The top Colorado golf stories of 2024, Part I

By Gary Baines – 12/26/2024

The year 2024 proved very eventful in Colorado golf whether from the standpoint of a fan, a recreational player, someone in the business or just an interested observer.

As a chronicler of such things, it’s an interesting topic upon which to reflect. We do that every year about this time in this space, and this late December won’t be an exception.

After looking over the Colorado golf headlines of the year, your correspondent has pinpointed 25 of the most notable, plus some honorable-mention picks. We’ll publish the results in reverse order — to preserve some suspense — and in two installments. Highlights from No. 25 through 13 will be published today, with the top dozen and the honorable-mention selections following in the days leading up to year’s end.

So, without further ado, away we go …

25. Fort Collins and Steamboat Springs resident Sam Saunders, grandson of the late Arnold Palmer, retired from professional tour golf with an announcement on social media in August. Saunders played full time on the PGA Tour and/or the Korn Ferry Tour for the last dozen years or so, making 158 starts on the PGA Tour and 163 on the Korn Ferry circuit. He recorded one runner-up finish on the PGA Tour and three on the KFT. But the 2024 season was a rough one as the 37-year-old made just four cuts in 19 events and posted just one top-40 finish, a 14th at the UNC Health Championship in early June. READ MORE

Jennifer Kupcho (in top row with sunglasses) celebrates a Solheim Cup win with her U.S. teammates.

24. Jennifer Kupcho, who was born in Littleton and grew up in Westminster, was part of a winning U.S. Solheim Cup team for the first time in 2024. After the USA lost to the Europeans in the 2021 Solheim Cup and the teams tied last year, Kupcho and her fellow Americans prevailed at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville, Va. It was the USA’s first victory in the event since 2017, and Kupcho’s first experience on the winning Solheim team as she wrapped up her third stint playing in the premier women’s golf team competition. “Finished. Business,” Kupcho wrote on Instagram after the event wrapped up. Less than three months later, the three-time winner on the LPGA Tour was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. READ MORE

23. Early in the year, CommonGround Golf Course’s director of agronomy Mitch Savage earned the national Excellence in Government Affairs Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. The award recognizes a superintendent, chapter or coalition for outstanding advocacy or compliance efforts in government affairs. Savage was “honored for his consistent advocacy efforts on numerous issues in the state of Colorado, working alongside the Colorado Golf Coalition, which consists of the Rocky Mountain GCSA, Colorado Golf Association, Colorado Section of the PGA and Mile-High Chapter of the Club Management Association of America,” the GCSAA said in a release. Later in the year, Savage was named the Rocky Mountain Golf Course Superintendents Association’s Superintendent of the Year and earned a Distinguished Service Award from the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. READ MORE

22. Sisters Lauren and Katelyn Lehigh of Loveland had quite a run at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball in San Antonio in May. The two shared stroke-play medalist honors and tied the event’s 36-hole scoring record, then advanced all the way to the quarterfinals of the national championship. Lauren, a former standout at the University of New Mexico who turned pro later in the year, and Katelyn, a junior at Fresno State, each won two girls 5A state high school individual titles in Colorado over the last decade. READ MORE

21. Bigfoot Turf Farm southeast of Greeley will host not only next year’s World Long Drive Championships, but a second WLD event in 2025. The World Long Drive Championships — the most prominent event in the long-drive universe — will be coming to the Bigfoot Turf Farm in LaSalle Sept. 24-28, WLD announced in the fall of this year. But that’s not the only 2025 event on the World Long Drive schedule that will be held at Bigfoot Turf Farm. The “Rocky Mountain Rumble” is set for the Weld County location from Aug. 15-17. In other words, over the course of six weeks, two World Long Drive events will tee it up in LaSalle. One of the top female competitors in long drive events lives in Colorado as 2023 WLD Champion Monica Lieving resides in Lakewood. READ MORE

20. Cherry Hills Country Club, the club/course that has hosted more men’s open-age major championships and more USGA championships than any other in Colorado, named a new PGA head professional for just the eighth time in its 102-year history. Bryan Nicholson, a former director of golf at Sahalee Country Club near Seattle, follows in the footsteps of the still-small number of previous PGA head pros at Cherry Hills, located just south of Denver: James Newman, Harold Long, Ralph “Rip” Arnold, Warren Smith, Clayton Cole, John Ogden and Andrew Shuck. Arnold, Smith and Cole are inductees of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. READ MORE

The CSU men’s golf squad celebrates its third straight team title during the fall portion of the schedule.

