Colorado Golf Expo attendance dips from last year, but World Long Drive presence proves a big hit
By Gary Baines – 3/11/2025
Golf can be a great way to get exercise, particularly for those who enjoy walking during their rounds.
But who knew that those who love the game can get that same benefit from the Colorado Golf Expo?
At least for Kevin Morton, the owner of the Expo since late 2022, the amount of walking he does during the show certainly falls into the “significant” category.
“I get 25,000 steps per day, and I love every minute of it. I really do,” Morton said on Tuesday morning, two days after the 2025 edition of the show wrapped up at the Colorado Convention Center.
Getting to Hall D at the CCC, going to and from the ticket area to the show a level above, and of course walking around the Expo floor countless times each day Friday, Saturday and Sunday certainly add up.
And what was the end result of all those steps — and of the considerable effort put forth by all sorts of members of the Colorado golf community as well as Morton himself?
While Morton and the ticket agency the Expo uses were still trying to reconcile a data anomaly on Tuesday morning, he said he anticipates cumulative attendance over the three days ended up in the low 8,000s. If that’s the case, it would be less than the past two years, but higher than 2020 and 2022 (there was no in-person Expo in 2021 due to Covid safety concerns). Last year’s show drew 9,015, the highest total since 2019 and the largest since the show moved from the Denver Mart to the Colorado Convention Center prior to the 2022 Expo.
“We’re down from last year,” Morton reported on Tuesday morning. “I think the number is going to lay in the lower 8,000 range. However, it’s still significantly up from (some) prior years that were in the 7,000s. I’m very happy with the attendance.”
2023 women’s World Long Drive world champion Monica Lieving of Lakewood laughs after giving the long-putt challenge a try on Friday.
The numbers for Friday and Saturday were solid, but attendance dropped on Sunday, when the temperature reached the mid-60s in Denver.
“That’s what we expected with the nicer weather,” Morton said. “To be honest, I would have been happy to play golf that day too.
“When you have weather like that (on Sunday), and you still have people come out on the Friday and Saturday, I’m very happy, I’m encouraged. It was definitely (the range) where I’d be happy. Our exhibitors were happy. I had a lot of positive feedback. One of the positive things is the quality of the attendee. People were buying products, and that’s important.”
Among the things that attracted attendees this time around was the addition of a considerable World Long Drive presence at the show for the first time. With two of its nine competitions in 2025 planned for Bigfoot Turf Farm in LaSalle southeast of Greeley — the Rocky Mountain Rumble Aug. 15-17 and the World Championships Sept. 24-28 — WLD was a natural for this year’s show. Several WLD competitors put on some jaw-dropping demonstration/exhibitions, and an indoor local qualifier for the WLD World Championships was conducted, with four competitors in the open division advancing to the Aug. 15 regional qualifier. Then the top finishers on Aug. 15 will land berths in the World Championships.
WLD competitor Hunter Noell took “tee it high, let it fly” to another level at the Expo.
When 2023 women’s WLD world champion Monica Lieving joined 2023 amateur world champ Andrew Eigner (who has since turned pro) and Hunter Noell in conducting Friday’s demonstration, most of the seats were full in front of the seminar stage — with additional people standing — prompting Morton to say he’d never seen so many people attend an Expo seminar.
And the long drivers put on a show, with Noell, for instance, reaching 214 mph ball speed during his time on stage that day. Noell also impressed the attendees by hitting separate long drives with a putter, with the ball teed up at head height, and addressing the ball while on his knees and left-handed. Heck, he even went over to the Expo’s long-putt challenge and beat the odds by draining a 90-foot putt over the weekend.
“I was thrilled” with the long-drive presence, Morton said. “Just from standing there watching people enjoy the long hitters, it made me happy that we created something that people wanted to engage in. There was clapping, there was cheering. The World Long Drive champions who came out to give the seminars were unbelievably engaging and having fun with it. I really think that piece stepped things up.”
It’s little wonder why one of the catchphrases for the WLD folks at the Expo was, “We drive for dough.”
The long-drive demonstration area was a popular spot over the weekend at the Expo.
Lieving, a realtor based in Lakewood who’s ranked No. 1 in the world among women, was asked by Colorado Golf Journal how much she’s looking forward to two WLD competitions in her home state this year.
“I’m super excited,” the four-time WLD event winner said. “I’m definitely someone where in a competition setting, I’m totally different. I’m a little less shy than I am now. But it will be really fun to have family and friends here to watch. … We really want to grow the sport. I think the Denver metro area, there’s a lot of interest in (long drive competitions). It’s really about (getting people out and showing them) how much fun it really is. It is a really growing sport.”
