Mike Zaremba of Pueblo West — the first player to complete a sweep of the Colorado Open and Colorado Senior Open titles — set to call it a career after 50 years as a golf professional
By Gary Baines – 3/19/2026
The symmetry and timing regarding Mike Zaremba’s career as a golf professional seems fitting.
A nice round figure of 50 years in the business.
Zaremba turned pro in April 1976 and his first job as a golf pro came that month when he became the head pro at Hollydot Golf Course southwest of Pueblo. And he’s scheduled to retire on March 31 as the PGA director of golf at Desert Hawk at Pueblo West — though it’s possible that end date might be extended, depending on when his successor might settle into the position.
That’s almost exactly a half-century as an actively working golf pro in the state. Asked if that timing is special and Zaremba said, “Gosh, I guess so. I never thought about it.
“This is the only thing I really wanted to do,” the 71-year-old said in a recent phone interview. “That’s the way it worked out.”
It’s coincidental, but Zaremba’s impending departure comes just months after two other prominent Colorado PGA professionals retired after similarly very long careers in the golf business in the Centennial State. Kyle Heyen (Hiwan Golf Club in Evergreen) and Alan Abrams (Indian Tree Golf Club in Arvada) called it a career in the fall and the early winter, respectively, after runs of more than 45 years as golf professionals.
Golf pros actively working in the business for close to a half-century in Colorado are definitely a rarity — despite Zaremba, Heyen and Abrams retiring so closely together.
Think of it this way in the case of Zaremba: When he was hired at Hollydot in 1976, the country had not yet celebrated its bicentennial — or Colorado its centennial. This summer, the USA turns 250 years old and Colorado 150.
Mike Zaremba has been named Colorado PGA overall player of the year and senior player of the year twice each.
Zaremba, a graduate of Mitchell High School in Colorado Springs and what is now known as CSU Pueblo, has had director of golf or head professional stints at Hollydot, the course now known as Desert Hawk at Pueblo West, Walking Stick (which he opened), and back at the newly renovated Desert Hawk. In fact, from about 1999 to 2006, he managed three courses at once — Desert Hawk, Walking Stick and Elmwood. All told, he’s been a PGA of America member since 1981.
One of the highlights of Pueblo golf over that half-century came in 2006 when Walking Stick hosted the U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship. Of all the 36 USGA championships held in Colorado, that one was the furthest from Denver. Tiffany Joh won the first of her two USWAPL titles that year. Zaremba was a key figure in bringing the event to Walking Stick, and he served as tournament chairman for the event.
“I was pretty proud of that,” he said.
And throughout his career as a director of golf/head professional, Zaremba has been one of the top players among club pros in the state.
Only three golfers in history have won both the Colorado Open and the Colorado Senior Open — and Zaremba was the first of them, prevailing by a stroke in the Colorado Open in 1995 at Inverness, and by three in the 2005 CSO at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club. Later, Bill Loeffler and Jonathan Kaye accomplished the CO/CSO title feat.
Asked what he considers his top accomplishments as a player, and the Colorado Open comes to mind first for Zaremba.
“You know what? The Colorado Open was awfully good,” he said. “I mean, there’s no doubt about it. That’s a tough one to win. Everything’s got to go right that week.”
Zaremba remembers holing out two full-swing shots that week — one with a 7-iron and another with a wedge, “which seemed to make the difference when I was going a little bad. I holed a shot, and then all of a sudden I’m right back in it.” Zaremba also remembers draining about a 15-foot putt on the final hole to edge out fellow Colorado PGA pro Mike Northern by one.
“I don’t know if there’s a bigger (state open) in the country than that, so that’s an awfully, awfully strong field all the time,” Zaremba said of the Colorado Open. “I was ecstatic to win that.”
Zaremba still plans to compete in retirement — both in Colorado and Mexico, where he hopes to host a pro-am tournament.
Then earning the distinction of completing the Colorado Open-CSO career sweep a decade later, that was a another proud moment.
“No question,” Zaremba said. “I was the first (to do that). So that was great.”
Zaremba also captured the New Mexico Open title, in 1996, joining PGA Tour winners Lee Trevino (1966 and ’72), Paul Stankowski (1992) and Notah Begay (1998) on the champions list.
In the Colorado PGA’s top tournaments, Zaremba has won the open-age Colorado PGA Professional Championship twice (1987 and ’99) and the senior title twice (2005 and ’18). He’s captured the CPGA Dow Finsterwald Player of the Year award and the Senior POY honor two times each.
As a senior (age 50 plus), Zaremba has competed in six major championships (three U.S. Senior Opens and three Senior PGA Championships, including the 2010 edition at Colorado Golf Club in Parker.)
