The Pressures on Public Golf

There’s a chance that the golf economy in Colorado is a little broken.

Normally, if there was a business that was all-but overwhelmed with customers, new competitors would show up. New companies offering similar services would open next door, and they’d compete.

With public golf tee times in Colorado, that isn’t happening very efficiently.

For five years the boom in Colorado golf has led to packed tee sheets and crazy competitiveness among public golfers trying to get tee times. North of Denver two public courses are going into their first seasons this summer – Bella Ridge Golf Course and Rodeo Dunes. But to the south golfers between Colorado Springs and Denver are seeing no new development. Players there driving ever-farther up I-25 to play public courses just to be able to get out.

But just hoping new courses will eventually come on line is tricky. Whitey O’Malley, the owner of Saddleback Golf Course in Frederick, has built two courses. Today he is the president of the National Golf Course Owners Association and he remembers very well when in the late 1990s developers nationwide were told to build courses as fast as possible. Many did, and many got burned.

“Many investors, financier’s and owners remember the late 1990’s, early 2000’s,” he said. “The heyday of “build a course a day”. The resulting oversupply was long lasting and painful.”

He said the rule of thumb for decades has been that courses need to be ready to charge a greens fee of $10 for every million dollars spent building a course.

“I think those numbers are fairly accurate today. I can’t imagine a course being built for under $10 million in Colorado, leaving average green fees to be around $100 per round. Getting increased value in surrounding homes is a way to offset the higher cost of green fees. The question becomes is the risk of building a golf course worth the increase value of the approximal housing.”

So, the problem is also not just supply, but affordable supply. Rodeo Dunes in northeast Colorado is just getting off the ground as a destination public golf resort but based on the rates its sister courses charge in Oregon and Wisconsin tee times will likely be $200 and up when it opens to public play in 2027. Tee time rates have not yet been announced. Bella Ridge, which is still in preview play and doesn’t officially open until later this spring, charged $65 to $80 for rounds through the winter. Summer rates will almost certainly be higher.

Jay Karen, CEO of the NGCOA, said there is steep financial complexity for building golf courses in areas where development pressure for housing already exists.

“Once you consider the total fixed investment and development costs, including land acquisition, clubhouse design and construction (which includes all kitchen equipment, furniture and fixtures), permitting, modern irrigation systems, access to water (depending on location of the course), acquisition of fleets of golf cars and agronomic equipment, in addition to penciling the ongoing operational costs and costs of goods sold, including labor, agronomic needs, food and beverage, operation technology, marketing and more, it’s easy to see how difficult it would be to offer affordable green fees to sustain a multi-million dollar investment,” he said.

“And we haven’t even calculated what ongoing financing costs may be, assuming a loan of some kind is necessary to underpin the development. When we talk about land acquisition for a daily-fee type course, it would have to be near a robust population center, not in the middle of these rural areas, where private clubs are being built. Two hundred acres of land near cities and towns will be far more expensive than fifty miles outside of town.”

Municipal governments can add courses, but there are no new projects announced at this time in the Colorado Springs area.

“We are placing high hopes on the municipal golf sector to continue to meet the needs of those looking for “affordable” golf in the coming years or even decades,” Karen said. “ Municipalities often have more tools in their tool box than private developers to build golf courses, or even acquire courses for sale, if there is interest in adding more green space and recreation to their portfolios of parks. Even though more and more muni courses are contributing to their town’s financial success, rather than extracting from them, it is still in the DNA of municipalities to keep the golf rates affordable for their local citizens. This is key for millions of people who enjoy golf in our country, especially in Colorado.”

In Colorado Springs, the city manages two: Patty Jewett and Valley Hi golf courses. Patty Jewett has been played for more than 100 years and city-owned since 1919. It offers a par 72 18-hole course and a separate 9-hole course.

Valley Hi’s 18-holes were built in 1956 as a private club then bought by the city in 1975. Valley Hi is the home course of the First Tee of Southern Colorado, the youth development program.

Nationally, the picture is different. The National Golf Foundation reports that at the start of 2026, more than 140 new courses were in planning or under construction across the country – the majority of those tied to private destination clubs, high-end real estate communities and resort properties.

Still, the opportunity is there.

Bella Ridge Golf Course, near Johnstown, was built by the Potdburg family which converted their former family farm to the golf and residential development. This is key: they already owned the land.

And as the population growth has continued in the northern front range, the course operators thought they were going to help meet a market demand for more public play.

If the course’s preview play is any indication, they absolutely have done that. The course does not officially open until this spring, but when they began to take a limited number of daily tee times beginning last fall the slots filled up quickly. Through the warm winter the course kept daily play to around 100 golfers, with tee times ending in the late mornings. They still filled up.