create clubhead speed with their flexibility.

It’s the same with punting.

“Some of the best, highest and furthest punts I’ve hit, I felt like I didn’t swing. You hardly feel it off your foot. Dad taught us that in golf, but it holds true in football.

“A lot of times in practice, my mind might be on golf, so I can relate it to don’t try to kill it and throw my back out, and make a nice, easy swing.”

If he could, Colquitt probably would play golf every day. But his seasonal obligations to the Broncos, who last year signed him to three-year, $11.7 million extension, along with the daily duties of marriage and fatherhood, prevent that from happening.

Colquitt and his wife Nikki have been married for three years. The couple has a twoyear-old son, Nash, and threemonth old daughter, Everly. On occasion, Dad will take Nash to the golf course. The toddler al-

PUNT BROTHERS: Britton and Dustin ply the family business.

Nikki Colquitt understands her husband’s great passion for golf. She doesn’t get in his way when he receives a text invite from Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning to hop a private jet for 54 holes at the exclusive Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska.

“But I mark those things on my calendar,” she says laughing. “If he gets a little too excited about playing golf all the time., I’ll say, ‘You know, you just went on that trip …’

“He gets to play whenever.

But he is such a good dad and knows how hard it is to take care of two little ones. He doesn’t try to play too much and stretch me too much. But he loves golf. It’s his absolute favorite thing.”

EXIT SANDMAN: In golf and on the gridiron, Colquitt excels in escaping trouble.

ready has started an apprenticeship in the family punting business. “The other day we were in the basement. He put on his Broncos helmet and said, “Nash kick it,” Colquitt said.

“He found a football and tried to swing his leg. He doesn’t get the concept of dropping the ball on his foot, but he gets it pretty high.”

Marriage and fatherhood may take Colquitt away from golf a bit more than he’d like, but his wife has noticed a welcome change in his personality.

“In college, he was that same jovial, smiling guy—but he was wild,” Nikki Colquitt said. “He went out, he partied and had a great time.

“Now he is the best husband, coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

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FAMILY GUY: The Colquitts are now a foursome.

the best dad and he is so level-headed. He has matured so much.”

On the football field Colquitt has delivered some outstanding kicks for the Broncos. But there’s a mildly amazing statistic attached to Colquitt and the Broncos’ record-setting offense in 2013.

Last season, Denver’s offense produced more touchdowns (71) than Colquitt produced punts (65) in 16 regular season games.

In one three-game stretch, Colquitt punted only three times—including a punt-less game in Dallas won by the Broncos 51-48.

“Sometimes it’s kind of uncomfortable,” Colquitt said. “It’s hard to get into a groove.

Back in the day when we were punting nine times a game, it was almost better because of the repetition.

“Now you have to be mentally strong, mentally ready for every situation. Even the Dallas game, there were seven times that I was about to run on the field and punt. But then we’d convert it on third down.

“It’s hard to say I want to punt, but it’s my job.”

Manning’s proficiency may have limited Colquitt’s playing time—and there were plenty of fourth-and-short situations where the quarterback has tried to wave off Colquitt as he leads the punting unit onto the field to a chorus of booing fans—but there is no rift between University of Tennessee alums. However, there might be some question as to who has the better golf game.

Colquitt recently partnered with Manning against Broncos tight end Jacob Tamme and retired wide receiver Brandon Stokley at Castle Pines Golf Club. In his first crack at the former home of The International, the punter carded a 78, the low round of the four.

“I don’t think Peyton blacklisted me from invite list,” he jokes, but if Colquitt continues to boom punts on the football field while lowering his scores on the links, the number of celebrity golfing invites he receives is sure to rise. CAG

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Contributor Sam Adams (likethebeer.com) is an award-winning journalist and comedian. co l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

89

ike the best of us,

the members of Valley Country Club know what to do when life gives them lemons. But when metaphorical bushels of the fruit arrived in the form of last September’s epic floods, they decided not to make lemonade; instead, they ordered the lobster.

Long before the deluge, the club already was looking to add to both its membership roll and the enjoyment of those who already belonged.

To that end, Valley’s board had approved a long-range master plan that involved making significant course enhancements. These included rerouting and lengthening several holes, upgrading the irrigation and adding a visual containment berm where the course abuts Arapahoe Avenue. However, the first phase of the plan “and our number-one priority,” according to Club President Tim Lucas, “was redoing the bunkers.” But, he says, “the rains accelerated the entire project.”

