This course is in our GSPro library — pull it up in any bay and play it wall to wall.

"Members should budget extra time for photos at the rock formations on 5, 11, and 13, and expect tee sheets to run tight during peak red-rock season."

Arrowhead plays through a garden of 300-million-year-old red sandstone spires in Roxborough Park southwest of Denver, and the Robert Trent Jones design team (Sr. and Jr., with the course opening in the early 1970s, most sources citing 1972) had the good sense to let the rocks run the show. Fairways slip between towering red fins tilted out of the foothills of the Front Range, with elk, deer and the occasional bear wandering through. It is regularly called one of the most photographed courses anywhere, has been voted the top public course in the Denver area, and earned a Golf Digest 'Top 75 Public' nod. For many Colorado golfers it is the round they take visiting friends to first.

Anyone visiting Denver who wants the state's most photogenic public round, and golfers who value setting and drama as much as scorecard; bring a camera group, not a money game.

Rather than one signature, the whole routing threads red sandstone formations; the defining moments come where fairways and greens sit directly beneath the tilted rock fins, with the downhill tee shots framed by spires the most photographed on the course.

It is only 6,636 yards but plays tricky: thick scrub-oak rough, big elevation changes and lightning-quick greens punish misses, so play forward tees and take your medicine around the rocks.

Par 70, 6,636 yards (71.5/138). Yardages port fine to a simulator, but Arrowhead is about thin-air distance, severe elevation change and red-rock intimidation, which a screen flattens completely.

Upscale public daily-fee course under Arcis Golf; prime-time green fees run north of 100 dollars with mid-week and twilight deals, and tee times book well ahead in season.