On a normal Monday evening at Todd Creek Golf Club, the loudest sound on the putting green is the Evening Ladies Putters checking in at 5:45 for their 6 p.m. tee-off, a weekly ritual that runs from May through September. The Men's Golf Club plays its scheduled events the same day, membership card in hand for the pro shop discount. It is the kind of golf course built around a 55-and-better community, where the biggest competitive stakes on most weeks are bragging rights over a $75 annual membership.
Then, for four days each August, the same fairways host something else entirely. This past August, 130 professional women golfers competed there for a $55,000 purse and a shot at the Epson Tour, one step removed from the LPGA.
That contrast is the story here. Not the tournament alone, and not the neighborhood's packed events calendar alone, but the fact that both are true of the same course in the same year, and neither one interrupts the other.
What actually happened last year
The Colorado Championship at Todd Creek is a stop on the ANNIKA Women's All Pro Tour, the developmental circuit aligned with Annika Sorenstam that feeds players toward the Epson Tour and eventually the LPGA. In its first year at Todd Creek, the tournament played July 29 through August 1, 2025, and the winner was Jieni Li, a 23-year-old Northwestern alum from Evanston, Illinois, who closed at 12-under through 72 holes with five birdies in her final round. She won in front of what tour organizers called the largest crowd in ANNIKA WAPT history, a notable marker for a course best known locally as a retirement-community amenity.
That single detail (largest crowd in the tour's history, at a course most people associate with cart paths and Monday leagues) says something about how quickly this event outgrew its debut-year expectations.
The 2026 edition moved later, and carried more weight
This year's tournament shifted back on the calendar, running August 18-21 instead of the late-July window it used in 2025, and it landed as the tour's only August stop. It also carried more structural weight than most tour events: while the majority of ANNIKA WAPT stops run 54 holes, the Colorado Championship was one of just five 72-hole competitions on the entire 13-event 2026 schedule, with the field cut after 36 holes to the top 40 percent.
The scheduling mattered for what it meant to the players teeing off just over two weeks ago on a course most of their gallery calls their own neighborhood amenity. As the 12th of 13 events on the season, Todd Creek landed right before the points race tightened for the ANNIKA 20, the cutoff that determines who carries momentum into the tour's season finale in Wichita, Kansas. Heading into the week, Katie Lu carried the tour's points lead and a cushion to defend. Others, like UCLA product Natalie Vo, sat just outside the top five with two events left to close the gap. A strong week at Todd Creek carried real consequences for these athletes in a way that a typical midseason stop does not.
| 2025 (inaugural) | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Dates | July 29 - Aug 1 | Aug 18-21 |
| Purse | $55,000 | $55,000 (est.) |
| Format | 72 holes | 72 holes |
| Field | Professional field with amateur inclusion | 130 professionals |
| Stakes | Debut year, largest WAPT crowd on record | Only August stop, tied to ANNIKA 20 season cutoff |
Free to watch, but not free to see much of
Admission for spectators is free, a detail worth knowing if you live nearby and have never thought of your own golf course as a place to watch professional sport. Spectators must be 16 or older, and while a cart isn't guaranteed, one can be rented from the pro shop for those who want to follow more than a hole or two. The course itself runs links-inspired terrain over roughly 7,300-plus yards from the championship tees, and walking just the cart paths covers close to 9.5 miles. Free admission is real, but seeing a meaningful stretch of the tournament without a cart means committing to a genuine hike across a course laid out by architect Arthur Hills back when it opened in 2007.
The event also benefits the Meador's Masters Foundation, giving the week a charitable dimension beyond the leaderboard.
The same month, a very different calendar keeps running
What makes Todd Creek's August unusual isn't just the tournament. It's that the tournament drops into a community that already runs one of the busiest activity calendars in the north metro, and that calendar doesn't pause for professional golf. On any given week this time of year, residents are choosing between:
- Evening Ladies Putters on the putting green, Monday nights through September
- The Hiking Club's regular Front Range treks, scheduled roughly every one to two weeks to trailheads like Button Rock Preserve
- Tap Takeover nights at The Grill at Todd Creek, where the on-site restaurant partners with guest breweries such as Prost Brewing
- Weekly Gin Rummy, Mah Jongg, and Mexican Train Dominoes sessions in the clubhouse's card rooms
- The Heritage Todd Creek Car Club's fifth annual show, which drew residents' classic and custom vehicles into the parking lot back in June
None of these compete with the golf tournament for attention. They run in parallel, which is really the point. A neighborhood that can host a pipeline event for the LPGA and still keep its Monday putting league on schedule the same summer isn't defined by either one alone.
What this actually tells residents about where they live
The easy read on Todd Creek is that it's a quiet, amenity-rich 55-plus community organized around golf, cards, and clubs. That's accurate, and it's also incomplete. For four days this past August, the same course was a legitimate stop on the path to professional women's golf, drawing a field that included players with NCAA titles, course records at other stops, and Epson Tour finishes already on their résumé. The tournament's growth from a debut event with the tour's largest recorded crowd to a marquee 72-hole fixture in just its second year suggests Todd Creek Golf Club has earned a reputation beyond its own subdivision.
If you live here, that's a fact worth knowing the next time someone asks what there is to do nearby in August. It's also a fact worth knowing if you're weighing whether the neighborhood's identity is settling into something more than a retirement-community label suggests. For residents thinking ahead to their next move, whether that's within Todd Creek or elsewhere along the Front Range, Chad Murray works with buyers and sellers across the Denver metro and can talk through what a market like this one actually looks like up close.
