What has been reported for almost a year — a Web.com Tour event coming to the new TPC Colorado course in Berthoud starting in 2019 — became a reality on Thursday when next year’s Web tournament schedule was announced.

The TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes will be held for the first time the week of July 8-14, 2019. The event, which will feature 156 players and a $600,000 purse, will be the first of five such tournaments planned for TPC Colorado through 2023.

TPC Colorado, located just northwest of U.S. Highway 287 where the road turns east a little northwest of Berthoud, has opened in phases over the last year, with some member play taking place on selected holes in September of 2017 and general public play beginning Sept. 1 of this year.

The TPC facility, the first brand-new 18-hole regulation golf course to open in Colorado since 2009, held its first major tournament last week with the Colorado PGA Professional Championship being contested there.

“Our site is a hidden gem, but I couldn’t imagine a better location,” said TPC Colorado owner Jon Turner. “Our project is equidistant between Boulder and Fort Collins. This is our marquis development project and we think it’s the perfect stage for this event to showcase Colorado to the world.”

The TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes will mark the first Web.com Tour event held in Colorado since 1997. The Web.com Tour is one step below the PGA Tour, with the top 25 finishers on the Web’s regular-season money list each year earning PGA Tour cards, and another 25 landing priviliges through their performance in the Web.com Finals, a series of season-ending events culminating with the Web.com Tour Championship.

The Web circuit — then known as the Nike Tour — previously had a tournament in Colorado in 1996 and ’97, when Riverdale’s Dunes Course in Brighton hosted the Nike Colorado Classic. Stewart Cink, who has since won six times on the PGA Tour including the 2009 British Open, claimed the title in 1996.

Of course, Colorado has also hosted annual PGA Tour stops in the state over the years, most recently The International at Castle Pines from 1986 through 2006. And the BMW Championship PGA Tour playoff event was conducted at Cherry Hills Country Club in 2014.

“We are excited to bring the Web.com Tour to Colorado in conjunction with the highly anticipated debut of TPC Colorado,” Web.com Tour president Dan Glod said in a release. “This state has historically delivered a tremendous amount of PGA Tour support, and we are confident that local businesses, fans and volunteers will enable the TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes to become a great success.”

TPC Colorado, a semi-private/high-end daily fee Scottish links-style course designed by Arthur Schaupeter, can stretch to 7,991 yards from the Tour tees. Some of its most formidable features are stacked-sod-faced bunkers (below), often with sheer walls, along with scenic views of the Rocky Mountains. Course mounding often results in views of only part of the flagsticks when hitting approach shots.

The large reservoirs on site — the Lonetree, McNeil and Welch Reservoirs — rarely come into play for championship-caliber players, though seven holes are situated along the water.

A 60,000-square-foot clubhouse at TPC Colorado is currently under construction.

Drew Blass will be the tournament director for the TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes. Blass, most recently director of corporate partnerships and business development for the LPGA, has served as director of operations and assistant tournament director for the last three U.S.-based Solheim Cups, including the one held at Colorado Golf Club in Parker in 2013.

“Colorado has a rich history with the game of golf and support (for it), which I witnessed firsthand during my time with the 2013 Solheim Cup,” Blass said. “We are confident the TPC Colorado Championship will become one of the region’s premier sporting events beginning in 2019 and the place to be each July.” 

Larry Collins, the PGA general manager at TPC Colorado, has worked at six TPC facilities over his career.

“It’s really a stunning piece of land,” he said last fall regarding TPC Colorado. “It sits on 800 acres, overlooking three reservoirs with about 1,500 acres of water — with Longs Peak and a panoramic view (of the mountains) in the background. The community is just going to be loaded with amenities. It’s very, very exciting.”

When the men and women from the CGA/CWGA course rating team made the rounds and did their duty at TPC Colorado in Berthoud last month, it was a bit of an oddity given the times we’re in.

After all, while it is standard practice for the state golf associations to rate and re-rate the courses in the state, it had been many a moon — almost a decade — since the CGA or CWGA course raters had last done their thing on a new 18-hole layout in the Centennial State.

In fact, to the best recollection of longtime CGA staffer Gerry Brown, the director of course rating and handicapping for the association, the last new 18-hole course done would have been CGA-owned CommonGround Golf Course, which opened in May 2009.

“With a new course, the hardest thing is there’s no yardage markers or GPS,” Brown said recently. “I won’t say it was unique or uncomfortable. Between us (the eight men from the CGA who rated TPC Colorado, along with the eight women from the CWGA), we have well over 100 years of experience rating courses. But this was best possible team of raters, reserved for captains who have five or more years of doing 10 or more rates a year.

“But it was seven sets of tees that we rated. That’s very atypical. We never anticipated people having more than six sets of tees. A lot of our formula (templates on spread sheets) broke.”

TPC Colorado, located just northwest of U.S. Highway 287 where the road turns east a little northwest of Berthoud, is tentatively scheduled to open around June 1, according to PGA general manager and director of golf Larry Collins, who’s moved into his new position after serving as director of golf at Boulder Country Club, then 18 years at the Omni Interlocken Golf Club in Broomfield.

In fact, the combination semi-private/high-end daily fee course has already been having select groups play portions of the course in recent months. Eighty-six members played a 10-hole shotgun on Sept. 18, and other groups have gone out on the course on nice weekends during the fall. The holes on the northern end of the property — 2 through 13 — are further along at this point.

But the agronomy team from the TPC Network, which is part of the PGA Tour, won’t fully open the course until it’s satisfied with the grow-in condition of the layout. Another factor will be when the initial stage of the clubhouse is ready to open.

