There are plenty of very well-known sports figures competing in this week’s U.S. Senior Open at The Broadmoor, but there’s a very good chance the person drawing the most attention earned his fame not on a golf course, but on a pitcher’s mound.

That would be Baseball Hall of Famer John Smoltz, who qualified for the Senior Open in Peachtree City, Ga., in late May (READ MORE), and who will compete with the big boys at The Broadmoor starting on Thursday.

Smoltz (left), the 1996 National League Cy Young winner with the Braves who’s now a baseball broadcaster with Fox and the MLB Network, held court in the U.S. Senior Open media center on Tuesday. He didn’t disappoint.

Some highlights:

— “I don’t know if there’s a cloud higher than Cloud Nine, but that’s where I feel like I’ve been” after qualifying for the Senior Open.

— “It’s probably the No. 1 thing that I’ve ever accomplished. Everything I’ve been part of before has been a team thing and I’m proud of all my accomplishments from a team aspect. But an individual role or accomplishment, I haven’t had anything anywhere close to this. This has been a dream of mine since I was probably 35 to 40 years old and I know a lot of my teammates were tired of hearing it, that I was going to do this one day, but it is the most excited I’ve ever been. … I don’t feel like I have slept normal since it happened.”

— “I would say where I am is nowhere close as a golfer as I was as a pitcher. I had all the confidence in the world in my pitches. Now that came with time and repitition, and I never was afraid of the pressure and pressure never caused me to fail or be the reason I failed. I failed because I didn’t execute. As a golfer I don’t have all the pitches, so to speak. I have what I have. I’ve never taken a lesson, I don’t practice, I just play. And it’s been a passion of mine ever since I realized that being a pitcher starting in A-ball, I’ve got four days that I better find a way to occupy time because I pitch every five days. And I picked up golf at about 20, 21 years old. The bug never has left. … To say I’m having the time of my life is an under statement right now.”

— “The Hall of Fame was the greatest achievement that I could be part of, but I didn’t get as many texts for the Hall of Fame as I’ve gotten for (qualifying for the Senior Open).”

— “If you don’t believe it, you’ll never dream it. If you don’t dream it, you’ll never achieve it. I am a big believer in that. I’m certainly not going to do something like tell you guys I’m going to grow hair by next year; that’s just unrealistic,. But I’ve always told my kids and people around me that, why not? Why not pursue your dreams? This is a secondary dream that I’m going to get a chance to be a part of.”

By the way, caddying for Smoltz this week will be 2016 CGA Amateur champion Colin Prater, who grew up playing The Broadmoor.

Water Galore as Temperatures Heat Up: With temperatures in the 90s on Tuesday and expected to continue there for the next several days, possibly nearing 100 on Thursday, the USGA is implementing policies that will help fans deal with the heat.
Starting on Wednesday:

— Clear, empty water bottles up to 34 ounces and up to two 24-ounce sealed water bottles will be permitted through championship admission gates.

— Three water stations have been placed around the course where plastic bottles can be refilled free of charge.

— Two air-conditioned cooling stations will be provided in conjunction with championship first-aid stations.

— The price of bottled water at all eight concession stands on the golf course has been reduced to $2 for the remainder of the week.

Raindance National Still a Go: Fred Funk, who finished second in the 2008 U.S. Senior Open held at The Broadmoor, said after his media session on Tuesday that the course he’s co-designing in northern Colorado could break ground later this year and may open as soon as the fall of 2020.

That would be Raindance National Golf Club in Windsor.

“We’re supposed to finally break ground this fall, we’re hoping,” Funk said. “We’re going. It’s going to be really cool. The land is remarkable.”

Quotable: Brooks Koepka winning the second of back-to-back U.S. Opens earlier this month was not lost on Kenny Perry, who has the opportunity to accomplish a similar feat at the U.S. Senior Open this week.

“He’s motivated me,” Perry said of Koepka. “I’d like to go back-to-back just like Brooks did. That would be incredible.”

Notable: Three-time U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin conducted a clinic (left), oriented toward junior players, on Tuesday on the practice range at The Broadmoor. … A field of 234 kids signed up for the Drive Chip & Putt qualifying event (below left) that took place Tuesday on the 18th hole of the West Course at The Broadmoor. Among those on hand as the event wrapped up was 1958 PGA Champion Dow Finsterwald (pictured in red below), a former longtime director of golf at The Broadmoor. … Tickets for this week’s U.S. Senior Open are still available, both online (2018ussenioropen.com) and at the gate starting at $25 on Wednesday and $50 per day from Thursday through Sunday. Kids age 17 and under get in free each day of the championship when accompanied by a ticketed adult.

— 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.