Wide skies, quiet confidence, and one story I still can’t quite laugh about
There are some courses that announce themselves with famous names, grand clubhouses, or eye-popping green fees. And then there are courses like Walking Stick Golf Course in Pueblo, Colorado — places that earn your respect one hole at a time. Designed by Arthur Hills and opened in 1991, Walking Stick has long been one of Southern Colorado’s best public golf experiences, with a layout that blends prairie, desert, and mountain views into something quietly memorable.
Walking Stick has also proven it can stand up to championship golf. It hosted the 2006 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship, won by Tiffany Joh, and the course describes itself as Pueblo’s leading major tournament venue. That competitive pedigree is part of what makes it more than just a pleasant daily-fee round.
But facts and tournament history only tell part of the story. What makes Walking Stick special to me is simpler than that: I’ve played a lot of events there over the years, and every time I return, it feels like a course that knows exactly what it is. It does not try to overwhelm you. It just gives you room, asks for judgment, and waits to see whether you brought your golf game — and your common sense.
The setting is part of the charm. The skies seem bigger in Pueblo. The fairways run through open ground framed by native grasses, arroyos, and the distant outline of the mountains. In places, the course feels almost linksy in spirit; in others, it feels like classic American public golf, with homes, open corridors, and enough movement around the greens to make you pay attention. Golf Digest describes it as a fusion of prairie and desert-style golf, and that feels about right.
And then there is the event I probably remember most fondly: the Labor Day three-course challenge. One day at Elmwood, one day at Walking Stick, and one day at Desert Hawk. That is a pretty good stretch of golf by any standard, and Walking Stick always felt like the centerpiece of the three — the course with just enough strategy, just enough beauty, and just enough bite to keep everybody honest.
There is also something unmistakably local about the place. The Western character, the open land, the CSU Pueblo backdrop, the feeling that this is golf rooted in its own community rather than built for outsiders passing through. That is part of the reason I have always liked it. Walking Stick feels like Southern Colorado.
Of all the holes on the course, one of the most memorable is the 15th, a par 5 known as “The Stick.” It is exactly the sort of risk-reward hole that stays in your head after the round. The name alone suggests a challenge, and the hole delivers it: tempting enough to make you think about being aggressive, dangerous enough to punish you when you are. It is the sort of par 5 where strategy changes with the wind, your score, and your mood. On one day it looks inviting. On another, it looks like a trap dressed up as an opportunity.
Walking Stick also has a way of creating the small moments golfers understand immediately. A fairway that seems wider until you actually have to hit it. A green that looks simple until you leave yourself above the hole. A bunker shot where the lip suddenly appears taller when your ball settles near the base.
Walking Stick does not beat you up with gimmicks. It just gives you a shot, lets you see everything in front of you, and then reminds you that seeing it and pulling it off are two different things.
And that brings me to my favorite sad story from Walking Stick.
My brother and I were playing in an event there years ago, one of the many tournaments I played on that course through the years. Like plenty of tournament rounds, there was an optional skins game. Usually that is just a little side action, a few dollars, a little extra fun, a chance to buy dinner if things go your way.
On the 18th hole, I holed out from the fairway for an eagle 2.
Not a near miss. Not a tap-in birdie after a good shot. Holed out.
And as it turned out, that eagle would have been the only skin of the day, worth $1,200.
Unfortunately, I had not put my money in the pot that morning.
So no skins were awarded.
That is the kind of golf story that starts funny, turns painful, and then settles into family legend. It was one of the best shots I have ever hit, and somehow it became one of the most expensive lessons I have ever learned.
Every golfer has a version of that story. Not always the same details, but the same theme. Sometimes it is not the bad swings that stay with you. Sometimes it is the day you did something remarkable and still walked away feeling like golf had slipped a banana peel under your shoe.
The good news is that Walking Stick is the kind of course worthy of that kind of memory. It is not forgettable golf. It is the kind of place where things happen — where a three-day challenge becomes a tradition, where one hole gets a nickname strong enough to define a round, where a sunset over the green makes you linger a little longer before heading in.
Late in the day, with the light turning gold and the checkered flag snapping over a smooth green, Walking Stick feels like exactly what a hidden gem should feel like: unpretentious, distinctive, and better than people expect. The official course site calls it one of Pueblo’s pre-eminent public golf facilities, and that rings true. It is affordable, highly regarded locally, and still very much part of the competitive golf fabric of the region.
That is why Walking Stick stays with me. Not because it is flashy. Not because it is famous. But because it is a really good golf course with real tournament roots, a memorable setting, and enough personal history for me to know that every time I go back, I am likely to come home with another story.
Some golf memories are about trophies.
Some are about architecture.
And some are about the day you made eagle from the fairway and forgot to buy in.
Walking Stick, for me, is all of that at once.
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