By Dan Karpiel

The Surveyor

Professional golf will be returning to Colorado this summer, and Berthoud will be front and center.

Last Thursday at the TPC Golf Course in Berthoud came the formal announcement and introduction for the TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes. The Web.com Tour event, held over four days from July 11-14, will mark the return of men’s professional golf to Colorado for the first time since 2006. An agreement between the Web.com Tour – the professional development tour for the PGA Tour – and TPC Colorado was reached to keep the tournament here in Berthoud for the next five years, or through 2023.

“Bringing the Web.com event to our club will just really magnify the Berthoud community and northern Colorado,” said John Buser, general manager of TPC Colorado.

Each year the top-25 money leaders on the Web.com Tour are given their PGA Tour membership cards for the following season. The Web.com Tour, formerly known as the Ben Hogan Tour, the Nike Tour, the Buy.com Tour and the Nationwide Tour, has been in existence for 30 years and serves as the primary avenue of qualification for the PGA Tour and currently three of out of every four PGA Tour members are Web.com Tour alumni. The Web.com Tour boasts 23 major champions and eight PLAYERS champions and includes current PGA stars such as Bubba Watson, Justin Thomas, Jason Day, Tony Finau and Jason Dufner.

The tournament will be of the traditional four-day (Thursday-Sunday) 72-hole format that will include 156 players competing for a $600,000 purse. After the opening 36 holes on Thursday and Friday, the field will be cut down to the low 65 players, ties included, for the final two rounds over the weekend.

TPC Colorado is the first new golf course to be built in Colorado in 10 years. While the 18-hole championship course that features a links-style design reminiscent of golf courses on the other side of the Atlantic is the centerpiece, the 800-plus-acre development, when completed, will feature much more.

Jon Turner, the developer behind the entire Heron Lakes community, explained the area will include the golf course with its 60,000-square-foot clubhouse, slated for final completion in spring of 2020, as well as a resort-style pool, exercise facility, a beach club for community residents, a marina on Lonetree Reservoir, and over eight miles of a trail system that will connect to the existing Berthoud trails system. Also, when built out to completion, the area will include 1,188 residential housing units.

“This is not an ordinary golf or country club. The vision our ownership group has, this is going to be a unique, family-driven, active-lifestyle club and community,” Buser explained. “In addition to an amazing golf course, we’re going to have swimming, active boating, kayaking, paddle boarding, hunting, over eight miles of trails that connect to the Berthoud trails system and the front range trails … in addition to world-class golf.”

Also announced last week was David Duval, former major champion and a 13-time winner on the PGA Tour, has accepted an invitation to play in this summer’s inaugural tournament. Duval highlights a field that will also include Denver native and Web.com Tour professional, Mark Hubbard.

Over the course of his professional career Duval achieved many of the sport’s highest accolades, including a win in the 2001 Open Championship as well as 10 more top-10 finishes in the four major championships, wins at the Tour Championship and the PLAYERS Championship, PGA Tour money leader, Vardon Trophy and Byron Nelson Award in 1998 and spots on the United States’ Ryder Cup and President’s cup teams in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002.

“We are thrilled to have David Duval join what’s shaping up to be an incredible field for the first TPC Colorado Open Championship at Heron Lakes. To have David, who originally started his storied career on this tour, join this event, truly shows how much he loves not only golf, but Colorado and his community,” said tournament director, David Blass.

Tickets for the TPC Colorado Championship at Heron Lakes start at $15 and can be purchased online at TPCColoradoChampionship.com.