Cherry Hills Country Club

Cherry Hills Country Club is a historic championship venue in Englewood, Colorado, designed by William Flynn. Set at an elevation of over 5,300 feet, it has hosted the U.S. Open, PGA Championship, and U.S. Women's Open, and is best known for Arnold Palmer's legendary charge in the 1960 U.S. Open. The club also features the Rip Arnold Course, a 9-hole par-3 layout built in 1962 and named for the club's beloved head professional who championed junior golf development.

Cherry Hills Country Club was founded in 1922 by a group of prominent members from the Denver Country Club who shared a singular ambition: to create a club devoted entirely to golf. They selected a 272-acre parcel of land south of Denver, at an elevation of approximately 5,300 feet, named for the cherry orchard that once occupied the property. The founders enlisted William S. Flynn, a Philadelphia-based architect who was emerging as a standout talented course designer of his generation, to create the layout. Flynn was paid $4,500 for his services, a modest sum even by the standards of the day, and upon completing his work, he described the result as a top-notch layout with few equals and no superior. The course that Flynn fashioned would prove him prophetic: Cherry Hills has hosted more major national championships than virtually any other club in the country. Flynn's design at Cherry Hills employed his philosophy of leveraging natural terrain with minimal artificial intervention. He routed the front nine in an hourglass pattern before wrapping the back nine around the outward holes in a counter-clockwise direction, creating a compelling rhythm that builds steadily toward a dramatic finish. Little Dry Creek meanders through the property, crossing fairways and running alongside greens to create natural strategic dilemmas on multiple holes. The gently rolling parkland terrain, punctuated by mature trees and the winding creek, gave Flynn a canvas of remarkable variety, and he responded with a course that demands every shot in the bag while rewarding intelligence and creativity over raw power. The 17th hole features what has been described as one of the first par-five island greens in the nation, a bold design choice that was ahead of its time. Cherry Hills first entered the national spotlight in 1938 when the USGA awarded the club the U.S. Open Championship, making it the first time the tournament had been contested west of the Mississippi River. Ralph Guldahl won with a commanding six-stroke victory, defending the title he had won the previous year. That same tournament produced a standout notorious moment in championship history: Ray Ainsley recorded a 19 on a single hole, a U.S.

Open record that still stands. The 1941 PGA Championship followed, with Vic Ghezzi defeating Byron Nelson on the 38th hole in a grueling match-play final. But it was the 1960 U.S. Open that forever etched Cherry Hills into golfing legend. Entering the final round, Arnold Palmer trailed the leaders by seven strokes. Over lunch before his afternoon tee time, Palmer asked a group of sportswriters whether a 65 in the final round could win. Told it was unlikely to matter, Palmer strode to the first tee and launched a drive that carried the green on the 346-yard par-four opening hole. He made birdie, then proceeded to birdie five of the remaining first six holes. Palmer fired a blistering 65 to win his only U.S. Open Championship by two strokes over a twenty-year-old amateur named Jack Nicklaus, who was competing in just his second Open. Ben Hogan, the fifty-seven-year-old legend seeking an unprecedented fifth Open title, was in contention until the 17th hole, where his approach to the island green spun back into the water. Hogan finished tied for ninth. The convergence of Palmer's charge, Nicklaus's emergence, and Hogan's heartbreak made the 1960 Open one of the defining events in golf history. The championships continued to come. Andy North won the 1978 U.S.

Open at Cherry Hills with a score of 285, one over par, edging Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus. In 1985, Hubert Green captured the PGA Championship, defeating Lee Trevino by two strokes at six under par. The 1990 U.S. Amateur saw Phil Mickelson defeat Manny Zerman 5 and 4 in the final, becoming only the second player to win both the NCAA Championship and the U.S. Amateur in the same year. Three years later, in 1993, Jack Nicklaus returned to Cherry Hills at age fifty-three to win the U.S. Senior Open, his eighth and final USGA championship, defeating Tom Weiskopf by a single stroke in an emotional triumph. The 2005 U.S. Women's Open produced another unforgettable moment when Birdie Kim holed out from a greenside bunker on the 72nd hole to claim victory at three over par. Most recently, in 2023, Nick Dunlap won the U.S. Amateur Championship, defeating Neal Shipley 4 and 3 and becoming just the second player after Tiger Woods to win both the U.S. Junior Amateur and U.S. Amateur. In total, Cherry Hills has hosted fourteen or more national championships, including three U.S. Opens, two PGA Championships, a U.S.

Women's Open, a U.S. Senior Open, three U.S. Amateurs, a U.S. Senior Amateur, a U.S. Mid-Amateur, and the 2014 BMW Championship, where Billy Horschel won at fourteen under par and the event raised $3.5 million for the Evans Scholars Foundation. The club also holds a unique place in American sports history beyond golf. In 1963, Cherry Hills hosted the Davis Cup tennis competition between the United States and Venezuela, a 5-0 American victory that marked the debut of a young Arthur Ashe on the international stage. Over the decades, the course underwent various modifications that gradually moved it away from Flynn's original vision. Recognizing the need to honor its architectural heritage while preparing for future championships, the club commissioned Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf Design in 2007 to undertake a comprehensive restoration.Doak's team restored original bunkers that had been removed or softened over the years, reconstructed Little Dry Creek to its natural state, removed hundreds of trees to reopen the sightlines and strategic corridors that Flynn had intended, and returned green complexes to their original contours. The clubhouse also underwent a $50 million renovation completed in 2023. The result is a course that honors Flynn's masterful original routing while meeting the demands of championship golf in the modern era. Cherry Hills Country Club maintains a membership of approximately four hundred families and carries a championship course rating of 75.8 with a slope of 145. The club also features the Rip Arnold Course, a nine-hole par-three layout measuring 665 yards that was added in 1962. With its incomparable championship pedigree, its association with some of golf's most iconic moments, and its faithfully restored Flynn design, Cherry Hills stands as one of the great pillars of American golf.