Country Club at Castle Pines - Colorado - USA

Located just to the north of the other Jack Nicklaus course at its namesake, Castle Pines Golf Club, The Country Club at Castle Pines is a more conventional layout than its higher-profile neighbor,

Opened in 1986, Jack’s "Signature" design is a brute from the tips (7,600 yards) with the front nine topping out at more than 4,000 yards. However, the challenge here at the Country Club is to keep focused on the game and not the glorious 360-degree mountain panorama.

“Tremendously scenic,” wrote Daniel Wexler in The American Private Golf Club Guide, “it begins atop a high ridge (the 2nd sits astride the abyss) before descending rapidly via the 667-yard 5th, where six trees (!) divide the driving zone.

Virtually all the rest of the course remains on the low ground, highlighted by three offbeat, bunker-free holes; the 11th (played over a diagonal creekbed to a narrow green), the 15th (whose green is perched above a pronounced left-side swale) and the 17th which features a shallow, heavily contoured putting surface with a steep fallaway in front.

In order to return to the clubhouse, both the 9th and 18th run significantly uphill and thus rate among the layout’s weaker links – though the cart ride back to the top of the ridge is an epic.”

In November 2019, members approved a $17 million improvement plan, which includes the club’s first swimming pool and tennis courts, but the course won’t be changing, as the greens and bunkers have recently been redone.