Tim Harty, The Business Times

The COVID-19 pandemic stopped a lot of people from doing a lot of things in 2020 and 2021, but golf wasn’t one of them.

Because golfers are outdoors, making it easy to stay six feet away from people, the Grand Valley’s golf courses got the blessing of the Mesa County Health Department to be open for business.

And people who never fancied themselves golfers took an interest in the sport if for no other reason than to avoid going stir-crazy at home.

As a result, the number of rounds being played and revenues increased significantly over prior years for the likes of Tiara Rado Golf Course, Lincoln Park Golf Course, Bookcliff Country Club, the Golf Club at Redlands Mesa, Adobe Creek National Golf Course and Chipeta Golf Course.

Once COVID restrictions loosened and life returned to pre-pandemic norms, the windfall for the Grand Valley’s golf courses could have ended there, but their managers are happy to say interest in the game has not dwindled.

ADOBE CREEK AND CHIPETA

The Adobe Creek and Chipeta golf courses are owned by the Wilson Golf Group, and Joe Toke, general manager of both courses, said the increase in play surged during the pandemic and hasn’t stopped.

“People got outside, got to learn a little bit about golf and realized, ‘Hey, this is kind of fun,’” Toke said. “Once they got outside and actually started doing it, just like a lot of us, once you start doing it, you fall in love with it. Once you fall in love with it, you wanna do it more and more and more. So, I think that’s the biggest reason why the golf boom has happened here on the Western Slope as well as the whole nation.”

Toke said he knows it’s a national trend because of the other golf courses owned by Wilson Golf Group in states such as Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

“Every single one of them have had numbers that if not record setting, are close to it,” Toke said. “So, it’s not just us on the West Slope, it’s nationwide.”

Count Adobe Creek and Chipeta among the courses breaking their records. Toke provided numbers based on starts (people playing nine holes or 18 holes) and said Adobe Creek, which has three nine-hole layouts for 27 holes, had about 68,000 starts in 2024. The previous record was 57,000 starts.

“All the leagues have grown, all the tournaments have grown, and all the open play has grown,” Toke said.

Chipeta Golf Course, which is an 18-hole executive course (par 59), had about 51,000 starts in 2024, and for comparison, Toke said the number of starts in 2017 was 24,000.

“2017-18-19 was tough, then COVID came, and people played through COVID pretty well, and it’s grown every single year since 2017,” Toke said.

TIARA RADO AND LINCOLN PARK

At City of Grand Junction-owned Tiara Rado, an 18-hole course, and Lincoln Park, a nine-hole course, Director of Golf Tim Tafoya said the number of rounds in 2024 was 73,500 combined, with about 39,000 of those rounds at Tia Rado.

And when comparing the peak months of May through September last year, he said Tiara Rado was up at least 15 percent from 2020, and Lincoln Park was up nearly 20 percent.

“We’ve been going up tremendously. We haven’t really had a down year since COVID kind of gave us the bump,” Tafoya said.

City of Grand Junction General Services Director Jay Valentine said people flocked to the golf courses during COVID, but post-COVID came with no guarantees.

“Golf is a disposable-income sport for most, and once COVID was done, we needed to make sure that people still stayed engaged and still stayed out golfing,” he said.

Valentine said the city’s courses were and still are price-sensitive “to make sure that we’re not pricing people out of the enjoyment of golf.” Tafoya said Lincoln Park lowered its greens fees a couple years ago, and Valentine added it’s priced to be a bargain, and “it’s probably the cheapest golf that you can play in the state of Colorado or in the region.”

Beyond prices drawing customers, Valentine commended Tafoya and his staff at both golf courses for constantly connecting with golfers.

“They work hard all year long trying to continue to engage those that want to start playing, keep people playing, provide lessons, provide youth programs, balancing tournament play with public play and so forth,” Valentine said. “So, it’s an ongoing effort. It’s not just sitting back and relying on the COVID surge to keep us afloat.”

Tafoya added the city courses’ rates were raised a little this year but remain fair. 

For a resident walking on a weekday, it’s $12 for nine holes ($9 with a season pass) at Lincoln Park, and it’s $46 for 18 holes ($24 with a season pass) at Tiara Rado. And he echoed Valentine in saying they’re trying to keep golf affordable.