Did they ever. With the storm washing out and contaminating Valley’s bunkers, Lucas and Grounds Committee Chair Rob Bulthaup front-burnered approval on a host of improvements proposed in the master plan by architect Rick Phelps of Phelps-Atkinson Golf Course Design.

While still worthy of hosting seven Colorado Women’s Opens and numerous state championships, Valley’s 7,043yard layout had become less challenging for big hitters who could outdrive the hazards. The remodel adds 270 yards, tipping the length at 7,313—“enough to get the attention of the 38- to 50-year-old club shopper,” says Phelps.

But the priority was “the bunkers, which were redone 10 years ago. They had evolved and didn’t drain well,” Phelps explains. “And bunkers are the artistic statements of the course.”

And Phelps’ artistry—and that of former PGA Tour pro Forrest Fezler, who did the construction and bunker shaping—evinces itself throughout the front nine. The once-shallow sand saucers are deeper, shapelier and more strategically positioned. “You used to be able to pick it clean from many of the fairway bunkers,” Lucas says. “Not any more.”

Valley’s metamorphosis begins on the first tee, where Phelps turned the easiest hole on the course—a straightway 533-yard par-five—into a double-dogleg with bunkers angling across the fairways and around the green, menacing big hitters who also have to clear a stand of trees to get on in two.

On the long par-4 second, moving the tee box 50 yards back brings into play the bunkers 290 yards out. Removing a bunker on the 409-yard third provides a bailout for those unwilling to flirt with the landing-area bunkers. A new back tee on the par-3 fourth now requires a full water carry to reach a green that eventually will extend back to the water.

“Five’s my favorite change,” Valley’s PGA Head Professional Barry Milstead says of the 374-yard dogleg left. “At the elbow, you had trees growing behind the bunkers; it was double-jeopardy hazard. And if you were a shorter hitter, you couldn’t get past the dogleg and had no shot at the green. It was a three-shot hole.” Phelps removed the trees, reshaped the bunkers and reduced the mounding. “He’s got-

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Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

SAND PAINTING: The reshaped bunkers on hole 5

ten it back to where it’s supposed to be,” says Milstead.

Lucas has similar praise for No. 7, a short, dogleg-right par-4 with elbow problems that Phelps cured by building new sets of tees and expanding the size and shape of the bunkers. “Visually, it’s just a stunning hole,” says the club president. “Strategically, it gives you the option of stepping on the gas or easing up.”

The club kept its foot on the accelerator throughout the spring. Originally slated for future construction, the 18-foothigh visual containment berm running the length of hole No. 2 got fast-tracked after the flood. With CDOT and the Southeast Metro Stormwater Authority (SEMSWA) excavating next door to lower the streambed and build a bridge across Cherry coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

Valley Changes course

Inspired changes by architect Rick Phelps are invigorating a classic Colorado club.

By Jon Rizzi | Photograph by E.J. Carr

Creek, the club agreed to take more than 75,000 cubic yards of dirt off their hands “and in the process save the club a half-million dollars,” says Bulthaup.

“Much of it is true to the original plans,” says Phelps, referring to the course design credited to architect William F. Bell (Torrey Pines), the son of the legendary William P. Bell (Bel-Air), who died shortly after receiving the commission for his only Colorado course. “The front nine was actually routed by Billy Sr.’s wife,” Phelps explains. “It opened five years before co l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

the back nine, which was Billy Jr.’s.”

Phelps’s renovations are following a similar pattern. Completion of the front nine happens this month, and the remainder of the back nine will wait until 2016.

“It’s already like a brand new course,” Lucas says. “It was important to get buy-in from the members, and they love it. It’s challenging for low handicap and enjoyable for the high.”

To pay for this enjoyment, Valley is assessing members $1,500 per year for the next few years, with a majority of funding coming from

member initiations. Bulthaup says some members have offered to pay their entire assessment now to get the work done faster.

“The changes have already brought new members, and I expect to get more,” says Bulthaup. “After all the changes, we’ll have a slope from the tips in the low 140s and a 74.5 rating. We want to be among the top clubs around.” CAG Jon Rizzi is CAG’s editor. For information: valleycountryclub.org; 303-690-6373.

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

91

Return to

Hoylake

With the Open Championship coming to my college team’s home course, I figured it was time to go back.

By Tony Dear | Photograph by David Cannon/ Getty Images 92

Colorado AvidGolfer | July 2014

coloradoavidgo lf e r .c o m

E

ight years ago,

Mike Creswell, an English financial planner from Hertfordshire, had a client who sat on the Greens Committee at the R&A. Shortly after the 2006 Open Championship at co l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

Hoylake’s Royal Liverpool Golf Club, the R&A man told Creswell that Tiger Woods had spent his practice rounds stalking the greens and locating soft spots on which it might be possible to land the ball and stop it before it bounded out of control over the back.

