Fossil Trace Golf Club — Local services in Golden

An update: Our annual Colorado Golf Binge group of 8 guys played Fossil Trace again last Thursday and it was super fun. The course is great. The service is super. It's still a 5-star. This was my prior review.....I just played Fossil Trace again on the afternoon of March 20, 2014 after skiing the morning at Arapahoe Basin. What a wonderful day! My nephew and I had a great lunch at the course's Three Tomatoes restaurant. Then played 18 very fun holes that are in surprisingly good condition for March in Colorado. Fairways and greens are already green and lush. And conditions will be better this summer. Give it a try. Just west of Denver in the foothills of Golden you’ll find an incredibly unique golf course. Fossil Trace Golf Club lies right behind that big golden domed government building in Golden north of I-70. Their slogan is “Escape the Ordinary, Experience the Extraordinary” and they claim their course was 64 Million Years in the Making! They’re right on their first claim. The experience is Extraordinary…especially for a Texas Flatlander. I’ll just have to trust them on their 64 million year claim. But this is also probably true because the walls of the cliffs on the back nine contain fossils of prehistoric creatures and plants that have been studied for years by students of the Colorado School of Mines. In fact two walls by the famous 12th hole are set with lights for students and tour groups doing evening studies of the fossils.

Before you head to Fossil Trace check out their great website and their helicopter fly over. It's a terrific way to get a feel for what you'll experience.

I’ve been able to play this course seven times and have improved progressively as I’ve learned how to play Colorado golf course designer, Jim Engh’s bowl greens and sloping fairways. Some golf purists criticize Engh’s designs as being too golfer friendly but I find them to be great fun. In fact on my last round I got a hole-in-one on the uphill par 3 third hole by using the backstop. I was hosting a group of my TX and IL buddies and we had fun celebrating the special day at Fossil Trace's Three Tomatoes bar/restaurant overlooking the course.

Head Golf Pro, Jim Hajek, will warn you not to bite off more of the course than you can handle. But in 2009 we didn’t listen. We played from the tips (Black tees) for 18 holes. The 6,831 yards at a high altitude with a 72.5/139 rating/slope didn’t seem too tough to handle but the narrow 480 yard par 4 4th and the 659 uphill into the wind 9th hole proved too much for us. So we squeezed in another nine holes after a great lunch at Fossil Trace’s Three Tomatoes Restaurant on the deck over looking the beautiful 10th and 18th holes.

This time we played the Blue tees at 6,241 yards with a 69.3/131 rating/slope and found it much better for our game and egos. Another option would be to play the "T-Rex" tees (a combination of the Black and Blue tees measuring 6,577 yds and 71.2/135 rating/slope). Before you go check out Fossil Trace's great website including very well done videos of holes 1, 10, 12 and 15. These will give you a good taste of what you'll experience on a golden day in Golden. Have your cameras rolling when you play the unique 12th and 15th holes. Both are par 5s. The 12th makes you feel like you’re the ball in a pinball or bumper pool game as you pick your route through tall rock formations in the fairway.

Golden is a fun town to visit après-golf. You’ll see some of the Coors Brewery near the Fossil Trace Golf Club - a tempting tour after 18 holes on a 64 million year old...

It's a beautiful course that seems to be well-maintained. It was neat to have non-traditional features, like the boulders and dinosaur track markings through the course. The carts were incredibly clean, and I liked that it had the technology of built-in speakers and maps that would show you the layout and distance for each hole; super handy if you don't have a range finder and if you're unfamiliar with the course. The staff we interacted with were friendly but professional.

The biggest reason I don't feel like this was a great experience is because the rate of play was insanely slow. They make it sound like that was something they heavily monitor and regulate, at least before we started, but we never once saw a marshall, and it took 5.5 hours to do the whole course. (We had 4 players for the front 9 but only 2 for the back.) When we asked the group in front of us if we could play through, the guy lost his temper, telling us that we should NOT be coming up behind them when they're teeing off (which on most holes, you can't see that where they're at until you're right on top of them) and that if HE wanted us to play through, he would've told us. We weren't trying to be rude; we asked because we were waiting 10 minutes at every hole for each of them to hit. Turns out there was a group in front of them that was also behind, and we had two groups behind us constantly on our tail as well. Obviously, Fossil Trace isn't responsible for the behavior of their guests, but in my opinion, a well-managed course, especially one that costs more than other comparable public courses in the area, should have been the ones telling people to pick up the pace. I get it--we were there on a Sunday afternoon, and it was 100% full. It was not going to be a 4 hour round of golf. But we wouldn't have had the run-in with the other guests if the staff had been the ones monitoring the progress and asking the other parties to be more considerate of the players behind them.

Not sure if we'll go back or not, especially since this may very well have been an isolated incident, but it was a pretty disappointing outcome for something we had been looking forward to for...

What an overpriced course, and I would skip. Let me share why...

First of all the club house staff are friendly, and no issues there.

The price of the round was $140 per person, and does include a cart, and you want one, its pretty hilly.

We got paired with another twosome, who were 20+ handicappers, and played well behind the pace of play, adding to our poor experience....so lets dig into the course....

Course condition - Given all the spring rain/sun we have had the course was in mediocre at best condition, with the greens having a ton of winter kill. completely unimpressed with green conditions

80% of the holes we played had some sort of worker on them, many almost oblivious that we were here to play expensive golf, we did spend a fair bit if time waiting for mowers to move out of the way. Pretty frustrating given the high price.

The rangers are ALL OVER THIS PLACE, but oddly, it still took us 4:45 to play 18 on a monday. So what do they actually do?

We did have a ranger appraoch us and yell (while we were putting) to see if we had recoved a towel for the group in front of us.

Again, we were here to play golf, and it feels like the course is working against you

Overall, there are way nicer condition courses for 1/3 the price. If you want the rocks in the fairway, yes, you do get scenery and such, you also get power lines, and a prison.

Choose wisely, is 140 worth it? I don't think so, I’ll take 2 or even 3 rounds elsewhere before...