 |
 |
|
A man apart
 |
| Photo by Jim Mandeville/The Nicklaus Companies |
Challenging the golfing records of Jack Nicklaus is one thing. Pursuing his overall accomplishments in the name of the game is quite another. The former is possible, the latter . . . well, it’s as good as untouchable.
Or will be. Nicklaus’ burgeoning golf business empire is ongoing and appears for the most part to be building an even bigger head of steam now that the man himself has basically set aside his golf clubs in order to channel his energies fully in the direction of the game’s development.
Nicklaus and his company, Nicklaus Design, are responsible for 277 golf courses worldwide, including more than 100 in the last decade alone. The firm also has at least 85 projects currently under construction or in the planning stages. It would seem that the sky is the limit, just as it was when Nicklaus was winning 105 professional golf tournaments — including his trademark 18 major championships — during the past 40-some years.
“Designing golf courses is my total expression of my appreciation for the game,” he says. “My playing career can only go on so long. But what I have learned that can be put on a piece of ground will go on way beyond my golf game and my life. To have the ability to design golf courses and influence where people play, the way people play and how they play is important to me.”
In the spirit of Old Tom
Nicklaus — the man, the golfer and the game’s visionary — is important to GCSAA, as well, as the association honors him as its 2005 Old Tom Morris Award winner.
“Jack Nicklaus truly embodies the spirit of the award,” notes GCSAA President Mark J. Woodward, CGCS. “Few, if any, rival his lifetime contributions to the game. He has touched nearly every aspect of the game and has done so with the utmost class, integrity and excellence.”
In naming Nicklaus the most powerful person in golf earlier this year, Golf Inc. magazine paraphrased the Old Tom Morris Award’s emphasis on a lifetime commitment to the welfare of golf when it noted his wide-ranging influence on all aspects of the game along with shaping the future of the industry through trend-setting course design, the licensing of golf equipment and apparel, instruction, real estate and player development.
Adds Nicklaus’ longtime friend and rival, Arnold Palmer, the inaugural Old Tom Morris Award recipient in 1983: “I certainly think that Jack is most deserving of this award because of his relationship to golf and his accomplishments in the game, not just from a playing standpoint, but from an architecture standpoint. He has set some very high standards for golf architecture and certainly has done a yeoman’s job in designing and building so many fine golf courses around the world.”
And from Pete Dye, a fellow golf course designer, Old Tom Morris Award winner (2003) and close friend for more than four decades: “Jack’s gone the whole gamut, from the greatest player to experiencing all sides of developing the game, from design to the agronomics — whatever he thinks will help the game of golf.”
Nicklaus discovered
If anything, the Old Tom Morris Award is an approving nod to Nicklaus’ evolution as a champion of both golf and the creation and care of its venues. Both are the result of learning, determination, the outright love of a singular sport and the support of family, friends and industry colleagues.
Once scorned for unseating the idolized Palmer atop the world of golf, Nicklaus resolutely earned the honor, respect and adulation of those inside and outside the ropes. Once criticized as a designer of golf courses only he could play, Nicklaus became a creator of playing fields for games of all sizes and shapes. Once considered aloof to the importance of the role of the superintendent in the success of a golf course project, Nicklaus today is one of golf course management’s staunchest advocates and provides a wellspring of career opportunities through both his work and his influence.
Nicklaus himself says it best when he recalls a time when he observed the contrasting reactions of golfers — high handicappers and the proficient — after they completed their rounds. What he learned helped forge the key components of his design philosophy today.
“To the average golfer, a golf course should be a pretty place to have fun, but the good golfer, or the professional, expects the pretty and demands a quality of golf — good golf shots and good values, fair shots and fair results,” he says. “So, if I can provide a golf course that’s aesthetically pleasing, well-conditioned, has good, solid golf holes and good, solid shot values and there’s enough money to provide the superintendent the ability to maintain it, then you basically have what you need for what everybody wants — a good golf course.”
Groomed for greatness
Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Nicklaus took up golf in 1950 at age 10. Under the guidance of his father, Charlie, a prominent pharmacist — “the catalyst and architect of my golfing career” — and Jack Grout, the professional at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, young Nicklaus became a sensation before that decade was over.
He was already a professional superstar and somewhat into designing when Charlie died of cancer in 1970. Grout, described by Nicklaus in his autobiography, “My Story,” as his teacher and motivator, also became a second father to the 30-year-old who by that time had already won two U.S. Amateurs, two U.S. Opens, three Masters, two British Opens and a PGA Championship, plus 24 other professional titles.
During last spring’s Memorial Tournament that Nicklaus hosts at his Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, he commented on the importance of the relationship he and Grout had for almost 40 years until the latter’s death in 1989:
“It’s not that Jack Grout probably taught me that much, it’s that he showed interest in me and he spent time with me and he encouraged me. He was there for me and that’s like being another father. When your dad is there for you, it’s something that encourages you and makes you want to do things better and that’s the way Jack Grout was.”
