Water Valley Courses Ready for Company

Pelican Lakes and Raindance offer a taste of what is to come in Northeast Colorado

by Jim Bebbington

With two new golf course developments announced for the prairie lands of northeast Colorado, the courses that are already up there could be excused if they felt a tad unappreciated. Not So.

“The more the merrier,” said Kurt Hinkle, director of communications for the Water Valley Company. The Water Valley folks – it is owned by developer Martin Lind, who also owns the Colorado Eagles minor league hockey team – entered the frey between Denver and Fort Collins in 1999 with Pelican Lakes Resort and Golf Club.

Clustered around the ponds and reservoirs that feed drinking water to Weld County, the course created a lakefront golf experience that would not be out of place in the Ozarks.

Then last year they doubled-down by opening the longest 18-hole tract in North America – Raindance National Resort near Windsor. The course offers six tee boxes for all manner of normal homo sapiens, but for those who flew in from Krypton as a baby their tips measure out at 8,463 yards.

The 713-yard second hole is just one way it separates the wheat from the chaff.

“The second hole from the back is a 300-yard carry,” Hinkle notes.

That typically is all the mortals need – and most march humbly but wiser up to the more forward tees.

Plans for the region now call for Rodeo Dunes – a project by the Bandon Dunes family of Dream Golf – to break ground near Roggen later this year on land that could ultimately support up to six courses.

Also recently announced – architect Art Schaupeter, Troon Golf and a long-standing Weld County dairy family, the Podtburgs, are developing Bella Ridge, an 18-hole course one mile off Interstate 25 near Johnstown and Mead.

The region legitimately has the makings of an epic golf-week destination. As players arrive to play TPC Colorado or Raindance or Ballyneal Golf and Hunt Club on the state’s eastern edge, they will have Rodeo Dunes, Pelican Lakes and other options to fill out their scorecard.

The drive from Ballyneal, through Roggen and on to Windsor for Raindance will clock at a little more than three hours. That’s not much more than, say, the drive from Muirfield, through St. Andrews, and on up the Scottish coast to Carnoustie.

“I think it’s a compliment,” Hinkle said. “It just means that golf is strong. Our course helps their course and vice versa.”

For Pelican Lakes and Raindance, Water Valley created a bundled membership offering where joining the two courses together offers 45-holes of golf options. That is now their largest category of members, Hinkle said.

They have even tweaked Raindance a smidge this season to make the No. 13 hole more palatable. It played last summer with the typical landing zone off the tee pitching balls either right or left. This year the mowers widened the fairway just at that spot, giving players a better chance of hitting two from a fairway.

So as the new courses come online between now and 2025, Hinkle says Water Valley is happy to wet people’s whistle for the bountiful options to come.

“There wasn’t any new excitement up here (for awhile) so it’s been nice to see the new projects,” Hinkle said. “It just helps grow the sport up here .”

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Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.

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