What happened in Denver?
After a couple of weeks off, I traveled to Denver the last week of May to compete in the Colorado Open. I played in this tournament last year and finished T19. It’s a unique tournament for a couple of reasons. The first is that the winner receives $100,000, the same amount as the winner of the Men’s Colorado Open. The other thing that makes it unique is the format. It’s a tournament within a tournament. The professional women are competing against each other and about half of them are also playing in a pro-am at the same time. Last year, I was not on a pro-am team, but this year, I got to play with Bob Webster – CU alum, Boulder resident and father of my former teammate at Oregon State, Kelsey Webster. Kelsey also played and she rounded out our group of three, which was really fun. My parents were there and I had my dad on the bag and my mom on the camera.
The course, Green Valley Ranch, is well designed and very challenging. It has a couple of holes that really make you think. In fact, the local rule is that if you play the last three holes par or better, you get a drink on the house. I started round 1 on the back 9 and managed to play them even par. I birdied #1, (my 10th hole) but an errant tee drive resulted in a double bogey for me on 3. I made an 8 foot putt on #4 for a birdie, but missed the green on #5 and made bogey. I was able to finish the rest of my round even, posting a one over. Due to Bob’s handicap and good play on the second 9, we ham and egged our way to a 7 under in the pro-am.
Almost as soon as we got in from the round, the horn blew and a thunderstorm came through. I was planning to practice, but play was delayed for an hour and a half, so we went home to get some rest. We met up with Bob later that day in Boulder and he gave us a tour of the University of Colorado campus and downtown. CU was the last of the Pac-12 campuses I had to visit. I guess I got there just in time before they left for the Big 12.
Bob and his wife, Susannah, hosted us for a delicious fajita dinner at their house before we headed back to our AirBNB. My round 2 tee time was in the afternoon. Thunderstorms were predicted, so we were a little concerned about getting our full round in. I played pretty well, but my putts were just missing. I ended the round 2 over, without any weather delay and well within the cut at T26. There were a couple pro-am teams that just went nuts in the morning round, when there was no wind, so we did not advance in the pro-am.
I was feeling good about the final round, and looking forward to playing in the morning without all the wind. I got to bed early, but around 10:30, the alert went off on my phone, warning that a severe hail storm was moving into the area. Within minutes, it sounded like we were in a war zone. Hail the size of golf balls were coming down like they were being shot from a cannon. It went on for about a half an hour and was followed by very hard rain for a few hours.
The next morning, I woke up to an hour weather delay while they assessed the damage to the course. My dad and I went out to check the rental car. It’s windshield was shattered on the driver’s side and it had dents all over it – hood, roof, sides. It was terrible. It doesn’t look that bad in the picture below, but trust me, it was pretty damaged.
Before 8 a.m., I got a text that round 3 was canceled and the tournament was over. I was really disappointed because I felt like I could move up the leaderboard, but what can you do? We’ve dealt with a lot of adverse conditions this year – tornados, wind, heat, bugs. It’s just part of the game I guess.
Since we had a full day, we decided to go back to Boulder for a hike. The city sits at the base of the Flat Iron mountains and there miles and miles of trails leading into the mountains literally in the middle of the city. We drove our battered car there and spent several hours hiking and enjoying the scenery. We also visited Golden and Red Rock Amphitheatre. There was a concert there that night so we couldn’t go inside, but I got enough of a glimpse to know that I want to go back.
When we returned our car the following morning on our way to the airport, the agent said they had more than 100 cars returned with damage and ours had the least damage of any she had seen. It didn’t make us feel any better!