You might recall that in 2006 Hoylake— which hadn’t hosted an Open since 1967— had been burned brown by a hot, dry spell that turned the links into a pinball machine requiring careful course management to avoid spending time in the rough and fair-

way bunkers…or behind the green. Woods won his third Claret Jug that week using his mightily effective long-iron stinger off the tee to avoid the trouble. The stinger took most of the credit for Woods’s emotional victory (it was his first major since the death of his father 12 weeks before), but his typically thorough study of the putting surfaces was likely just as important.

Creswell doesn’t have time to stalk greens finding soft spots. And neither do I. Preparation for our round at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club in early April consists of stuffing bacon baps and cups of tea down our necks, then swapping stories from our spells on the Liverpool University golf team—his from the early ’80s, mine a decade later.

The University of Liverpool Golf Club Alumni Day is played on the venerable course the college team calls home and which Robert Chambers and Old Tom Morris’s younger brother George first laid out in 1869. Just a nine-holer then, it has since been added to, redesigned and bolstered by Harry Colt (1924), Fred Hawtree (1960s), Donald Steel & Martin Ebert (2000) and Martin Hawtree (2007).

Regardless, today we walk between the dunes and avoid the course’s notorious internal outof-bounds, knowing golf has been played on this ground for 145 years.

Creswell left Liverpool in 1986 but didn’t return to Hoylake until 2005. He filled the 19-year gap the way most golfers of a certain vintage do—by getting married, building his career, and having kids. It was inevitable, though, that one day he’d start feeling pangs. “I had to go back,” he says. “Royal Liverpool is such a great course and I had such fond memories of it. For a start, I love links golf because I hit a high fade and therefore have no fear of crashing into the trees 30 yards down the hole like I do at my home course. Hoylake is a different challenge every time you play, because the wind dictates the tempo of the round and changes speed and direction so often. And I always loved the view across the Dee Estuary from the ninth tee to the Clwydian Hills in Wales. It’s one of my favorite places in golf.”

Like Creswell, I’d allowed a lengthy period to grow between leaving Liverpool in 1991 and returning to Hoylake. It had been 23 years since I’d seen the old place in fact, during which I too had got married, worked hard, and had kids. Unlike Creswell, however, I had another pretty good reason for not having been back in so long—I’d emigrated to America with my July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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ROAD TEST: Royal Liverpool’s easiest drive.

American wife who had spent three years in Britain trying desperately to get used to the weather, driving a stick shift on the left side of the road, our coin-operated electric meter, and Yorkshire Pudding.

Mike and I are joined by Arthur Jennings, a one-handicap and former county cricketer who had graduated from Liverpool in 2005. He too hasn’t played Hoylake in a while, so he is likewise as eager as Mike and I are to take on the course “…blown upon by mighty winds, breeder of mighty champions” as Bernard Darwin once said (JH Taylor, Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Peter Thomson, Roberto de Vicenzo, and

Woods have all won Opens here).

On the first tee, we are greeted by a short, heavily-bearded man wearing a thick rain jacket and holding a clipboard. He wants to know if we use a rangefinder, asks to see the grooves on our wedges and enquires about our reaction to the anchoring ban. It isn’t clear who this gentleman is, but I tell him I will never use a rangefinder because knowing the exact yardage to the hole doesn’t seem to make one iota of difference to my score or my level of enjoyment, my grooves are indeed competition-worthy, and the anchoring ban is ridiculous and should have occurred 50 years ago. The man smiles, jots down my responses, and walks away. Before I can ask who he is, our group is called to the tee.

The 1st hole for the 2006 and 2014 Open Championships—called “Royal,” because it sat just across Stanley Road from the nowdemolished Royal Hotel that served as the club’s original clubhouse—is usually the 17th at Hoylake. Before the ’06 Open, however, the R&A decided the existing 18th was too weak a climax for the Open Championship so the 17th and 18th became the 1st and

LIVERPUDLIANS: Creswell, Dear and Jennings.

2nd, and the par 5 16th the finishing hole.

The move made sense, but it did mean the fantastic, if controversial, 1st hole now became the 3rd. The 426-yard bruiser may not be terribly long, but out of bounds stretches down the entire right side of the hole threatening both the drive and the approach. For members who have not had the chance to warm up and work the slice out of their swing, it must be an absolutely terrifying prospect on a cold winter’s morning.

