Pacific Coast Amateur, part of the Elite Amateur Golf Series, returning to Colorado for first time since 1988; RainDance National set to host the event in July 2027
By Gary Baines – 9/28/2026
The last time the Pacific Coast Amateur — one of the top amateur golf championships in the country — was contested in Colorado, Ronald Reagan was still President of the United States.
Yes, it’s been that long. But the drought is soon ending.
The 2027 Pacific Coast Am — the 60th of the modern era of the championship — will be contested at RainDance National in Windsor July 20-23, with the CGA serving as the host association, it was announced on Monday. It will be the first Pac Coast Colorado has hosted since Bear Creek Golf Club in west Denver did the honors in August 1988. From 1977 through ’88, Colorado hosted the Pac Coast three times — including in 1977 at Denver Country Club and 1983 at Hiwan Golf Club in Evergreen, the home of the Colorado Open at the time.
For the record, Billy Mayfair won at Bear Creek, becoming a back-to-back winner of the event — the most recent until Jaden Dumdumaya of Benicia, Calif. prevailed in 2025 and ’26. Mayfair went on to capture five PGA Tour titles in his pro career, including The Tour Championship in 1995.
Since 2022, the Pacific Coast Amateur has been part of the Elite Amateur Golf Series that leads up to the U.S. Amateur. The other Series championships are the Sunnehanna, the Northeast, the North & South, the Trans-Miss, the Southern and the Western.
Ashley Harrell, the chief operating officer at the CGA, played a key role in making the Pacific Coast Amateur at RainDance a reality.
“Competitive golf in Colorado offers a uniqueness that should be shared with the most elite players as often as possible,” Harrell wrote in an email. “Colorado has a strong history of hosting elite amateur competitions, and bringing the Pacific Coast Am to Colorado for the first time in nearly 40 years adds to that history in a significant way.”
Arroyos runs throughout the property at RainDance National.
The Pac Coast is a 72-hole stroke-play competition, but it also includes a team component. The first two rounds are a concurrent team competition for the Pacific Coast Amateur member associations, including the CGA. Three-player squads from those associations tee it up, with the top two scores from each counting toward the team total each day.
This year at Poppy Ridge Golf Course in Livermore, Calif., the team representing the CGA and Colorado came closer to the Morse Cup victory than it ever has, ending up one stroke behind the champions from the Northern California Golf Association. It marked the sixth time Colorado has finished second in the Morse Cup — 1982, ’83, ’92, 2011 and ’22 being the others — but 2026 was the nearest the Centennial State has come to victory. The CGA team included Colin Prater of Colorado Springs, Thayer Plewe of Cortez and Miles Kuhl of Boulder. (Overall for the week, Prater went on to tie for 11th place individually as USC golfer Dumdumaya, won for second straight year.)
Today, 16 member associations comprise the Pacific Coast Golf Association, including 14 from the western United States and two from western Canada.
The 2027 Pac Coast will be the second big-time amateur competition that will be played in Colorado in 2027. The Arnold Palmer Cup — a Ryder Cup-like competition that features the top male and female college players from the U.S. against an International squad — is set for the week of June 7-13 at Cherry Hills Country Club.
This marks the first time an Elite Amateur Golf Series tournament has been held in Colorado since Denver Country Club hosted the Trans-Miss in 2022, where current PGA Tour player William Mouw won.
RainDance National, a Fred Funk/Harrison Minchew-designed layout that opened in 2022 and features many arroyos, has hosted a few big state championships in recent years as the 2023 CGA Amateur was held there, along with the 2023 3A boys state high school tournament, the 2024 CGA Senior Match Play and the 2026 CGA Four-Ball. RainDance can stretch to 8,463 yards from the “Tour” tees, but has many options, length-wise.
“Since its opening in 2022, RainDance National has been an incredible annual host for multi-day CGA Championships,” Harrell wrote in her email. “The staff, facility and golf course have proven capacity and commitment to host high-level competitions, making them an obvious choice to pursue as a host site for the Pacific Coast Am. RainDance provides length and terrain that will challenge the competitors in a distinct way.”
As noted, next year will be the 60th version of the modern iteration of Pacific Coast Amateur, which was resurrected in 1967 after initially being held from 1901-11.
Individual champions at the Pac Coast include numerous players who went on to win on the PGA Tour, including Will Zalatoris (2016 champ), Aaron Wise (2015), Ben Crane 1998), Jason Gore (1997), five-time PGA Tour winner Mayfair (1987 and ’88), Brian Henninger (1985), Curt Byrum (1979), Mike Reid (who attended Cherry Creek High School for a time; 1976), John Fought (1975) and Mark Pfeil (1972 and ’74).
The winners of the Pac Coast Am in Colorado were Mayfair (1988 at Bear Creek), Mike Mathies (1983 at Hiwan) and Lindy Miller (1977 at Denver CC). Other competitors in those events included PGA Tour champions Robert Gamez, Paul Goydos and Jim Benepe.
“We are honored to have RainDance National as host to the 60th Pacific Coast Amateur and thrilled to bring the championship to the state of Colorado for first time since 1988,” Pacific Coast Golf Association executive director Nate Schroeder said in a release. “In just a few short years, RainDance has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the top courses in the state and it will provide a tremendous test for players with dramatic elevation changes and plenty of length.”
Since Colorado last hosted the Pacific Coast Am, the tournament has been held 10 times in California, nine in Oregon, six in Washington, five in British Columbia, four in Arizona, two in Hawaii and one in New Mexico. There was no Pac Coast Am in 2020 due to Covid-19 safety concerns.
