At Long Last

4-time Colorado Open champion Dave Hill will become first athlete from golf world to be inducted into Colorado Sports Hall of Fame since 2013

By Gary Baines 

Fifty-four years after being one of the inaugural inductees into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, Dave Hill will be enshrined in the Colorado Sports HOF in 2027.

This week, the selection committee for the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame selected Hill and five others for induction on April 15 at the Hilton Denver City Center. Joining the 13-time PGA Tour winner in the class of 2027 are Broncos Ring of Famer Tom Nalen, former Rockies standout Carlos González, retired champion runner Jenny (Barringer) Simpson, Bolder Boulder co-founder Steve Bosley and retired longtime Broncos media relations/PR director Jim Saccomano.

Hill will be the first person since Steve Jones in 2013 to be inducted based largely on what they accomplished in golf. Others from the golf world in the CSHOF include Babe Zaharias (1974), Joan Birkland (1981), Hale Irwin (1986), Dale Douglass (1989), Judy Bell (1996), Barbara McIntire (1998), Jack Vickers (1999), Babe Lind (2004), Dow Finsterwald (2008) and Will Nicholson Jr. (2011).

Hill resided in Colorado — primarily in Evergreen — for much of the prime of his career, though he was born in Michigan. He passed away in 2011 at age 74.

The second of Hill’s 13 PGA Tour victories came at the 1961 Denver Open, held at Meadow Hills Country Club. Then from 1971 to ’81, he won four Colorado Open titles at Hiwan Golf Club in his hometown of Evergreen. No one before or since has matched or surpassed that total.

Also in the Centennial State, Hill was one of the owners of Park Hill Golf Course in Denver during the 1970s and early ‘80s.

Besides his 13 PGA Tour wins, Hill won the Vardon Trophy for lowest season-long scoring average on the PGA Tour in 1969. He also represented the U.S. in three Ryder Cups, and claimed six titles on PGA Tour Champions.

When the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame was founded in 1973, Hill, Zaharias and Lind comprised its first induction class.

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