“I think we’re doing that,” he said. “A lot of folks have raised their rates, and, yes, we have raised our rates, approximately 10 to 15 percent this year. But in raising those rates we’re still on the low end of most of the golf courses in the area, ratewise. I know that Redlands (Mesa) continues to increase their rate year over year. Delta, which is also a municipal golf course there, Devil’s Thumb, they raised their rate to over $80 for 18 holes. Battlement (Mesa), it’s always been right around that $100 price point. So we’re really competitive in our rates and certainly because of the product that our guys put out.”

GOLF CLUB AT REDLANDS MESA

At Redlands Mesa, the rates indeed have increased, and Director of Golf Maxwell Weckerly said that needed to be done to put pricing in line with what should be charged at a public course that gets ranked among the best in Colorado.

Pricing isn’t easily pinned down, because Redlands Mesa switched to a dynamic-rate system, meaning the price depends on the time of the year, day of the week and time of day. But Weckerly said the average peak-season price is about $160 for a round, and that includes a cart, because walking the course is prohibited. However, Mesa County residents get a 30 percent discount, and there are promotions such as Mesa County Monday, when it’s only $75 to play for a Mesa County resident.

Tiara Rado and Adobe Creek charge less, but plenty of people remain willing to pay to play Redlands Mesa. That was clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Weckerly said, “When Covid happened we obviously had to make a lot of changes, and we had to have people have their own carts, and there were lots of differences that we had to implement, but we were full every single day. I mean, we used every single one of our carts pretty much every day.”

Weckerly said the number of rounds the past three years aren’t as high they were during 2020 and 2021, but at approximately 30,000 rounds each of the past few years, they remain significantly higher than they were pre-pandemic.

“It’s not as big as that real COVID surge was, but we still do get a lot of golf,” he said. “And I think the cool thing about it is it inspired a lot of people to go try the sport out, and then once they did, they were like, ‘Oh this is pretty fun, pretty cool,’ so then people kept up with it.”

Weckerly said he doesn’t have exact numbers prior to 2018, which was the year his parents bought Golf Club at Redlands Mesa (and since then Maxwell and his four siblings have bought into the golf course, too). And that sale and subsequent changes, he said, boosted the rounds being played, regardless of COVID.

Weckerly estimates the annual rounds played before 2018 were about 15,000 to 20,000 per year, and that was at lower pricing.

BOOKCLIFF COUNTRY CLUB

As a private club, only members get to play Bookcliff Country Club, and Bookcliff General Manager Dave Fiscus said its members responded the same way golfers did at public courses during COVID.

And the momentum has continued post-COVID, as he said increased play “kinda happened organically with COVID, and then just, I think, the valley’s growing, so our membership count has continued to rise.”

Fiscus can’t provide hard numbers for comparison, because Bookcliff County Club recently changed its system for counting rounds. He said they get an accurate count now, but in prior years the numbers were a little suspect.

“I think in years past people would just go out and play and not really check in in some cases, so it’s not the true number,” Fiscus said.

For 2024, though, he can say the total rounds were about 18,000, and “definitely last year it would be safe to say that we’re 2,000 to 3,000 rounds higher than what we used to be.”

MORE ABOUT LOCAL GOLF

WHAT’S IT GONNA COST?

To contact the Grand Valley’s public golf courses for rates, tee times or more information, try the following:

Adobe Creek National Golf Course:

876 18 1/2 Road, Fruita; 970-858-0521, adobecreekgolf.com

Chipeta Golf Course:

222 29 Road, Grand Junction; 970-245-7177; chipetagolf.com

Lincoln Park Golf Course:

1240 Gunnison Ave., Grand Junction; 970-254-3890; 

golfgrandjunction.net/lincoln-park

The Golf Club at Redlands Mesa:

2325 W. Ridges Blvd., Grand Junction; 970-255-7400; redlandsmesa.com

Tiara Rado Golf Course:

2057 S. Broadway, Grand Junction; 970-254-3830; 

golfgrandjunction.net/tiara-rado

DON’T FORGET THE PRIVATE CLUB

Bookcliff Country Club is a private golf course for members only. For membership information, call 970-243-3323, email membership@bookcliffcc.com or go online to bookcliffcc.com.