Broadmoor Golf Club - East

Ross design history and timeline

Spencer Penrose commissioned Donald Ross in 1916 to lay out eighteen holes that would anchor the resort he was building at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain. Ross drew the plans that year, construction followed, and the course opened in 1918 in the same season as the hotel itself. At roughly 6,400 feet it was the highest golf course in the United States when it debuted, a distinction the resort promoted heavily. The club has long maintained that Ross regarded The Broadmoor as his finest work; the claim circulates widely in resort materials and golf media, but it rests on the club’s own account rather than on surviving correspondence.

Ross did not return to Colorado Springs for a second construction phase. His eighteen holes occupied the lower, hotel-side portion of the property, and they stood as a single course for three decades. The reconfiguration that produced today’s East Course came from Robert Trent Jones Sr., whom the resort engaged in 1948. Jones built a new nine on the higher ground south of Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard, and in 1952 that nine was joined to nine of Ross’s holes and opened as the East Course. In 1964 Jones returned to build nine more holes and rework the remaining Ross nine into the West Course. The dating of Jones’s work is not consistent across sources: the resort’s chronology gives 1948, 1952 and 1964, while one architectural account places his construction in the mid-1950s and a widely circulated encyclopedia entry compresses the entire expansion into 1965.

What that history left is an unusually well-documented division of authorship. On the East Course, holes 1 through 6 and 16 through 18 are Ross’s; holes 7 through 15 are Jones’s. Ross’s work therefore bookends the round, opening it on the gentle ground nearest the hotel and closing it there again, while Jones’s nine climbs the slope in between. Nine of the eighteen holes a visitor plays today follow Ross’s 1918 routing corridors.

Unique design characteristics

Because the Ross holes open and close the East Course, the first six and the last three are where his work is legible. The 2nd, a 347-yard par 4, plays uphill to a severely tilted green and illustrates the pattern that recurs across his Broadmoor holes: modest length defended almost entirely at the putting surface. The 3rd, a par 5 since lengthened past 600 yards, brings a pond into the approach and asks whether to lay back for a full wedge or press toward a green that will not hold a running ball. The 4th follows immediately over the same water, a 170-yard par 3 to another sharply canted green in full view of the hotel — a piece of resort staging that dates to the original build. The closing stretch returns to this ground, with the 17th now stretching past 600 yards from the championship tees.

The greens are the defining feature, and their difficulty is as much optical as physical. Putts at The Broadmoor break away from the mountains, and the Cheyenne Mountain backdrop reliably deceives players into reading slope that runs the other way; surfaces that appear to rise are often running downhill. The club treats this as its single most useful piece of guidance to visitors, and ranking panels routinely identify it as the course’s signature. On the Ross holes the tilts are subtler than on the upland nine, which makes both line and pace harder to commit to.

The bunkering now reads as Ross throughout, though by reconstruction rather than survival. The shapes are geometric and slightly squared, set behind steep grass faces — a marked departure from the curvaceous forms Jones had introduced. The contrast with the Jones nine remains clear in the ground itself rather than the hazards: the 9th is a sweeping par 5 with water fronting the green, the 10th a long downhill par 4, and the 12th a par 3 of roughly 240 yards played almost entirely as a carry. These are holes of scale and announcement; Ross’s are holes of angle and surface.

Historical significance

The Broadmoor is one of very few Ross commissions executed at genuine mountain altitude, and the only one conceived as the centerpiece of a grand hotel opening in the same season. That interdependence of hotel and course was central to Penrose’s plan, and it gave Ross a problem he encountered nowhere else in his portfolio: a property that rose steeply away from its clubhouse at an elevation where the ball flew distances his eastern work never contemplated. His response — keeping the holes on the lower, gentler ground and defending them at the green rather than through length — is the reason the surviving holes still function against modern championship players.

The East Course has sustained a long USGA relationship. Jack Nicklaus won the 1959 U.S. Amateur here at nineteen, the first of his USGA titles. The 1962 Curtis Cup followed, with the United States defeating Great Britain and Ireland 8–1. Annika Sörenstam won the 1995 U.S. Women’s Open for her first major championship, and the Women’s Open returned in 2011. The U.S. Senior Open has been played here three times — 2008, 2018 and 2025, the last won by Pádraig Harrington by a stroke over Stewart Cink — and the USGA has awarded the championship to The Broadmoor again for 2031 and 2037.

Rating panels place the East Course high without treating it as a pure Ross artifact. Golf Digest ranks it sixth in Colorado in its 2025–26 Best in State list and 47th nationally among public-access courses, and it is one of a small group of North American and Caribbean courses holding the magazine’s five-star rating. GOLF placed it 97th on its 2024–25 Top 100 Courses You Can Play. Panel commentary consistently singles out the green contours and the mountain-driven misreads — that is, the Ross inheritance — as what distinguishes the course.

