A year after Inspirato opted out as title sponsor of the Colorado Open championships, it’s returning — under new ownership and management — in that same role for 2026
By Gary Baines – 5/14/2026
It went right down to the wire, but the 2026 Colorado Open championships will have a title sponsor.
And to get it, they went back to the future.
With just about three weeks before the Colorado Women’s Open — the first of the 2026 championships — is contested at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club in northeast Denver, tournament officials are announcing they’ve agreed to a one-year deal that will make Inspirato the title sponsor of the Colorado Open, Women’s Open and Senior Open in ’26.
If that name seems familiar, there’s a reason. Inspirato was the title sponsor of the Colorado Open championships from 2022 through last year. But 14 months ago, the officials from the championships announced that Inspirato — under different ownership and management than is now in place — requested an early termination of its title-sponsorship deal with the Colorado Open tournaments. And it was granted its release a year early by the Colorado Open Golf Foundation. That made the 2025 tournaments the final year with Inspirato in the title-sponsorship role — or so it seemed.
But with new ownership/management at Inspirato in place — Exclusive Investments acquired the company on Feb. 3 — Kevin Laura, CEO of the Colorado Open Golf Foundation, went back to the well after several other possibilities didn’t pan out. And it worked out — at least for 2026.
Though it’s just a one-year deal, the possibility is there for the relationship to be extended.
“They’re under new management and they’ve only been working together for about four months since the purchase (of Inspirato),” Laura told Colorado Golf Journal on Thursday. “So they’re interested in dating again and seeing if the fit is good. But they do like the initial feedback and impressions in reputation that Inspirato gained from being our title sponsor, and they’re just excited to extend this to this year and see what the future holds. We’re just in the courting stage, but the early dates have gone very well.
“So we’re very excited to have Inspirato as our sponsor for the 2026 Opens.”
Asked why he approached Inspirato given that it had ended its title-sponsorship deal just a year earlier, Laura said, “I don’t want it to sound arrogant, but I would say because everyone told me not to or ‘don’t waste your time.’ I’m in the ‘no’ business, so I am I’m told no 90 percent of the time.
“The fact that I knew that we had four years of a very strong relationship in the naming-rights world, I just planned for them to at least see (the proposed opportunity). The previous owners had invested four years of a five-year deal, and building it to this point. So it was easier to convince the new people what a good previous investment they had made — or the previous owners had made. There’s so much luck involved, and timing is such a big deal. So I was very fortunate that I got to the right people at the right time.”
Inspirato is a Denver-based luxury travel subscription business. Laura worked with Exclusive Resorts’ CFO, Robin Warne, in making the new title-sponsorship deal a reality.
“I was just glad to catch some people with some open minds,” said Laura, who confirmed that Colorado Open leadership had a “Plan B” in place in case no title-sponsorship deal was struck prior to the 2026 championships.
The Colorado Open tournaments, long considered the gold standard of state and regional opens, are set this year for June 3-5 (Women’s Open), July 23-26 (Colorado Open) and Sept. 2-4 (Senior Open). They’ll all remain at Green Valley Ranch Golf Club, where all those tournaments have been held since 2004. The championships will continue to benefit the First Tee at Green Valley Ranch, and Laura credited LCP Group, the owners of Green Valley Ranch Golf Club since 2024, for supporting the championships and the First Tee GVR as the title-sponsor search has taken place.
In March 2025, Colorado Open officials announced that their first prizes — which had been hiked to $100,000 each (starting in 2016 for the men and 2022 for the women) — would be reduced to $50,000 starting last year. Even at that, the checks for the winners remain among the very largest in the country for state and regional opens. First prize for the Senior Open went from $20,000 to $15,000 starting last year.
The overall purses for the two open-age championships were reduced from $250,000 to $200,000, with the entire reduction coming from the winner’s portion, meaning second-place finishers on down were unaffected. In the Colorado Senior Open, the purse went from $100,000 to $80,000, with the entire payout affected, not just the winner’s portion.
The hope was that the reductions would make it easier to forge a new title-sponsorship deal. All the purse sizes in 2026 will remain the same as they were in 2025, Laura said.
“Once we realized that we were in that arms race with ourselves (regarding player payouts), the tournaments didn’t skip a beat, and the fields didn’t suffer by that adjustment,” Laura noted.
The Colorado Open dates back to 1964, when it debuted at Hiwan Golf Club in Evergreen. The first Colorado Women’s Open was played in 1995, and the first Senior Open in 1999.
Over the years, champions at the Colorado Open have included PGA Tour winners such as Dave Hill (four times), Jonathan Kaye (twice), Steve Jones, Kevin Stadler, Al Geiberger, Mark Wiebe, Willie Wood and Dan Halldorson. Among Women’s Open winners are LPGA champions Jennifer Kupcho and Lauren Coughlin. Senior Open champs include Kaye and Guy Boros, both winners on the PGA Tour.
Colorado Golf Journal 