Cherry Hills Country Club

William Flynn designed Cherry Hills Country Club in 1922 on a piece of Denver-suburb prairie at the foot of the Front Range, at an elevation of 5,200 feet. The course hosted the U.S. Open in 1938 (Ralph Guldahl), 1960 (Arnold Palmer), and 1978 (Andy North), the PGA Championship in 1941 (Vic Ghezzi) and 1985 (Hubert Green), and the BMW Championship in 2014. The Palmer 1960 victory is the moment the course is best remembered for — he drove the first green, a 346-yard par-4 in thin Colorado air, to set up an opening birdie that became part of the round of 65 that won him his only U.S. Open.

The scorecard at the back markers reads 7,316 yards, par 72, with a slope of 145 and a course rating of 76.5. The Cherry Hills altitude makes the yardage misleading — every iron carries roughly seven percent further than it would at sea level, and the par-72 plays effectively closer to 6,900 yards in the air the architects designed around. The four par-3s sit between 165 and 242 yards. The 242-yard twelfth is the longest one-shotter on the routing and plays directly into the prevailing west wind that builds through the afternoon.

The four par-5s range from 484 to 592 yards. The 484-yard sixteenth is reachable for any tour-level player and is a scoring chance throughout championship play; the 592-yard ninth is the longest hole on the card and plays uphill into wind. The number-one handicap is the 544-yard fourteenth — a par-5 that the modern long hitter can reach in two, but the green is angled hard right against a creek that captures anything short or left. The 553-yard second-hardest is the long par-5 fifteenth.

Cherry Hills Village sits in a high-desert continental climate band — cool nights, low humidity, intense daytime sun. The playing window runs March through November, with the firmest conditions arriving in September and October. Afternoon thunderstorms are a July and August risk; rounds get suspended frequently through summer. The membership preserves the Flynn routing the 1960 U.S. Open was played on, with only modest tee additions added to keep pace with the modern ball.