Record-size winners’ prizes for Colorado Open and Colorado Women’s Open being reduced to $50,000; final year of Inspirato title sponsorship has been changed from 2026 to 2025. Some of the saved money will go to First Tee-GVR scholarships
By Gary Baines – 3/20/2025
The Colorado Open championships have long since established themselves among the best of the best regarding state and regional open golf tournaments. That dates as far back as the 1970s in the case of the Colorado Open itself, which debuted in 1964.
But when the Colorado Open and the Colorado Women’s Open hiked their first prizes to $100,000 each — starting in 2016 for the men and 2022 for the women — it might have been more than the market could bear, at least in the long term, sponsorship-wise.
With Inspirato requesting an early termination of its title sponsorship deal with the Colorado Open championships — and being granted its release a year early by the Colorado Open Golf Foundation— 2025 will mark the final year of Inspirato in the title role for the tournaments at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club in northeast Denver. And with the Colorado Open Golf Foundation now looking for a title sponsor for 2026 and beyond, the first-place prize money will be cut in half for the 2025 Inspirato Colorado Open and Colorado Women’s Open in the hopes that will make it easier to forge a new title sponsorship deal.
The winner’s portion of the purse for the 2025 Colorado Open and CWO each will go from $100,000 to $50,000, while decreasing from $20,000 to $15,000 for the Inspirato Colorado Senior Open. Registration for the championships opened on Thursday, and players were notified of the changes.
The overall purses for the two open-age championships will be reduced from $250,000 to $200,000, with the entire reduction coming from the winner’s portion, meaning second-place finishers on down will be unaffected. In the Colorado Senior Open, the purse will go from $100,000 to $80,000, with the entire payout affected, not just the winner’s portion.
“It’s almost an arms race with ourselves as far raising these purses and everything (in the last decade),” Kevin Laura, CEO of the Colorado Open Golf Foundation, told Colorado Golf Journal on Thursday. “With Inspirato’s sponsorship ending (after this year), having to go find another sponsor and trying to be savvy … We have to price our sponsorship where there’s more possibilities of sponsors. So we decided to reduce the purses so we don’t have so much pressure on having to sell title sponsorship at such a high level that (would) limit the number of options we have.”
Leadership at the Colorado Open Golf Foundation anticipate redirecting a portion of the purse-reduction savings to a dedicated scholarship fund that would benefit First Tee-Green Valley Ranch participants. Details about that scholarship fund have not yet been finalized.
“This idea of us really focusing on potentially a big scholarship program and giving money to kids and keeping the money in Colorado with the kids that are growing up here is more of a holistic value and vision for us in our next chapter,” Laura said. “We’re hoping to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and we’ll be getting together as a board to decide those particulars.”
It should be noted that even at $50,000 for the first prizes, the Colorado Open and CWO will be among the top-paying state and regional opens in the country. For his part, Laura doesn’t see the significant reduction in first-place money affecting the quality of the fields for the Colorado Open championships.
“It’s still a transformational amount of money,” he said. “… It’s really based on availability of their schedule as to whether they join us (to compete). I do not think it’s going to hurt the quality of the field. There’s too few playing opportunities for a player to not want to play because a first-place prize is only $50,000. If you say that out loud it sounds so funny because we set the bar so high” with the $100,000 winner’s prizes. Now that figure is “just extremely high, not super high.”
Changes have come at Inspirato since it became the title sponsor of the Colorado Open championships in 2022, and it was announced then that the Colorado Women’s Open would increase its purse to $250,000 and its first-place money to $100,000 to match the totals for the Colorado Open. Most notably, Brent Handler — who headed Inspirato in 2022 — departed as CEO of the company in September 2023. When the 2022 announcement was made about the purse increase for the Colorado Women’s Open, Handler indicated the title sponsorship deal for all three Colorado Open championships was worth $400,000 annually.
“Once Brent Handler was replaced as CEO — and the CEO that replaced him was replaced — they started telling us it’s a tough marketplace for them now,” Laura said of Inspirato.
“We loved getting to where the purses were raised to, but our focus is not going to be solely on that,” Laura added, looking ahead. “We’re really most impressed with what we’ve done in the past in paying the men and women equally. That’s what we’re committed to do with our men’s and women’s (open) championships — keeping them with equal pay.
“We’ve adjusted (the tournament payouts) for this year but haven’t thought of any of the future years yet.”
Laura has been exploring options for a new title sponsor — starting in 2026 — for some time now.
“We have a number of potential (title sponsors), but none of them would snap their fingers and decide (to take it over this year),” he said. “But it’s exciting news that there is some interest.”
The 2025 Inspirato Colorado Women’s Open is scheduled for May 28-30 at GVR, while the Inspirato Colorado Open will be July 24-27, and the Inspirato Colorado Senior Open Aug. 27-29.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com