19. The fact that this feat has happened twice in the last three years at the same Colorado-based NCAA Division I golf program belies how difficult it is. Two years after the CSU men started the season with three straight team titles under then-first-year head coach Michael Wilson, the Rams did it again in 2024, this time under first-year CSU head coach Jack Kennedy. To start the fall portion of the schedule, the Rams won their own Ram Masters Invitational in Fort Collins, the Gene Miranda Falcon Invitational at the Air Force Academy and the Mark Simpson Colorado Invitational in Erie. In one of those events, Colorado resident Matthew Wilkinson posted his first individual college victory as he prevailed at the Falcon Invite. It was a big year for Wilkinson as he also won the CGA Match Play title at age 20. The CU men, who had one of the best falls overall in program history — with a victory, three second places and a third to go along with a 1-3 record in the Big 12 Match Play — is ranked 34th in the National Collegiate Golf Rankings, while CSU is 40th. READ MORE

18. Looking back at some of the top performers at the 2023 U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills Country Club, it’s remarkable what they accomplished this year.

Nick Dunlap, the champion at Cherry Hills, followed Phil Mickelson’s pattern from 33 years ago by winning a PGA Tour event as an amateur five months after claiming the U.S. Amateur title at Cherry Hills. READ MORE Following the victory in The American Express, Dunlap turned pro and earned a second PGA Tour victory in 2024, marking the first time in history that a golfer has won on the PGA Tour as an amateur and a pro in the same year. Not surprisingly, that led to Dunlap earning PGA Tour Rookie of the Year honors before turning 21 on Dec. 23, thus becoming the youngest winner of that award since Jordan Spieth in 2013. Meanwhile, 2023 U.S. Am runner-up Neal Shipley landed low-amateur honors at both the Masters and the U.S. Open in 2024 before turning pro. Shipley became the first player since Viktor Hovland in 2019 to claim low-amateur honors at the Masters and U.S. Open in the same year. Meanwhile, Blades Brown, who at the 2023 U.S. Am became the youngest stroke-play medalist in the 123-year history of the championship (age 16), has announced that he’s turning pro as a 17-year-old and will make his professional debut at the PGA Tour’s American Express next month.

17. Landry Frost of Colorado Springs became the fourth Coloradan in the last three years to win a national title in an individual discipline at the Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals at Augusta National. Frost claimed the chipping championship in April at the home of the Masters. Previous Coloradans to win DCP National Finals disciplines were Jacob Eagan of Castle Rock (chipping) and Brady Shaw of Pueblo (putting, both 2023) and Sophia Capua of Aurora (chipping in 2022) READ MORE

16. University of Colorado-bound Evergreen senior Tyler Long put together a nearly perfect high school golf season in 2024 en route to the Class 3A state title. iWanamaker noted that Long didn’t shoot a tournament score higher than 69 in the 2024 high school season — and that he won — or at least shared the title — at all eight high school events in which he competed. And Long shot 66 or lower six times in his nine competitive rounds. READ MORE Long, earlier this year winner of the AJGA Colorado Springs Junior title, subsequently was named one of two boys Future Famers by the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and landed a spot on the first Team Colorado junior all-star squad put together by the CGA in conjunction with the USGA’s new U.S. National Development Program.

15. Two-time Colorado Open and PGA Tour champion Jonathan Kaye, a Denver native and former University of Colorado golfer, added the Inspirato Colorado Senior Open title to his list of wins. He thus became the first player with major ties to the Centennial State since 2013 to claim the CSO championship. In addition, Kaye became just the third golfer to win titles in both the Colorado Open and the CSO, joining Mike Zaremba and Bill Loeffler. Kaye captured victories in the Colorado Open in 1996 and 2017. READ MORE

14. The Colorado Christian University men’s team became the first Colorado-based college program to win a national team championship in golf. The Cougars defeated North Georgia in the title match to claim the NCAA Division II title in May. It was CCU’s fifth team victory of the season. The national title was the first in CCU athletics history. READ MORE To follow that up, Colorado Christian swept the team titles in all five of its fall tournaments to start the 2024-25 season.

Eleven members of the 16-player Team Colorado junior all-star squad.

13. The inaugural edition of Team Colorado was announced in November, with a who’s who of the state’s junior golf ranks included. Colorado is one of seven states that are part of a pilot program designed to expand the pipeline for elite junior golfers into the recently created U.S. National Development Program. In all, 16 players — eight boys and eight girls — were named to Team Colorado. READ MORE 

About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com