The vision behind Tom’s 10 at Spanish Peaks Mountain Club

A top-10 experience

We started back up in June 2023, coming off one of the biggest snow years and wettest springs that I have ever experienced. Because of the snowpack and wet weather, we couldn’t get out to do any work on the par 3 until late June.

It was a busy 2023 season with final shaping, cartpath installation, grassing and native establishment. We sodded the last green in early September and laid the last bluegrass sod in the rough surrounds at the end of September. We were able to mow the greens a few times before spraying our snow mold protection, preparing the course for winter, and for the most part, all the sod had rooted before we got our first snowfall. The course was ready for winter, and we felt good about where we were at.

We dedicated the par-3 course to Tom by calling it Tom’s 10. All the holes were homages to his favorite par-3 holes he had played throughout his career:

• Hole 1. Design concept from Loch Lomond’s 18th green in Scotland, bunker within a bunker.
• Hole 2. Design concept from the Riviera CC’s No. 6 green with the bunker in the middle of the green.
• Hole 3. Design concept from Royal Troon’s No. 8 called the Postage Stamp, very small green with bunkers surrounding. Built a sod stacked bunker using ecoturf product.
• Hole 4. Design concept from Augusta’s No. 16, we built the pond to mimic.
• Hole 5. Design concept from Pine Valley’s No. 10, deep bunker front right of green. We ended up making the depth of this bunker the height of Tom, 6 foot, 3 inches.
• Hole 6. Recreation of the original 18th green at Spanish Peaks before we redesigned it in 2020.
• Hole 7. Design concept from the greens at Pinehurst No. 2 course, perched greens, convex movement.
• Hole 8. Design concept from Merion’s No. 17 green — ridge in front, balls go to back right.
• Hole 9. Design concept from Pebble Beach’s No. 7, the short downhill par 3.
• Hole 10. Design concept from the Frost Creek’s No. 14 green in Eagle, Colo.

I often am asked, “Why a 10-hole par-3 course instead of a traditional nine-hole course?” The original design was a nine-hole par 3, but during the routing exercises, Tom made it a 10-hole routing. Tom’s answer was, “If we could fit more holes in this parcel, we would; I want to give them as much golf as we can see fit.” So we ended up with 10 holes and a practice putting green.