This $80 Tom Doak design is a walker’s paradise

Just a few miles from downtown Denver, CommonGround offers golfers one-of-a-kind views throughout the round: city skyline in the foreground, snowcapped mountains in the distance. But don’t let its mile-high elevation fool you, this is a flat piece of land.

When I visited Denver for the first time, I expected a course this close to the Rockies to be a fairly difficult walk, full of elevation changes. After all, CommonGround played a key role in my colleagues’ Sean and Dylan’s recent 9-9-9 Challenge success, where they made nine ski runs, played nine holes of golf, and watched nine innings of baseball all in one day.

Instead, my local playing partners insisted CommonGround was a walker’s paradise, with slight uphill climbs only on the 9th and 18th, two of the course’s harder holes. Most holes were a flat or slightly downhill walk. We played in April, and the firm ground made for great conditions to bring out the contours throughout.

As the only Tom Doak track you’ll find on our Best Golf Courses for Under $100 list, CommonGround provides fun, thought-provoking holes and features. Despite the lack of natural rolling hills you’d expect to find on a Doak-designed course, the fairways and greens have plenty of tricky undulations.

There aren’t an overwhelming amount of bunkers, but they are well-placed, forcing golfers to constantly make important risk-reward decisions throughout the round. On the hardest hole on the course, the par-5 third, an attempt to reach the green in two looks welcoming, until your ball rolls into one of the few pesky bunkers on its way to the punch bowl green.

On the 11th hole, another par-5, water to the left and the back of the green also forces players to think twice before hitting a wood into the green, but a fairway bunker sits right in the ideal layup area. The approach is hit right into the view of downtown Denver and with the Front Range mountains behind it.

Although my round was full of three-putts, it was a great day of golf at one of Colorado’s most cost-efficient gems. CommonGround is an ideal model for what a metro-area muni should be. As the home of the Colorado Golf Association, the facility regularly hosts clinics for Denver kids and encourages them to enroll in their caddie and leadership program going into high school. The par-3 course there is available to golfers of all ages and skill levels. Locals get great rates on green fees and year-long packages. But even for the out-of-towner, CommonGround is an excellent golf course, in solid condition, for a very fair price. 

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