In the early 1920’s, Denver’s population and infrastructure began to rapidly expand, which over crowded the most popular country club in town, Denver Country Club. This growth led a group of DCC members to seek out land for a new golf club that focused on the game rather than ancillary social experiences. By 1922, the club hired the premier golf architect of the times, William Flynn—who was fresh off extensive design work at Pine Valley Golf Club—to layout and design the new course. Flynn spent a month in Denver coming up with the Muirfield-esq routing and drawing detailed hole-by-hole construction plans for Cherry Hills, while also creating a plan to redesign the nearby Denver Country Club. Flynn’s design featured several holes with breaks in the fairway—a calling card of his designs—expansive sandscapes with grass islands and rugged grassed mounds reminiscent of Pine Valley. After Flynn’s departure from town, a local work crew began to build the course according to the accurately scaled design plans with specific construction instructions.
Nearly 15 years after the course was completed, Cherry Hills took its first steps into championship golf by hosting the first U.S. Open west of Minneapolis in 1938. Hosting high-level competitions would quickly become the club’s identity, as it would go on to host multiple majors, various USGA championships, and a PGA Tour event.
Throughout the last 90 years and a dozen-plus elite competitions, Cherry Hill’s course has been altered several times to varying degrees. Prior to the 1960 U.S. Open, several dramatic changes removed a lot of Flynn’s original work, like the massive cross hazard on the 17th hole that was modeled after the Hell’s Half Acre at Pine Valley. In addition, hundreds of trees were planted to line each fairway, which destroyed a lot of playing angles and Flynn’s strategic intent. Then in the 1970s, the course was altered greatly by Arnold Palmer’s design firm ahead of the 1978 U.S. Open to make it tougher by adding and remodeling bunkers in a new style and increasing the scorecard yardage.
Today the course may be aesthetically different from its original 1922 design, but it maintains the original routing and a majority of the original design features that Flynn put in place thanks to a prolonged restoration effort by Eric Iverson and Tom Doak. The once rugged bunkering and mounding and sparsely tree-covered hillsides now more closely resemble a stereotypical “parkland” style golf course with ample amounts of maintained rough and mature trees.
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Take Note…
Cherry orchard. Once the group of Denver Country Club members found the property for their new golf club, they named it after the cherry orchard found on the site and its gentle rolling hills.
Strategic Trees. Part of Flynn’s design work included strategically planting trees in certain locations that would help dictate strategy on several holes. This included placing trees on the inside and outside of doglegs and in areas that would create visual deception, challenging higher-level golfers. Like many clubs across the country, additional tree plantings occurred over the years, creating a much more forested course than prior to 1960. While Doak and Iverson have removed hundreds of trees to open up the playing corridors, Cherry Hills still presents more trees than originally intended.
Final punch. Flynn explicitly designed the final five holes in such a way that they would minimize the chances for playoffs. This final stretch is quite challenging and par is a good score on each hole.