Building blocks
There were other mentors, Joe Dey, the first PGA Tour commissioner, and Pete Dye chief among them.
“Believe it or not, Jack and I have been close friends all these years,” Dye likes to say, aware that many persist in considering him more competitor than mentor to Nicklaus.
True, the two were rivals in amateur golf during the late 1950s and early ’60s and, of course, they’ve been in the same business of designing golf courses for more than three decades. Yet, to their knowledge, they’ve never even bid on a job against each other and Dye, as always, is content with a couple projects a year while Nicklaus’ agenda dominates the market.
Dye also likes to say that Nicklaus has done more to boost the public image of the golf course architect’s profession than anyone else. If so, Dye, 14 years Jack’s senior and yet just a budding designer in his own right in the mid-1960s, played a major role in that regard when he asked Nicklaus to consult a bit during the construction of The Golf Club in New Albany near Columbus. From there the two collaborated on a half-dozen projects, including Harbor Town Golf Links, before deciding to go their separate ways in the business.
In full bloom at Jack’s house The heart of the relationship between Jack Nicklaus and the superintendents’ profession actually began nearly 30 years ago and literally in his own backyard. For much of the time that the Nicklauses have lived at their estate in North Palm Beach, Fla., Jack has employed a full-time grounds-care team that includes a young intern usually from the turfgrass or landscape management ranks. Over the years, many of the interns have gone on to become golf course superintendents. One of the first was Tolby Strahan, CGCS, who is now a 25-year GCSAA member and the director of golf at the Grand Bear Golf Club, a Jack Nicklaus Signature layout in Saucier, Miss. The program’s incumbent is Justen Patterson, who was the second assistant superintendent at the Gary Nicklaus-designed Dalhousie Golf Club in Cape Girardeau, Mo., when he won the nod for what has become a coveted niche in the Nicklaus organization. “It’s a great opportunity for these kids to come in for a year to a year and a half and work on testing different grasses and whatever,” Jack says. “They learn grass, they learn trees, they learn what I want and they also learn that I’m not an ogre. Sometimes they screw up and sometimes they don’t. That’s what the program is all about. I’m very proud of the whole thing.” On the cutting edge Still, Trosclair, who’s been at the estate for 17 years, is Nicklaus’ tree guy. He specializes in tropical fruits and palms, of which there are more than 100 on the grounds. He points out that the estate is a haven for anything that grows, specifically non-traditional species in non-traditional situations. “Actually, there is a lot of groundbreaking work that goes on, testing the northern and southern limits for turf, trees, flowers and other plants, that has caught the interest of a lot of people in the industry,” Trosclair says. Much of the testing has resulted in cultivars and species making the cut, so to speak, and winding up in a Nicklaus golf course project. The same could be said of the turf interns, many of whom have used the job as a springboard to golf course employment at Nicklaus venues and others throughout the country. Trosclair’s responsibilities include taking the interns under his wing and overseeing what is pretty much a free-wheeling apprenticeship. A lot of the turfgrass acreage comprises a putting green and the family’s lawn tennis courts. Most recently, the work has centered around the care and feeding of various SeaIsle paspalum cultivars on the green and a Champion-Tifeagle bermudagrass mix and more paspalum on the tennis courts. Of particular interest is the grasses’ tolerance to wear and tear. “One thing that’s really cool about all this is that Jack’s always looking to try things,” Trosclair says. “That’s what makes the internship attractive to guys — they get to be on the cutting edge.” While most of the interns have had schooling in turf or landscaping or experience in golf course maintenance, the feature that impacts the program the most is the network of working superintendents who help recruit candidates for the position and assist in the management of the grasses from time to time. GCSAA members and “graduates” of the program, like Eric Bauer, the head of golf course maintenance for the Woodlands Development Co. in The Woodlands, Texas, and Jim Simmons of Alabama’s famed Shoal Creek, have brought in a number of interns. Trosclair says he leans on a few nearby superintendents he calls “wizards with grass,” such as Steve Ehrbar, CGCS at Lost Tree Club in North Palm Beach; John Katterheinrich at The Bear’s Club in Jupiter; and Dave McIntosh, a turf consultant now with Advanced Aeration Systems in North Palm Beach — a trio with 62 years in GCSAA between them. But, most of all, the program benefits from frequent sojourns into the yard by Nicklaus himself, armed with questions, suggestions and his signature resolute vision. “Jack is not so much hands-on as he is mind-on,” Trosclair says. “He knows what he wants and how he likes it. He’s demanding but fair and very rewarding. He’s a good guy to work for.” A test from Mother Nature While the monetary loss had not been pinned down, Trosclair estimated it would take about six months to complete repairing and replanting. “It’s one of those things ... it’s happened to people all over the state,” he said. “We’ll get it all back together and hopefully better than ever.” A big break Weeks, recruited for the