The River Course at Keystone

The River Course at Keystone Resort, designed by Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry and opened in 2000, is the younger sibling to Keystone Ranch (the resort's original 1980 RTJ Jr. course), and the more accessible of the two championship layouts. The par-71 routing spans 6,886 yards from the tips and is deliberately architected for broader playability: the front nine runs alongside the Snake River with a flatter, more open character, while the back nine carves through dense lodgepole pine forest with the tighter corridors and elevation shifts expected of a Colorado mountain course. Five sets of tees, wide fairways, gentle bunkering, and mellow green complexes were all intentional design choices by Hurdzan/Fry to make the River Course the resort's "come-as-you-are" option, a guest-friendly alternative to Keystone Ranch's more demanding mountain-meadow architecture. It earned three consecutive Silver Medals as one of America's Best Golf Resorts from Golf Magazine (2002-2007) and Golf Digest ranked it #12 in America's Top 50 Courses for Women and #58 in America's Top 75 Golf Resorts. Together with Keystone Ranch, it completes a 36-hole resort program that rivals any mountain-West golf destination.