Country Club of the Rockies

Overview: Country Club of the Rockies is a Jack Nicklaus Signature course in Edwards, within the Vail Valley’s open mountain landscape. The links-style routing uses rolling ground, broad fairways and the Eagle River to create a course that changes character from hole to hole. Water is in play on eleven holes, but the defining experience is the way the course moves between open terrain and river-side corridors. Four holes run along or across the Eagle River, giving the round a strong geographic identity as well as a strategic one.

History: The course opened in 1984 as part of the Arrowhead community and was developed around Nicklaus’s vision for a Colorado summer course that worked with the valley’s natural setting. Since then, improvements have been made with Nicklaus Design’s approval and guidance. The result is not a frozen original, but a continuously maintained interpretation of a Signature design, with agronomy and conditioning treated as part of the course’s long-term character.

Did You Know? The Eagle River influences four holes directly, while water appears on seven more. That is a surprisingly large portion of the routing, yet the course does not read as a water-heavy target course. The river, wetlands and rolling fairways are distributed through the landscape so that the player encounters different kinds of risk instead of repeating one hazard pattern.