Lieving and Eigner even brought their world championship belts from 2023 with them to the Expo.
Morton was so impressed by what the WLD demonstrations and qualifying brought to the table that he anticipates not only having them back next year — regardless of whether the 2026 WLD schedule includes Colorado events — but conducting three exhibitions per day rather than just one. And he may slightly expand the area devoted to long drive and perhaps try to give it a more “sporting event-type feel.
“Quite frankly, when you see Monica Lieving or Josh Cassaday or Hunter Noell or Andrew Eigner, they’re amazing, and they enjoy what they do,” he said. “When they’re hitting 330 yards off their knees, people look at that and just go, ‘I’m doing something wrong. It’s not the ball, it’s me.’ I just see people really enjoying that and really engaging in that. Hunter is really good at getting the crowd going.
“We’ve already talked to the World Long Drive people, and they were super thrilled and super happy. I think this is going to be a continuation of our growth that we’re doing over the next few years to refresh everything and look at every piece of the event and continue to make it better and more engaging. … I would fully expect we’d continue (a long-drive presence) because their engagement was high and our engagement was high. It’s definitely a great opportunity for everybody.”
Blossoming junior golfers were among those who got a kick out of the offerings at the Expo.
Other Expo highlights from Morton’s perspective were the long-putt challenge — with the accompanying “Hole Hecklers” team keeping things lively — and a successful run in the Junior Golf Central area.
“The First Tee/Junior Golf Central area was busy with kids,” Morton said. “That’s exactly what we’re looking for — that engagement, having kids doing putting and chipping and just getting involved. Some of these kids, it might have been the first time they’ve ever picked up a golf club. Who knows? We might have just started out the career of the next Monica Lieving. The goal in those areas is give kids the opportunity to hold a golf club, swing a golf club. Maybe this summer, they might go out with mom and dad and actually play a couple of holes. If that’s the case, we did our jobs. I did talk to the people at First Tee and they were ecstatic. They thought the traffic was terrific.
“The long-putt area — again with Hole Hecklers — was fun. There were people high-fiving and getting excited when people were making putts. That’s another area that stepped up. If we can continue to add things like that — World Long Drive, continue increasing the junior program, really focusing on traffic patterns — we’ll keep making the show incrementally better every single year.”
The CGA booth was among those front and center at the Expo hall.
Traditionally the Colorado Golf Expo — and its predecessor, the Denver Golf Expo — has been a fixture in February. In fact, since at least 2008 — and very possibly earlier than that — the in-person Denver Golf Expo and the Colorado Golf Expo has never been held in a month other than February.
But, after being conducted on President’s Weekend in both 2023 and ’24, this year’s show moved to March 7-9, which was one of the available dates at the Colorado Convention Center.
At this point, Morton said he doesn’t know if the Expo will stay in March next year, or return to the second half of February.
“It’s going to take a little more time because we want to do a deep dive with the analytics,” he said. “We’re going to find a sweet spot for a date, and it’s going to be dependent on a combination of things that are (in some cases) out of our control. We like it if there’s enough snow on the ground to make it where people are not playing golf, but not enough snow that they wouldn’t attend a show.
“March being the snowiest month in Colorado, it’s a wildcard. I don’t know if we’re ever going to find that perfect date, but it’s definitely the last two weeks of February and probably the first week of March. That’s the sweet-spot zone where we’re going to try to stay within.”
The Colorado PGA continued its tradition of offering free 10-minute lessons at the Expo.
This year, the Expo sold out its exhibitor space not long before the show started, with nearly 100 exhibitors, not including the eight or nine manufacturers that were on hand at the driving range/demo area. Much of the focus of the Expo continues to be offering early-year opportunity to get deals on merchandise, equipment, services and rounds of golf; a place to try out clubs, get free 10-minute lessons from Colorado PGA professionals, and a chance to learn more about what’s going on in Colorado golf from organizations such as the CGA and the CPGA. This year, also on hand were some folks from the U.S. Senior Open as that senior major is set for June 26-29 at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. At the Expo, the USSO championship trophy was on display.
The U.S. Senior Open trophy, which will be presented after this year’s championship at The Broadmoor in late June, was on display at the Expo over the weekend.
Regarding the vendors involved, an emphasis for Morton continues to be getting more local golf courses exhibiting at the show. He said the City of Lakewood and the City of Aurora capitalize on being Expo regulars, but he’d like to draw many other Colorado courses.
“There’s the same feedback pretty much every year. It’s very consistent,” he said. “The ongoing thing we need to work harder on is getting more local golf courses to be involved. This is a community event, and the community should be involved. It’s up to me to continue to work with local golf courses and try to convince them that the traffic received at the Expo is something they should really look into.”
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