Can Coloradans win both Inspirato CO Open and CO Senior Open for 2nd straight year? Senior Open field includes handful of PGA Tour winners, including defending champ Jonathan Kaye
By Gary Baines – 8/25/2025
This week’s Inspirato Colorado Senior Open will mark the final Colorado Open championship of the year, the last such tournament with Inspirato as the title sponsor, and will present an opportunity for golfers with strong Colorado ties to pull off a rare local Colorado Open championships double for the second straight year.
A year after Coloradans won both the Colorado Open (Davis Bryant) and the Colorado Senior Open (Jonathan Kaye), the table is set to do it again after Basalt native Jim Knous claimed the 2025 Colorado Open title last month.
Prior to last year, you have to go back to 2013 as the last time Coloradans claimed victories in at least two Colorado Open championships (the Colorado Women’s Open, Open and Senior Open) in the same year. For the record, Colorado residents swept all three titles in 2013 — marking the first time that had happened in a single calendar year — with Becca Huffer (CWO), Zahkai Brown (CO) and Doug Rohrbaugh (CSO) doing the honors.
This week’s 26th annual Senior Open is set for Wednesday through Friday at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club in northeast Denver. At stake will be an $80,000 purse, with the winner receiving $15,000 of that — assuming he’s a pro.
The 156-man field is expected to include several PGA Tour winners, among them Gary Hallberg of Longmont (three PGA Tour victories), part-time Boulder resident Kaye (two), Guy Boros, Wes Short Jr., and Jim Carter. Short has also won twice on PGA Tour Champions.
Nine former CSO champions — accounting for 11 victories — are scheduled to tee it up, including every winner since 2019: Kaye (2024), Jason Schultz (2023), Boros (2022), Harry Rudolph (2020 and ’21), Britt Pavelonis (2019), John Ross (2016), Greg Bruckner (2012 and ’15), Rohbaugh of Carbondale (2013) and Mike Zaremba of Pueblo West (2005).
In addition, five Colorado Open winners — accounting for six victories — are entered this week: Kaye (two Colorado Open wins), Shane Bertsch of Parker, Brian Guetz of Littleton, Scott Petersen of Parker and Zaremba. Bertsch, a one-time winner on PGA Tour Champions, tied for 12th on Sunday at the Ally Challenge on the Champions circuit.
Also in the CSO field are past PGA Tour veterans Omar Uresti and Bob May; former Broncos quarterback Tommy Maddox; Colorado senior standouts Matt Schalk, Micah Rudosky and Caine Fitzgerald; former USGA champion David Berganio; Steve Schneiter, winner of a national PGA Professional Championship and a Senior PGA Professional Championship.
The amateurs entered include recent CSO low-ams Richard Bradsby (2024) and Michael Harrington (2023) as well as Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Kent Moore and former CGA Player of the Year Steve Irwin.
The field will be cut to the low 50 players and ties after two rounds.
For Wednesday and Thursday’s tee times, 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