Grand Again

Sinclair Rocky Mountain Open has made big strides in recent years, and it’s not stopping now; winner of 88th edition of historic tourney in Grand Junction will earn $25,000 of $100,000 purse

By Gary Baines

Speaking as a person who was inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame five years ago, Doug Simons believes the Sinclair Rocky Mountain Open golf tournament is really starting to hit its sweet spot.

In addition to being the longtime president of Enstrom Candies, Simons serves as the president of the board of directors for the tournament that’s held each summer in Grand Junction. And in recent years, under the leadership of him and the board, the purse for the RMO has reached $100,000, with $25,000 going to the winner.

While that’s not on the level of its more famous open brethren from the Front Range — the Inspirato Colorado Open, which has a purse of $200,000 and a first prize of $50,000 — the Rocky Mountain Open’s numbers still are eye-catching by the standard of state and regional opens.

The RMO’s first prize has more than tripled over the last dozen years, jumping from $8,000 in 2014 to $10,000 in 2015 to $15,000 in 2019 to $20,000 in 2021 and to $25,000 in 2023.

For most players competing on mini tours and state and regional tournaments, that’s certainly not chump change.

“We’re really tickled that we’re bringing this thing back to life, and giving it a new life,” Simons said about the RMO in a recent phone interview with Colorado Golf Journal. “We’re using history and our longevity and really starting to make some headway in bringing money to the tournament. It’s the highest level of play that we get here in Grand Junction. … The winners are starting to be in the 20 under par (or more) range for three days, so that’s a pretty high level of play. It’s something we want Grand Junction and western Colorado to be proud of — that we’re taking this thing to the next level. It feels really good. I’m really pleased in the effort we’ve put together.”

The 2026 edition of the Sinclair Rocky Mountain Open will be held Thursday through Saturday (Aug. 20-22) at Tiara Rado Golf Course (they finish on a Saturday to help give the players time to get to their next events). A pro-am is set for Wednesday.

It will be the 88th consecutive year the tournament has been played, making it the oldest open state/regional championship continuously held in Colorado, though amateur events such as the CGA Match Play (started in 1901), the CGA Women’s Match Play (1916) and the CGA Amateur (1933) are older.

The city of Grand Junction-owned Tiara Rado Golf Course is the picturesque site of the Rocky Mountain Open.

And there’s plenty of notable history from the RMO.

Babe Zaharias, who would be named the top female athlete of the first half of the 20th century, teed it up against the men at least a couple of times at the Rocky Mountain Open. She finished third at the RMO as an amateur in 1946 and competed again at the tournament in 1950, that time as a pro.

Then in 1975, 1969 U.S. Open champion Orville Moody became the biggest-name winner of the RMO. Moody had served in the U.S. Army, stationed for a time at Fitzsimons in Denver. Moody also went on to claim a U.S. Senior Open title.

Smiley Quick, winner of the 1946 U.S. Amateur Public Links at Wellshire Golf Course and a one-time winner on the PGA Tour in 1950, captured RMO titles in 1951 and ’56.

Former University of Colorado golfer Matt Zions, who would go on to win a European Tour title in 2011, claimed victory at the RMO in 2005. And Nate Lashley claimed the RMO title in 2014; five years later, he would win on the PGA Tour.

This month, as usual, the RMO has attracted a strong field. As far as golfers with strong Colorado ties go, that includes two players who finished in the top 10 at this summer’s Colorado Open — AJ Ott (second place) and Hunter Swanson (sixth) — as well as 2024 national Elite Amateur Series champion Connor Jones and Brandon Bingaman, who has competed in two PGA Championships.

Simons, whose wife Jamee is prominent part of the Enstrom bloodline, has been heavily involved with the Rocky Mountain Open for the dozen years he’s served as president of the RMO board. (The board’s ranks also include Frank Wilkinson, long also a member of the CGA board of directors.) And the tournament runs in the Enstrom family as Jamee’s grandfather, Chet Enstrom, a co-founder of the Enstrom company in 1929, served as the first tournament chairman back when the RMO started in 1939.

The RMO lost a primary sponsor more than a dozen years ago, and Simons was of the opinion that the organization running the tournament wasn’t doing a very good job with it — and wasn’t distributing much money from the event’s proceeds. So in 2014 Simons and some partners purchased the rights to the tournament for $30,000, made Enstrom the title sponsor and formed a board of directors.

“Since then, we’ve really grown the tournament and we’ve brought in a lot of other sponsors,” Simons said.

The result, he noted, was not only the significant growth in the RMO purse, but in the money distributed to the tournament’s beneficiary — the athletic department at Grand Junction-based Colorado Mesa University. Simons said nowadays the RMO gives $30,000-$40,000 annually to that cause — more than five times what was the case before Enstrom and Simons became involved.

In fact, the money goes into an endowment which has surpassed $550,000 since being established in 2014. Should that endowment get close to $1 million in the future, Simons said further proceeds might go out to other areas of the community besides CMU.

“That’s kind of a long-term goal,” he noted.

In 2019, Sinclair came on board as the title sponsor — with Enstrom remaining a prominent secondary sponsor.

‘We’re really turning this thing into something bigger than what we thought we were going to be able to do,” Simons said.

Coloradan Jackson Solem won the RMO in 2023.

Also to help that cause, this year on Tuesday evening the RMO is hosting a cocktail reception for sponsors and the competing professionals. Ideally in the future, Simons said, a notable golfer would be brought to speak at that reception.

“We’re really making this into something that we can be really proud of,” he said. “And we’re not going to hold up; we’re going to keep going. We’re always putting pressure on Sinclair to cough up some more dough. We want to get to the point where everyone is clamoring to get into this thing because we’re going to create a purse that they can’t ignore.”

As is often the case in tournaments such as this, the community chips in by hosting the pros in their homes during the week. Between 25-30 competitors will be housed that way during the tournament, Simons said.

The host families “are helping us take this thing to the moon.”

The RMO also created a Rocky Mountain Open Wall of Fame — which includes plaques for every winner of the tournament going back to 1939 — located on a walkway at the city-owned Tiara Rado Golf Course. (It should be noted that the tournament started at Lincoln Park Golf Course, and it’s periodically been held at other courses in Grand Junction over the years.)

Under consideration for the future is possibly holding a senior portion of the event at Lincoln Park.

“Those are all pie-in-the-sky things that we kick around,” Simons said.

So why is it important for Simons and Enstrom and the RMO board to put their efforts into this tournament, as opposed to anything else in the community?

“I’ve been at Enstrom for 47 years,” the 71-year-old Simons said, noting that his sons represent the fourth generation of the family in the business. “At Enstrom, we’re a community-minded business. We put Grand Junction on the map for people all over the country and around the world. We’ve always been very philanthropic about supporting the community. With Chet (Enstrom’s) involvement in getting this tournament started, then getting it under our control, it’s just one more arm of our philanthropic journey to continue to build this with some excitement around this golf tournament — and being able to benefit our community in the long run. That’s the drive behind it.

“We were just blessed that the (tournament) didn’t peter out and die. We got ahold of it before it spit the bit, if you will. This is part of our community mission. With the long history, it just became really important for us to figure out how to build this thing and use that rich history to our benefit. And so far, the sauce seems to be working. … We’re not going to look back; we’re going to keep on rocking.”

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