Anybody who watched the Senior PGA Championship on TV last weekend had to be impressed with Colorado GC, the Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw course outside Denver making its debut as a major championship site. Like just about every course that duo designs, the course looked natural, quirky, challenging and fun to play.
Can you sense the "but" coming?
Turns out Colorado GC is in a bit of a tight spot, financially -- which really shouldn't be a big surprise, considering it opened three years ago, just about the time the recession wave began to break over golf's shoreline. In his report from the Senior PGA in this week's issue of Golf World, senior editor Bill Fields talked to Mike McGetrick, founding owner of the upscale private club, who denied rumors the club would close after the tournament.
"No, we're not [closing]," McGetrick told Fields. "We hope in the next 90 days to be recapitalized, and that things are going to be great. We have 308 members, and Colorado GC is going to be here, whether I own it or somebody else does."
In a wrapup story published Tuesday, the Denver Post touched on the "instability" of Colorado GC, and floated the idea that the PGA of America might buy the club in an arrangement similar to its ownership of Kentucky's Valhalla GC. But McGetrick and PGA of America CEO Joe Steranka, while admitting a possible sale has been discussed, didn't sound optimistic that it would happen.
"The talks were never serious, in part because of the uncertainty of what's going on here," Steranka told the Post. "Valhalla is still a Kentucky-run private club; while the PGA owns it, we're very hands-off in the management. In my mind, corporate-run clubs lose their individuality, the personal culture."
You can read the entire Denver Post story here.
-- G.R.