position by Bauer — himself a graduate of the program in the mid-1990s — worked at the estate for 22 months during 2002-2004. In a fitting scenario, Weeks had worked for Bauer as a college intern three years earlier at the Nicklaus-designed Spring Creek Ranch in Collierville, Tenn., and following the end of his tour of duty at the estate earlier this year, he went back to work for Bauer in Texas as one of his assistants at The Club at Carlton Woods near Houston, which includes a three-year-old Jack Nicklaus Signature course. Under Nicklaus and Trosclair, Weeks managed the turfgrasses, headed the installation of a new irrigation system and helped in the selection of new turf equipment. He says he experimented with the different paspalum cultivars for the desired combination of aesthetics and durability and also worked with different bermudagrasses from his alma mater, Mississippi State University. “Mr. Nicklaus and Phil just kind of let you do your thing. They want you to get out there and learn — make mistakes and learn from them,” says the seven-year GCSAA member. “It was a very hands-on experience. You were allowed to develop your own cultural practices, such as fertilizers and pesticides and all that.” “He would come out about once a week and ask a lot about what we were doing and why. He was always interested in what was going on in his yard. He’d even give me some tips on how to communicate and explain things. It was a neat experience.” “It was almost like your mother was there every day while you’re working because of the way Mrs. Nicklaus treats you,” Weeks says. “She’d bring cookies and drinks and ask how things were going. I learned a great bit from her hospitality.” Now that Weeks is back with his mentor, Bauer, the door appears to be swinging open wider still. Bauer, an 11-year GCSAA member, has his protégé sharpening his spurs on the construction of the club’s Tom Fazio venue. “Eric is real energetic and the kind of guy I want to be around and learn this business from,” Weeks says. “He’s given me a real good opportunity here as an assistant and to be on the ground floor of a high-profile construction project. It’s been a heck of a few years for me.” – T.O. |
“Besides learning to never be afraid to try something, one of the things that I sort of followed from Pete is that golf is a more pleasant game played downhill — to see what’s in front of you,” Nicklaus says. “I really hadn’t thought about that until he and I worked together. It also makes a course play shorter, but that wasn’t much of an issue in those days.”
In the early 1970s, Nicklaus hooked up with another architect, Desmond Muirhead, with the idea that the latter’s skills in overall golf community development along with his design expertise would be the perfect assist to Jack’s dream venue, Muirfield Village GC. In the meantime, the two worked together on a handful of projects and then finally opened Muirfield Village in 1974.
His way
By then, Nicklaus, typically, was firm in his resolve to be his own man in golf course development.
“I just got tired of compromising what I wanted to do. I had developed my own sense of what a golf course should be,” he says. “I learned a lot from Pete and Desmond, but I just wanted to do a golf course by myself.”
And so he did. Nicklaus’ first solo job was Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, a piece of work that has since hosted two dozen Canadian Opens. And from there, the rest is ongoing history and testament to the man’s legendary powers of concentration and dedication.
The most extraordinary — and quite possibly the most overlooked — aspect of Nicklaus’ heyday in the 1970s and ’80s is not just that he won nearly 50 golf tournaments, including another 10 majors, but that he also designed almost 100 golf courses. When the current superintendent at Muirfield Village, Paul B. Latshaw, CGCS, says, “Arguably, Jack’s the greatest golfer ever and he’s probably going to become the greatest architect ever,” it’s hard to argue with him.
The learning curve
Few also would argue the fact that early on Nicklaus’ golf courses were perhaps more suited for professional use — too tough and too challenging for the majority of golfers.
There is some background to that. Nicklaus says that in his younger days when he began to travel and play more championship venues around the country — as well as Scotland during the 1959 Walker Cup — he started taking an interest in the myriad design features that confronted him, albeit through the eyes of a blossoming star shotmaker. It’s a process that continues today.
“I’ve played, by my best count, approximately 500 golf courses,” Nicklaus says in “Nicklaus by Design,” his book on golf course strategy and architecture. “They say that every person you meet has some influence on you, even if you’re not aware of it. I think the same can be said for golf courses. Each of them has had some impact on my thinking. It may not always be on a conscious level, but the impact is there.”
Thus, 30 years ago Nicklaus took what he saw and put it to a piece of land, as he says, in its most formidable form — a great player challenging great players.
“I did it many times in the image of how I played golf,” he said of his early design philosophy in an interview a few years ago.
In Nicklaus’ defense, many of the owners or developers who hired him in the 1970s and ’80s challenged him to design tournament venues or the toughest layout he could.
Nicklaus is quick to note that it wasn’t long before he began a steady transition, toning down his designs to be more versatile, more balanced, more playable for all levels of golfers.
