Less than 15 minutes after The Broadmoor’s eighth USGA championship concluded on Sunday, the USGA announced that No. 9 is on the way.
Before David Toms was handed the U.S. Senior Open trophy on the 18th green of the East Course on Sunday evening, the crowd was told that the Senior Open will return to the resort in 2025. Specific dates that year have yet to be determined.
It will mark the fourth U.S. Senior Open held in Colorado, and the third at The Broadmoor, which did the honors in 2008 and this year. Cherry Hills Country Club hosted the event in 1993, when Jack Nicklaus won.
“Beginning with the U.S. Amateur in 1959 (when Nicklaus also prevailed), The Broadmoor has been a gracious and wonderful host and a valued partner to the USGA, helping us to showcase the world’s greatest players on the game’s grandest stages,” USGA CEO Mike Davis said in a statement. “This has been a tremendous week of golf and a great celebration of the game, and we are excited to bring the championship back to Colorado Springs in 2025.”
It’s unusual for a U.S. Senior Open site announcement seven years in advance. In fact, the courses for the 2023 and ’24 events haven’t yet been set. But the USGA obviously was sold on all that The Broadmoor brings to the table.
“It’s amazing how well Colorado supports these things,” said Russ Miller, The Broadmoor’s longtime director of golf. “It’s been proven over and over and over. That’s exciting.”
The 2025 U.S. Senior Open will be the 34th USGA championship held in the Centennial State. In the interim, Colorado Golf Club in Parker will be the site of the 2019 U.S. Mid-Amateur, with those dates set for Sept. 14-19.
The fans came out in force this week at The Broadmoor. The USGA announced the attendance for the 39th U.S. Senior Open was 134,500. That’s 5,786 more than the weeklong number for the 2008 Senior Open at The Broadmoor.
“It far exceeded what I anticipated,” Miller said of the attendance during The Broadmoor’s 100th anniversary celebration. “That’s a tremendous success.”
The 134,500 was the most for the Senior Open since the 157,126 in Omaha, Neb., in 2013. The record for a Senior Open came in Des Moines, Iowa in 1999, when more than 200,000 people attended.
The figures this week include 102,600 during the four championship days — Thursday through Sunday. It went 19,700 on Thursday, 23,200 on Friday, 28,700 on Saturday and 31,000 on Sunday.
“The fans were tremendous,” said Toms, an LSU alum. “Now I know why all these LSU people come here to get out of the heat.”
This week’s U.S. Senior Open was all the more impressive considering a hailstorm that hit the area two weeks before the championship. Large hailstones damaged the greens quite severely. But by the time the Senior Open began on Thursday, it was barely noticeable.
“We were less than two weeks out,” Miller said. “The maintenance staff took 15 guys and took ball repair tools and went to every green and did thousands on every green. I could take a golf ball and it went down in (the hailstone marks).
“It’s not like a divot. When hail hits, it splits the turf. They fixed them by hand, we verti-cut again — which we weren’t going to do — but that was a great decision by Freddie Dickman (director of golf course maintenance at The Broadmoor). And now you’d never know anything happened.
“It was about 10 days (after the storm) before you couldn’t tell anything. In practice rounds, it looked like little bruises almost. The last couple of days it’s perfect. You can’t tell a thing. (The nearby two of) Fountain had baseball-size hail, so we got very lucky — I guess.”
Overall, it turned out to be quite a week for The Broadmoor. Besides the attendance, there were no weather delays, which is no small matter this time of year along the Front Range. And while the East Course caused the players fits, few complained about the test.
“It was a perfect U.S. Open setup,” said Rocco Mediate.
Added Jerry Kelly: “Those of you who know me know I don’t like to give the USGA that much credit, but they got it right this week. It was a fantastic job. The golf course got firm, tough, fast (and still) extremely playable. It was a great championship.”
That’s the overall tenor of the feedback Miller heard this week.
“I think the golf course held up great,” he said. “A lot of the players are saying it’s very difficult but very fair. You can’t get lucky. You’ve got to manage the course. That’s what an Open championship is all about. I’ve heard no negatives on the golf course. And the weather has been perfect.”