Current condition and integrity

Ross’s 1918 eighteen no longer exists as a unit and cannot be walked as one. It was divided between the East and West courses in the mid-century expansions, and the East retains nine of those holes. Within that nine, the routing corridors, the green sites and the fundamental surface tilts are the elements that carried through; they were not rebuilt by Jones and they remain the course’s primary defense.

The bunkers are a different matter. Ahead of the 2008 U.S. Senior Open, the club engaged Ron Forse, who worked from historical aerial photographs to reshape the bunkering across the course between roughly 2005 and 2007. Forse returned the hazards to the geometric, steeply grass-faced forms visible in the early images, removed much of the artificial mounding that had accumulated around the greens, and extended the same idiom onto the Jones holes. The effect is that the East Course presents a more consistently Ross-like bunker style today than at any point since 1952 — but the bunkers on the Ross holes are a twenty-first-century reconstruction from photographic evidence, not surviving 1918 fabric, and the distinction matters when assessing integrity.

Other changes are the familiar ones. The Ross holes have been lengthened substantially, most visibly at the 3rd and 17th, both of which now play past 600 yards from the back tees against original dimensions far shorter. Tree growth is heavier than Ross would have seen on open mountain-slope ground in 1918, particularly where corridors run alongside the resort campus, and mowing lines around the green surrounds have been tightened for championship presentation. The macro-tilt of the site, which no renovation has touched, remains the largest intact feature of the Ross era.

Sources & Notes

The Broadmoor (club site) — “Golf Courses” page, accessed Aug. 2026. The club’s hole-by-hole architect attribution (Ross holes 1–6 and 16–18; Jones 7–15), par 72 and 7,355-yard blue-tee yardage.

The Broadmoor (club site) — “Legacy Golf,” accessed Aug. 2026. The 1916 Penrose commission, the 1918 opening, the resort’s chronology of Robert Trent Jones Sr.’s engagement (hired 1948; East formed 1952; West 1964), and the club’s claim that Ross considered The Broadmoor his best work.

Feed the Ball (Derek Duncan) — “Broadmoor East: Ross Turns the Table.” Hole detail for the Ross stretch (the uphill 2nd and its tilted green, the pond-carry 4th), Jones’s curvaceous bunker style, and the scope of Ron Forse’s reshaping from historical aerial photographs, including its extension onto the Jones holes. Places Jones’s construction in the mid-1950s (see disputed items below).

LINKS Magazine — “Stay & Play: The Broadmoor.” Forse’s engagement ahead of the 2008 U.S. Senior Open, the use of old aerials, and the removal of artificial mounding around the greens.

PGA.com — “The Broadmoor’s East Course: Where Golf History Meets Mountain Majesty.” The break-away-from-the-mountains green reading, golden-age green scale, and championship framing.

Golf Digest — Best in State (Colorado) 2025–26 and America’s best public-access rankings. East ranked 6th in Colorado and 47th nationally among public-access courses; one of a small group of North American courses holding the magazine’s five-star rating. Panel commentary on the green contours’ optical illusions.

GOLF Magazine — “Top 100 Courses You Can Play 2024–25.” East ranked 97th; notes the Ross/Jones composite character and the course’s elevation distinction at its 1918 debut.

Top100GolfCourses.com — “Broadmoor (East).” Colorado ranking context and current back-tee yardages for the lengthened 3rd and 17th (both now past 600 yards).

USGA — 2025 U.S. Senior Open championship coverage (Pádraig Harrington over Stewart Cink) and the June 24, 2025 announcement awarding The Broadmoor the 2031 and 2037 U.S. Senior Opens, both to the East Course. USGA records for the 1959 U.S. Amateur (Nicklaus), the 1962 Curtis Cup, and the 1995 and 2011 U.S. Women’s Opens.

Wikipedia — “Broadmoor Golf Club.” Consulted for championship chronology; its variant dating of the Jones expansion (1965) and variant West-course hole attribution are treated as dissenting views rather than followed.

Disputed items. (1) The dating of Jones’s work: the resort gives 1948 (engagement), 1952 (East) and 1964 (West); Feed the Ball places construction in the mid-1950s; Wikipedia compresses the expansion into 1965. The resort’s chronology is followed. (2) “Ross considered it his best work” rests on the club’s own account; no surviving correspondence is cited. (3) The bunkers on the Ross holes are a 2005–07 reconstruction from photographic evidence, not surviving 1918 fabric — sources differ on the programme’s precise dates.