It’s not much fun for Open competitors either, even if they have spent an hour on the range and played two holes already.

The hole—known as “Course” for its link to the Liverpool Hunt Club’s racecourse on which Chambers and Morris’s original nine holes were laid out—is perhaps Hoylake’s most famous. But it is only one of many great tests on a course that is perhaps lowlier than the sum of its parts. Hoylake is not as beautiful as Turnberry, nor do the names of its holes suggest anything as romantic.

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HOLD THAT, TIGER: Woods tamed Hoylake in ‘06.

It is not as difficult as Carnoustie, nor as brilliantly strategic as the Old Course. It is not as quirky as Royal Lytham or Royal St. George’s. Its sand hills are not as grand as those at Royal Birkdale or Royal Troon, and it probably doesn’t have quite as many great holes as Muirfield. It is pretty flat for the most part, and has ocean views from only three or four holes.

And yet, and yet… there isn’t a single weak hole out there. Some are better to look at and more fun to play than others, but whether by beauty, intrigue or difficulty, all 18 justify their place on an Open Championship course.

“In 2006, Tiger said how great he thought Hoylake was, and I think the pros will love it this year,” says Jennings. “There are none of the blind shots some of the other Open venues have, and there certainly aren’t as many funny bounces as you get at a course like Royal St. George’s. It’s just a great, fair test.”

After the round, during which Jennings demonstrates why he plays off one, Creswell shows how he maintains a solid five handicap, and I prove that flying across the Atlantic Ocean then driving 300 miles is no way to tune up for a course that has no breather hole, we each shower, don a jacket and tie and repair to the upstairs dining room for roast beef. Despite having played Hoylake dozens of times during my time in Liverpool, I never once went upstairs in the clubhouse. Seeing all the club’s memorabilia is almost as big a thrill as playing the course.

After cheese and port, the gathered alumni stand and toast the Royal Liverpool Golf Club. The Club Captain addresses the room then gives way to the wee, bewhiskered man—minus rain jacket and clipboard—we’d met earlier on the course. Turns out he is Dr. Steve Otto, head of the R&A’s Research and Testing department who no doubt played a pivotal role in having the anchored stroke banned. Fortunately he doesn’t bring up the rather pointed opinion I had given him earlier in the day, but instead gives a surco l o r a d o a v i d g o l f e r . c o m

prisingly amusing speech for a math PhD and professor who once worked with NASA on a top secret military project.

Otto takes golf equipment marketers to task, busting their most inane myths and highlighting the absurdity of commercials that claim this particular club gives you 15 more yards. “Fifteen more than what?” he laughs. “And whose drives are being measured?”

Following dinner, my new friends and I have a little wager on who might win this year’s Open. Arthur says it’s Lee Westwood’s turn to land a major and Hoylake will suit his near flawless ball

striking. Mike says it will be a big hitter like Nicolas Colsaerts, Dustin Johnson or Rory McIlroy. Me? I go for Tiger Woods because he hadn’t yet told the world he’d undergone back surgery days before.

There’s no guarantee Woods will be back for this year’s Open, but if he does return in time, is feeling properly motivated and can swing a golf club without discomfort, I still think he can find soft spots on the greens more often than anybody else.

CAG

Contributor Tony Dear is based in Bellingham, Washington.

July 2014 | Colorado AvidGolfer

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Golf

in common?

A

pproximately 4,500 miles separate the golf clubs of Green Valley Ranch and Royal Liverpool, the respective sites of this month’s HealthONE Colorado and British Opens. As our state championship celebrates its 50th year, golf ’s oldest major celebrates its 155th. But Green Valley has hosted more Colorado Opens (10) than Royal Liverpool has hosted the British version (nine), and more Americans (48) have won the Colorado Open than they have the British Open (42). Are there any connections between the two events?

See if you can figure out these three:

1.

BRITISH OPEN The official language of the host country?

PUZZLERS

games Of

A Tale of Two Tournaments Do this month’s Colorado and British Opens have anything

COLORADO OPEN The name of the event’s first low-amateur?

TRIVIA

|

2.

BRITISH OPEN Winner of last year’s Open Championship at Muirfield?

COLORADO OPEN 1989 Low-Amateur at Hiwan?

3.

BRITISH OPEN Year of the legendary Liverpool band’s first world tour?

COLORADO OPEN Year of first Colorado Open at Hiwan?

For the answers and to submit any other connections, visit coloradoavidgolfer.com.

CAG

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