Influential former CGA president Tom Sandler, who laid the groundwork for the association’s ownership of CommonGround Golf Course, passes away at 79
By Gary Baines
Tom Sandler, a former CGA president who played an integral role in the association’s eventual acquisition of the property on which CommonGround Golf Course now sits, passed away on Aug. 16 after a brief illness. He was 79.
A professional accountant by eduction and training who eventually became the CEO of Case Logic in Longmont from 2004-09, Sandler served as the CGA’s president in 1988 and ’89. And, as current CGA CEO/executive director Ed Mate recently noted, he was very influential in that role, “chiefly responsible for setting the CGA on the path that ultimately led to our acquisition of the land that is now CommonGround.”
CommonGround, the public course the CGA owns and operates in Aurora, straddling Denver, has existed in its current form since 2009, when it opened after being designed by renowned course architect Tom Doak and his Renaissance Golf Design team. In the years since, it has served as the second stroke-play course for the 2012 U.S. Amateur and the 2019 U.S. Mid-Amateur, along with numerous state amateur championships and USGA qualifiers.
The property originally was home to the Lowry Air Force Base golf course, After the base was decommissioned in 1994, it transitioned to a public facility known as Mira Vista Golf Course. The CGA and the CWGA took over operations in the mid-1990s and started transforming the site in 2005.
In the years after CommonGround opened in May 2009, many of the CGA’s community-oriented “for the good of the game” programs started to be operated out of the course, including the influential Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy.
“Tom Sandler was one of — if not the most — important voices in the CGA’s decision to acquire a golf course,” Mate noted in an email. “As president of the CGA from 1988 to 1989, Tom led the board in creating a separate fund to acquire a golf course. As a CPA, Tom understood that we needed to demonstrate more than goodwill if we were going to be taken seriously as golf course owners. The creation of that fund put us in a position to ultimately win the bid to acquire the land that is now CommonGround Golf Course.”
Sandler served on numerous boards — in addition to the CGA’s — during his lifetime, with his financial guidance proving invaluable to various non-profits and companies in distress.
Sandler, a Castle Rock resident at the time of his passing, was born on Dec. 16, 1946 in Pleasantville, N.Y., and was a first-generation American. He started caddying and playing golf as an 11-year-old, eventually becoming passionate about the game. As his obituary noted, “the game became part of his identity.
“An introvert by nature, he came alive on the golf course,” the obit reads. “He loved playing with friends and colleagues and made many new friends along the way. Tom had a remarkable memory for every golf course he played and could describe a hole years later and recall how well — or poorly — he had played it. It was on the golf course that he felt most at home.”
At Ithaca College in New York, he majored in accounting and graduated first in his class in 1968. A year later, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served until being honorably discharged in August 1970. He then went on to earn a Masters degree in accounting from Binghamton University in New York.
Memorial services for Sandler are set for Oct. 17 from 5-7 p.m. at Colorado Golf Club in Parker.
True to Sandler’s love of golf, his family asks that those wishing to honor his memory would make a donation to the Evans Scholars Foundation, which sends high-achieving caddies to college via the Evans Scholarship. One of the Evans Scholarship houses is located at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
For more about Sandler and his life, CLICK HERE.
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