First 18-hole rounds played at Rodeo Dunes; general public play set to start on May 1, 2027, with $350 green fee planned; work on second 18-hole course, putting course, short course beginning
By Gary Baines
ROGGEN — Perhaps it’s a telling indicator, given the relatively remote location of the budding — and enticing — Rodeo Dunes golf complex, located roughly 42 miles northeast of Denver International Airport.
The Colorado Golf Hall of Fame recently conducted an online auction that helps raise money for the organization and its museum, located at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. The auction, which closed earlier this week, featured many items, including rounds of golf at quite a few Colorado courses, including some of the most prestigious in the state.
Among the very highest bids for golf-only opportunities were for a foursome at Ballyneal ($4,800 for a foursome), Sanctuary ($2,500 for a foursome) and … Rodeo Dunes ($3,950 for a threesome).
Now, there can be many reasons that certain courses draw such large bids, but certainly one of them is that there’s considerable demand.
In the case of Rodeo Dunes, located on the high plains near I-76’s Roggen exit, some of the first 18-hole rounds were played at the Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw-designed course as part of a media day on Thursday. Rodeo Dunes “Founders” — and selected others — are set to tee it up beginning Friday in what is being billed as a Founder preview season. (An earlier preview of the course, dubbed “The First Ride”, saw selected golfers play 11 holes last fall.)
The number of Rodeo Dunes Founders — and the significant up-front and ongoing financial commitment they’ve made — also shows considerable interest in this entire Michael Keiser Jr. project that began seven years ago when he took interest in the site.
Though Keiser is part of the family that has developed and operated Bandon Resort in Oregon and Sand Valley in Wisconsin, Rodeo Dunes is Michael’s deal, with him being the owner and developer of the project. It’s located on a site that had been operated as a ranch by the Cervi family since 1883. There’s plenty of sand dunes, native brush, but almost no trees, water features or (for the time being) significant structures. The Roggen Farmers’ Elevator looms large — albeit in the distance, just off I-76.
Tom Ferrell, the vice president of media and communications — who spearheads public relations for Rodeo Dunes — said Thursday that Founders number “a little bit north of 300.” According to the Rodeo Dunes website, the Founder deposit is now $115,000, with $5,000 annual dues — though those numbers have grown from the commitments of past years.
“We brought in some more Founders because we moved up construction of the second course (the one designed by Coore/Crenshaw protégé Jim Craig, who will be overseeing his first personal full-length course),” Ferrell noted. “It's allowing us to build a second course now. We’ll have to have a limit (on Founder numbers) because we're a public golf facility. So we're not just out there selling willy nilly, and we don't want to dilute the Founder experience.”
Yes, Rodeo Dunes will be open to the general public, though it won’t be cheap as $350 is expected to be the prime-season public green fee — subject to change — when 2027 tee times start being accepted sometime next month (exact date TBA). It’s likely that shoulder-season — if added — pricing would be less. Discounted fees for Coloradans hasn’t yet been put in place, “but it has been discussed,” said Ferrell, adding that, if implemented, it would be for shoulder season.
Public play will begin May 1, 2027. Updated details can be obtained by becoming a Rodeo Dunes “Insider”. Sign-up is located at the bottom of THIS PAGE on the RD website.
“We’re spending a lot to make these (courses) world class,” Ferrell said. “Green fees — we’re not (at) stupid green fees like you see at some places now. And once we have a couple of courses up and going, you’ll be able to do a 36-hole day with the second round being half price.”
Given how highly regrarded another prairie links course in northeastern Colorado — the private Ballyneal in Holyoke, ranked the No. 34 greatest golf course in the U.S. by Golf Digest and No. 4 among its 50 greatest courses built since 2000 — that certainly helps Rodeo Dunes’ cause. And it doesn’t hurt that Rodeo Dunes — like Ballyneal — is pleasing to the eye in many respects, mainly due to the bunker formations, sand dunes and grassy knolls.
There’s no shortage of fans of prairie links golf — Rodeo Dunes’ wheelhouse, given the property on which it’s located. Though only one of a possible six courses that could be built has been completed — the one designed by Coore and Crenshaw — the second layout, designed by Craig, is actively being worked on.
All the courses — no matter how many are eventually built — are expected to be walking-only, though some ADA-related exceptions will be made. Going walking-only no doubt greatly appeals to many golfers, but also will keep many regular cart riders away. Rodeo Dunes’ location — roughly 50 miles one way from downtown Denver, 60 miles from the Denver Tech Center, 64 miles from Boulder, 72 miles from Fort Collins — could keep others golfers from making repeat trips, though there are plenty of examples of more remote golf resorts sites that thrive regardless.
The $350 green-fee price — plus caddie fee, if one is desired — will be a hurdle that will keep plenty of golfers from partaking, but there also seem to be many willing to open the wallet if the product is enticing enough.
One of the prominent sand dunes at Rodeo Dunes.
Suffice it to say it will be interesting to see how this grand project plays out over the next decade.
As for now, there are a lot of moving parts involved, and future plans will be partly dependent on how things roll out in the near term.
“We’re going to be watching play this year,” Ferrell said. “We're going to be watching Founder demand. We're gonna be watching when we sell (public play) tee times for ’27. Now that we have a golf course, we start to really have some hard data to make decisions.”
With the Coore/Crenshaw course having been completed, Farrell said Craig and his team are currently working on a seven-hole loop for the second course.
“It's conceivable that we'll be able to play a few holes (from that course) in the fall,” he noted. “I think it's more realistic that we'll play preview golf next year. It depends on how fast they go.
“I got here on Saturday, and I was not prepared for what I saw. I mean, they're moving. It'll open in the spring of ’28, but we could have 18-hole preview play next year.”
The Roggen Farmers’ Elevator is a prominent fixture in the background at Rodeo Dunes.
So what will differentiate the Craig course from the Coore/Crenshaw layout?
“It's question I asked Jim Craig. And he gave me a great answer,” Ferrell said. “He said, ‘I’m going to build all the holes that Bill Coore wouldn't let me build. Jimmy is a big believer in fun — not that Bill and Ben aren’t. You know, he'll do whimsical, dramatic bunkering. He is a little bit more aggressive of a shaper than maybe Bill and Ben are. What you're going to see is him taking natural contours and extending them or fattening them or thinning them. And I suspect we're gonna see a lot more hide-and-seek pins on his course.”
Work has started on the putting course at the site.
Meanwhile, work has also begun on a 7.5-acre putting course (“The Rockies”), near the first tees for the two regulation courses. “We could be putting in the fall,” Ferrell said. Also in the relatively-near-term plans are a “short course”, which is being routed. Suffice to to say much progress has been made since dirt was first moved on the Coore/Crenshaw course in June 2024 or grassing started in April 2025.
“In a perfect world — and I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t happen — by Masters 2028 we’d having putting, we’d have a short course, we’d have two (18-hole regulation) courses and we’d have a clubhouse, including a couple of restaurants,” Ferrell said.
As for a third full-length course — for which an architect has yet to be chosen — “We'll finish the things that are started now,” Ferrell said. “We'll get some vertical construction going, and then we'll get to that (third course). So that might be a couple of years away.”
The scorecard from Rodeo Dunes.
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