The most memorable of the bunch was the first one — the 2004 U.S. Senior Open at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis. That’s because Dow Finsterwald, the retired PGA director of golf at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, called Zaremba and set him up for a practice round with Arnold Palmer, a longtime close friend of Finsterwald, who won 12 PGA Tour titles himself. And once Zaremba was on site, Palmer arranged for fellow World Golf Hall of Famer Gary Player to join them for the round.
“That was one of my highlights,” Zaremba said. “That right there was something special. Let me tell you: It’s just impressive being around those guys for four hours.
“I’d never played in front of that kind of crowd. And let me tell you, they pack them in.”
As for specific things he remembers from that day, Zaremba said he recalls initially not even being able to get close to Palmer on the range to introduce himself due to the large media contingent surrounding the King. When Zaremba did get to say hello to Arnie, Palmer subsequently apologized to him after arranging for an earlier tee time for them than originally planned and for asking Player to join them.
“That guy, he made you feel like a million dollars,” Zaremba said of Palmer. “When he told me that, I remember my caddie giving me my 7-iron and saying, ‘Let’s just see if we can hit it on the range right now.’
“I remember how cordial those two guys were — and how good a players they were at that age. Anything they could do to help me … Gary Player had won the U.S. Open there at Bellerive years earlier (in 1965, completing the career Grand Slam), and he was showing me the shots he was hitting from the bunkers (in ’65). It was just unbelievable.”
Asked if he got to have lunch with Palmer and Player after the round, Zaremba said, “No. I couldn’t even get near them afterward because they were signing so many autographs. In fact, I beat them out of a couple of dollars — both of them — and couldn’t even collect.
“(That day) was just a great memory for me.”
Zaremba, who started as a golf professional in 1976 at Hollydot, has managed multiple courses in Pueblo over the course of his career, and once served as volunteer head coach for his alma mater, CSU Pueblo.
Days like those are certainly special, but they’re also incredibly rare for most club professionals. In Zaremba’s case, the norm for many days as a professional are long hours spent at the golf course in his job as the director of golf or head professional.
“Any more, as busy as the golf courses are …,” he said. “I open up every day, seven days a week. And the programs you do with ladies and juniors and all, I do those in the evening, 6 or 7 o’clock, when we can get on the course and there’s nobody out there. So they are long days. … You know, you get tired after a while.”
Which brings up the question about how the business at courses has changed over the last half century.
“The pro shop is harder because now all your big vendors sell online to everybody,” Zaremba said. “That’s considerably harder than it used to be. It’s kind of funny. I went through full circle here; We had a lot of youth players when I first started. And then all of a sudden, none. And now, if you look at the demographics of golf, the biggest segment again are 18 to 34 (year-olds). So the golf’s in good hands now. I think that had a lot to do with Covid and a lot of it to do with all the junior programs all the pros have (as well as Youth on Course). Because now I’ve got so many juniors playing the course, and it’s great. These kids can play for it for five bucks. They love it.”
Speaking of relatively young players, another thing Zaremba looks back fondly upon in his career is coaching at his alma mater. Back in the 1970s, Zaremba played golf at what was then known as Southern Colorado State College, then as the University of Southern Colorado, earning All-America status in 1974. (In fact, he played a year of basketball at the school as well.) But the men’s golf program eventually went away. But Zaremba played a big role in resurrecting it, serving as the volunteer head coach from 1988 to ’96. During that period, using just about all southern Colorado golfers, the school won five Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championships. In 1994, Zaremba was named RMAC Coach of the Year and Regional Coach of the Year.
“I just said, ‘My gosh, they’ve got to have a program here,” Zaremba said. “We got a bunch of guys from the community and we funded it for three years and then the college said, ‘If you could do that, we’ll take it over.’ I didn’t take a dime out of it, but we were very successful.”
For what he’s done within and for the program and the university, Zaremba was inducted into the CSU Pueblo Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012. He’s also a member of the Greater Pueblo Sports Association Hall of Fame, enshrined in 2018.
As for what his future holds, Zaremba said that he and his wife Susan plan to spend roughly half the year living in Pueblo West and half in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. A Colorado resident since the late 1960s, Zaremba has spent quite a bit of time in Puerto Vallarta and has played in some tournaments there. In fact, he’s working on organizing and hosting an annual pro-am over four courses there.
The city “is a great little pearl down there,” he said. “I just like it so much. And the weather is so perfect.”
Then when he’s back in Colorado, Zaremba plans to play in some tournaments, including perhaps the Colorado Senior Open and some Colorado PGA events.
“I still like to compete; there’s no question about that,” he said.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com