(The top two photos come from the CGA rating team, with the bottom one courtesy of Devin Sena.)

The course “is phenomenal,” said Collins, who is now working at the sixth TPC stop of his career (including Plum Creek in Castle Rock, Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra, Fla., and Southwind in Memphis) and is involved in a new course build-out for the fifth time. “It’s really a stunning piece of land. It sits on 800 acres, overlooking three reservoirs (Lonetree, Welch and McNeil) with about 1,500 acres of water — with Longs Peak and a panoramic view (of the mountains) in the background. The community is just going to be loaded with amenities. It’s very, very exciting.”

Indeed, the Arthur Schaupeter-designed Scottish links-style course is good enough that an agreement has been reached in which a Web.com Tour event will be contested at TPC Colorado for at least five years, beginning in 2019, with course officials hoping for late-summer dates. It will be the first time a tour-caliber event will be contested over multiple years in Colorado since the PGA Tour’s International departed following its 21st and final time visiting Castle Pines Golf Club, in 2006. 

The Web.com Tour — then known as the Nike Tour — previously had a stop in Colorado in 1996 and ’97, when Riverdale’s Dunes Course in Brighton hosted the Nike Colorado Classic. Stewart Cink, who has since won six times on the PGA Tour including the 2009 British Open, claimed the title in 1996.

While TPC Colorado can stretch out to 7,991 yards for events like the one planned for the Web.com Tour, it can also be played from as short as 4,157 from the front tees. And, as Brown noted, there will be a total of seven sets of tees possible.

The course can be both formidable and inviting, depending on a number of factors.

“We’ve had more female spouses closing their husbands on memberships because it’s very favorable for the bogey golfer,” Collins said. “We have seven sets of tees and you can play the course from 4,100 yards up to almost 8,000. And there’s only three potential holes where you can lose a golf ball. And (the course features) pretty expansive fairways, meaning fairly easy to hit into.”

Also, there are very few trees — indeed, those that there are are only on one hole — and out of bounds stakes seldom are a concern. Seven holes are situated along the reservoirs but Collins said the water rarely comes into play. And the fescue rough that frames holes is meant to be thin and wispy, allowing errant balls to be found and hit. 

On the other hand, there are some formidable bunkers with stacked-sod faces which most players would like to avoid like the plague. And course mounding often results in views of only part of the flagsticks when hitting approach shots.

“From a bogey golfer standpoint, it’s a very scary-looking course with monstrous bunkers ready to gobble up errant shots,” Brown said. “TPC Colorado’s biggest obstacle to protect par is bunkers. They have Scottish-style stacked sod with steep, sheer walls. They’re 2- to 15-feet deep and you don’t go in and out very easily. They’re intended to be a penalty stroke and they’re strategically placed.

“But there are very few trees and most of the OB is away from play. The fairways are generous. And the native is thin and wispy so you can play out. The greens are hard to guess on a new course.”

Individual hole-wise, a few things draw attention at TPC Colorado. 

One is the par-5 13th, which can stretch out to 762 yards from the “Tour” tee. That makes it one of the longest holes anywhere, a true three-shot par-5, even for long hitters. Adding to the difficulty of the long, sweeping dogleg left is the presence of a 110-yard-long “Hell Bunker,” which is inspired by the bunker of the same name on the 14th hole of the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. The one at TPC Colorado features three separate “hollows” with stacked-sod walls.

Another hole that draws from a famous relative is the par-3 eighth, which might bring to mind some elements of the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, home of The Players Championship. No. 8 at TPC Colorado doesn’t feature a true island green, but it’s a peninsula of land that extends into Lonetree Reservoir, with water left, right and long. 

Still another hole that would like to draw upon comparisons to well-known fan favorites is the sixth, one of three risk-and-reward short par-4s. No. 6 goes by the name Riviera and hopes to emulate the 10th hole at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, one of the best risk-reward par-4s around. The sixth at TPC Colorado features plenty of bunkering and a small green of about 5,000 square feet that will nevertheless entice bigger hitters to try to drive the green. 

A hole that will also be of interest is the par-3 16th, named Center Stage, where players tee off right next to the clubhouse, potentially in front of a number of spectators. 

“Art Schaupeter did a really fabulous design,” Collins said. “Sometimes you play great courses and you kind of remember each hole because they’re each individually identified. This is one of those courses where there’s 18 (disntinctive) holes. You don’t really play one then look at another and say ‘Oh, it has a lot of similarity.’ He really did some fascinating contouring and use of the land.”

Collins said TPC Colorado has already drawn commitments from more than 100 members. But by agreement with the City of Berthoud, the course will be open to the public on an ongoing basis, albeit at a high-end price. Collins said greens fees haven’t yet been set, but he added, “probably right now, if we were to open up next June, it’s probably going to be a mid-$100 round.

“Quite honestly, if this didn’t have the TPC brand on it, I don’t think we would have ever considered selling memberships until next March. This is really about the golf course that’s being built, and the Tour’s excitement to be not only in Colorado but the Rocky Mountain Region.”

About 5,500 square feet of the planned 40,000-square-foot clubhouse will open next year, if all goes as expected, including the golf shop and cafe, with the rest opening in 2019. Also planned are a sports center, community pool, boating and fishing memberships, waterfowl hunting, a beach club, a marina and a pier.

Golf members will receive TPC Passport deals at TPC Passport Reciprocal Properties and other courses, including The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass and several other facilities that host PGA Tour events.
 

— 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.