With the PGA Tour-licensed TPC Network announcing earlier this month the groundbreaking for the TPC Colorado golf course in Berthoud — designed by Art Schaupeter and scheduled to open in the spring of 2018 — several things are worth noting:
— Assuming work goes according to plan, TPC Colorado will be the first new course to open in Colorado since CommonGround in Aurora debuted in 2009. The previous year, Four Mile Ranch Golf Club in Canon City opened.
— Since those most recent openings, more than a handful of Colorado courses have closed, most notably Green Gables Country Club in 2011.
— Though it’s not scheduled to open as soon as TPC Colorado, it shouldn’t be forgotten that there’s another course in the works in the state — RainDance National Golf Club in Windsor, which was announced two years ago.
Interestingly, TPC Colorado and Raindance National are located not far from one another in northern Colorado, about 12 miles apart as the crow flies on different sides of I-25.
Harrison Minchew, who is working with PGA/Champions Tour player Fred Funk on the design of RainDance National, said last week via email that construction on the course should start next year, with the possibility of opening in the summer of 2019.
Justin Richmond, a player manager at IMG, confirmed “Fred is still very much involved in the project.”
— Assuming TPC Colorado and RainDance National open as planned, it will end an almost unprecedented stretch in which no new Colorado courses have come online. The last time there was a similar time frame with no (or very few) new course openings in Colorado was most of the 1940s into the early 1950s.
Of course, this is all a far cry from a stretch (1997-2007) sandwiched around the dawn of the new millennium, when an average of almost seven courses per year opened in Colorado.
— The addition of TPC Colorado, which will be open to the general public, marks the first time the TPC label has been placed on a Colorado course since Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock was known as TPC Plum Creek. TPC Plum Creek largely made its name when it hosted Senior Tour (now PGA Tour Champions) tournaments from 1984 through ’87.
The 18-hole championship course at TPC Colorado, which will be built around the Lonetree, McNeil and Welch Reservoirs, will be able to be stretched to 7,900 yards for championship competition, or anywhere from 4,000 yards on up for recreational play or less rigorous tournaments. In Colorado, Schaupeter also designed Highland Meadows Golf Course, which, coincidentally, is not far from the RainDance National site.
The backers of the TPC Colorado project say the course will feature “panoramic views of Longs Peak and the entire Front Range and holes along the shorelines of the large reservoirs. Stacked-sod pot bunkers and fescue-lined fairways will give golfers a sense of the Scottish heritage of the sport,” according to their press release.
For more information about the TPC Colorado plans, CLICK HERE.
