Broadmoor Golf Club West Course

The Broadmoor Golf Club West Course in Colorado Springs is an 18-hole resort layout that blends holes from Donald Ross's original 1918 design with additions by Robert Trent Jones Sr., set at an elevation of 6,800 feet in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The West Course is characterized by more heavily tree-lined fairways, steeply contoured greens, and more pronounced doglegs than its East Course counterpart, offering sweeping views of both the mountains and the city below. It hosted the 1998 PGA Cup Matches and has been a signature element of The Broadmoor resort's golf program for over a century.

The Broadmoor Golf Club's West Course in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. and opened in 1964 as the second championship course at one of America's most celebrated mountain resort properties. Jones had already contributed to the Broadmoor's golf program through his work redesigning portions of the East Course in the early 1950s; the West Course commission gave him the opportunity to design a complete 18-hole layout on the same Colorado Springs resort grounds, allowing him to apply his mature design philosophy to terrain where elevation, mountain scenery, and the resort context shaped every decision. Robert Trent Jones Sr. was at the peak of his influence in 1964 — the post-World War II era that had established him as the dominant force in American golf course architecture. His work at Baltusrol, Oakland Hills, and dozens of other courses had defined the "championship" aesthetic of mid-century American golf: courses of significant length, with elevated greens, strategic bunkering, and the dramatic water features that had become his signature.

At the Broadmoor West Course, Jones worked with the natural elevation changes and mountain context of the Colorado Springs terrain, creating a layout that balanced his characteristic boldness with the visual restraint the resort setting required. The West Course plays to a par 71, somewhat shorter in overall yardage than the East Course, with a routing that uses the terrain adjacent to the main resort campus to create playing variety while maintaining the immaculate conditioning standards that the Broadmoor's operational excellence demands. Jones's green complexes on the West Course reflect his characteristic approach: elevated surfaces with defined edges that penalize misses and reward the accurate approach shot that identifies the correct line from the tee. The Broadmoor resort's relationship with golf extends across more than a century of continuous operation, from Spencer Penrose's founding vision in 1918 through the resort's current status as a Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond property.

The resort has committed consistently to maintaining both the East and West Courses at standards appropriate to a property that attracts visitors from around the world specifically for the combination of Broadmoor service standards and Broadmoor golf. That commitment has required periodic renovation investments on both courses to preserve the playing quality that Jones and Ross's designs require. Subsequent renovation work by Mark Rathert in 1997 updated elements of Jones's 1964 design, addressing bunker design and green complexes while preserving the fundamental routing and character of the original layout. More recent work by Ron Forse and Jim Nagle further refined the course's playing surfaces and hazard configurations, extending the West Course's life as a competitive resort layout appropriate to the Broadmoor's exacting standards.

The combination of the Broadmoor's East Course (Ross/Jones) and West Course (Jones) gives the resort 36 holes of design pedigree that few American properties can match — two courses whose architects are represented individually in the World Golf Hall of Fame, whose combined tournament history spans more than a century of USGA championships, and whose mountain Colorado Springs setting provides the backdrop that Spencer Penrose envisioned when he built one of America's great resort properties in the shadow of Pikes Peak.