FEATURE: DOMESTIC
By Crai S. Bower
All my bags were packed, and I was ready to go in mid-May when I received a call informing me that Denver would receive 8-10 inches of snow on my scheduled day of arrival – great news for skiing but not-so-great news for a golf trip. The snow was long gone with temperatures in the mid-80s by the time I landed a few days later to play five of Denver’s finest tracks.
Colorado golf carries one element we all love: altitude-assisted distance. Dave Averill, my sea level-bound, Seattle-based playing companion, couldn’t wait to watch his 240-yard driving average soar into the 260s and beyond. However, what’s easily forgotten in our thin-air-induced distance-drunk state is that reduced friction also produces lower spin rates, a sobering fact that quickly transformed Dave’s “Man, I launched that one!” boasts into a “Why won’t my ball stop on the green?!” hangover. A little altitude adjustment is part of any Front Range exam here.
TPC Colorado at Heron Lakes would serve as our arrival day test. Home to the Korn Ferry Tour’s Blue Championship, the course runs to almost 8,000 yards from the tips, almost 10% of which is covered by the infamous 773-yard par-5 13th. Designed by Art Schaupeter, the Scottish links-style (with water in play) layout features myriad lies, rivetted bunkers, and greens that roll every which way but straight.
As brawny as the par 4s and par 5s may be, even from a hybrid Gold-Blue tee length of 6,450 yards, it’s the creative par 3s that captured my imagination, beginning with the second: a 175-yard, water-adjacent Biarritz green, though the broad trench was hardly cavernous. The 324-yard par-4 third continues the fun intro, a classic risk-reward carrot that tempts you to peel off 80 yards by carrying the water to the green.
Each of TPC’s plotted prairie holes conveyed enough distinction to keep us focused on this day that started with a 4 a.m. carpool, a three-hour flight, and an hour drive to the clubhouse. (A 7 a.m. flight from NYC lands no later than 10 a.m. at DEN.) The 152-yard eighth, a narrow, tree-lined chute toward the Lonetree Reservoir, demanded accuracy; the 140-yard 16th, perched directly in front of the timber clubhouse, was a 60-foot descent that required precise distance.
We chose downtown’s Rally Hotel as our home base. Located fewer than 500 yards from the Colorado Rockies’ Coors Field home plate, the baseball-themed, independent hotel sits on McGregor Square, a lively gathering spot featuring multiple restaurants, a giant screen, and frequent live entertainment.
Though I worked as a singing waiter in the mid-1980s at the Palace Hotel in Cripple Creek, I haven’t spent much time here until recently. In the past two years, I’ve golfed in the alpine at Keystone and Breckenridge, skied at Vail, Steamboat Springs, and Snowmass, and explored the Denver Botanical Gardens and lively neighborhoods like RiNo and Capitol Hill. It’s easy to understand why this historic frontier town is booming.
My initial hope was to preview Rodeo Dunes, arguably the biggest golf development of 2026 about 45 minutes northeast of Denver International. Sadly, the previous week’s snowstorm led Rodeo’s agronomists to close preview rounds in favor of overseeding the Keiser’s latest “if we build bliss, they will come” enterprise. Public rounds are set to begin next spring.
We “settle” instead for Arrowhead Golf Club, arguably the most scenic course in the state. Robert Trent Jones Jr. must have been giddy when asked to etch a course on this sandstone-framed canvas. “The back nine is the stunning side,” opines the beverage cart driver as we step off the pond-fronted, red rock-backed green of the 419-yard third.
We’re incredulous, that is, until we make the turn and follow a stegosaurus back rock formation for the length of the 10th hole, the beginning of what feels like time travel into the Jurassic period. We split, skirt and slither through the red rocks, then draw a breath at the 173-yard 13th, a steep descent bookended by boulders to a narrow green. As a golf design aesthete who prefers 20 over par on a gorgeous course to +12 on a ho-hum layout, this is one RTJ2 poem I want to read again.
We leave the red rocks behind and commute to Aurora’s CommonGround Golf Course, the one true muni on our schedule. The conditions and challenges here appeal to any golfer regardless of one’s home club. Tom Doak’s layout sublimely follows the contours of the valley, a series of fairways that require precision and greens that demand creativity.
The 144-yard par-3 second is short on length but, thanks to an elevated green, long on nerve, given the mess of sand and brush that awaits an offline shot. Bunkers set the parameters on this unusually flat track, like the way the par-4 8th’s cross-bunker dictates our angle to a finicky green with a gaping false front. The 539-yard, par-5 11th should play easy, except for the constant wind we’ve faced all afternoon, a set of gusts I suspect rarely takes a day off. With intriguing holes like the mound-obscured 14th, this is the best type of muni, one you could play on repeat without ever getting bored.
There isn’t one dull shot at Golden’s Fossil Trace Golf Club, as I learn when, teeing off down the 575-yard par-5 first, my ball settles behind an 85-year-old stone chimney incinerator, a manmade obstruction that allows me to relocate my next shot. Fossil Trace is first and foremost fun, though frustration awaits in every steep, serpentine bunker that slithers forward for thirty yards.
Designer Jim Engh’s gem really glistens on the back nine, as we’re often asked to split sandstone bluffs. No free drops here after being too cute and landing my ball against the rock on the 585-yard, par-5 12th, where an oak-leaf-shaped bunker fronts a two-ridged green, surrounded by rock that protect the green like a triceratops’ frill. (What makes the 12th even cooler is the course living up to its name with 64-million-year-old triceratops footprints visibly embedded in the rocks.) As if it’s needed, water enters the fray on the closing three holes, fomenting more, um, fun on what proves the most memorable course of our tour.
“This was my favorite,” Dave says. “Great features with lots of up and down fun.”
We save the woods (and the best) for last, traveling south to Larkspur and into the mountains to Bear Dance, a pristine layout where every hole stands as tall as a ponderosa pine. We descend quickly into the shadows on the 502-yard opening hole, a slight dogleg right that spills upon a pendular green, the first of many interesting green complexes that distinguish this track, principally designed by former PGA of America president Brian Whitcomb and considered Denver’s finest public offering.
Except for the fourth’s lone windmill, conifers set the eighteen stages here, though the broad fairways keep errant strikes among the evergreens to a minimum. The most notable bunkers come into play on the drivable downhill, 353-yard, sixth hole, where eleven traps comprise a bear’s claw. Water fronts an arboreal collared green on the gorgeous downhill, 431-yard, par-4 16th. Danger also trickles past on 17, a 145-yard par 3 that demands shots stay left of the cascading stream. To borrow from a tune I sang to my once young children, I’d go waltzing with Bear Dance as often as possible were I to live here.
Satiated with five rounds over three days, Dave and I return to Denver to dine at James Beard finalist Dana Rodriguez’s latest venture, Carne RiNo Modern Steakhouse. I dine on exquisite burrata with heirloom tomatoes and sundried tomato pesto, followed by pollo asada, an adobo-roasted half chicken. I raise my ironically named “Ain’t No Sunshine,” a Rosaluna mezcal, chile morita-infused dry curacao and citrus cocktail, to toast three brilliant days chasing birdies in sundrenched Colorado.
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