Dye writes in the foreword to “Nicklaus by Design” that Bobby Jones was also an influential presence to Nicklaus and planted a design seed that thrives yet today — “second-shot thinking,” an emphasis on precision approaches to the green rather than power. It’s a thinking that remains prevalent at Augusta National, created by Jones and Alister Mackenzie and revered by Nicklaus.
“I still enjoy second shots more than first shots because first shots are basically to put you in position to play the hole,” says Nicklaus, who admits at one point he did lean a little toward letting players hit the driver more, but then advances in equipment technology and a resulting lack of space curtailed that thinking.
The battle against obsolescence
Ah, yes, technology ... golf equipment in the 21st century ... the large, prickly subject that sticks in Nicklaus’ craw. In an interview with GCM late this summer, Nicklaus regretted that architect Jay Morrish, who worked with Nicklaus Design from 1972-83, was retiring from the profession in disappointment and frustration. Morrish had said in the June 2004 issue of this magazine that equipment technology in the hands of modern players had rendered many great golf courses irrelevant and made it extremely difficult to design suitably challenging new venues.
Nicklaus feels the same way as his friend and colleague and, as one of the industry’s more vocal critics of technological advances in the golf ball, he is determined to carry on the fight.
Nicklaus not only maintains that today’s golf ball is the biggest issue confronting course design and development, he believes that the powers that be, the USGA and the PGA Tour, appear to be unable to appropriately address the issue. Meanwhile, course architecture is left in the lurch.
He also believes that today’s course conditioning is not as much of a factor in the length issue as many claim. “We’ve had great conditions, especially at the championship courses, for many years. It’s a scoring factor, but not a huge one in my opinion,” he says.
“The point is, we (Nicklaus Design) do not do a golf course, from the time we start the planning to the time we open, that it isn’t already obsolete for the professionals or those guys who can hit it nine miles,” he says. “We used to be able to guess pretty well what technology was doing to the ball. But by the year 2000 the increases were so much we just couldn’t keep up. It’s no longer a question of protecting par, it’s a question of protecting the golf course.”
Nicklaus says that length is not the answer in designing courses because of property constraints, financial constraints and plain old common sense for the overall good of the game.
“I agree with Arnold Palmer that the game should be fun for the amateur golfer,” he said in “Nicklaus by Design” a couple of years ago. “The rules as they are are fine for the amateur ... hitting the ball longer is fun and it brings people into the game. But for the showcase events, such as PGA Tour events, USGA championships and the other majors, let’s have the manufacturers make a golf ball that’s 10 percent shorter. If we take just 10 percent off the golf ball’s distance, we bring hundreds of great golf courses back from the brink of extinction.”
Strategic solutions
But, like building 9,000-yard golf courses, a ball for pros only is an unlikely scenario. So, Nicklaus and other designers are increasing their efforts to control the ball through architectural components that demand strategic play. The upside is that the average golfer benefits from the results.
“Any way you look at it, the averages say that only 2 percent of play is from the back tees,” Nicklaus notes. “I’ve changed my philosophy to where I design far more from the average golfers’ tees now — create a strategy that I think they can enjoy. You’ve got to do that so the average person can play the golf course and enjoy it.”
Nicklaus adds that instead of multiple teeing areas, he now favors designing for a set of three — the tips, playing from 7,500-plus; a middle tee for the average player, 6,200 to 6,700 yards; and a tee for seniors and women of about 5,500-plus yards.
Indeed, then, the golfer who went farther than anyone in history has also come a long way in design.
“We all have a learning curve,” says one who has worked with Nicklaus for the better part of two decades, Mike McBride, the former superintendent at Muirfield Village and now an independent contractor and consultant. “That whole process of being able to strategically design a championship golf course, but still allow the high handicapper to play and have fun is where I think Jack has excelled in, say, the last 10 years.”
A greener thumb
While the question, “Who is going to play the course?” is asked first these days when Nicklaus takes on a project, the relationship between golf and the environment is a close second.
Nearly a quarter of the Nicklaus courses in the United States are involved in Audubon International programs. One, the stunning Old Works Golf Club in Anaconda, Mont., was built on a federal Superfund clean-up site of former copper mining operations. It took more than two years and $23 million to complete the layout, which, in turn, was rewarded with Golf Digest’s 1998 Environmental Leaders in Golf Award and GCSAA’s 1999 Environmental Steward Award.
“There may be no better marriage between development and environment than a golf course,” Nicklaus says. “... I take my design cues from nature. I try never to force an idea onto a piece of land and I think most of the top designers today would agree that a big part of our job is not so much disrupting earth, but taking the suggestions of Mother Nature and building on them.”
Nicklaus’ progression in furthering the welfare of the game has pulled golf course management along as well. While some in the profession may say belatedly so, others — particularly those who have been there and done that with Nicklaus — say it’s always been a top priority in his order of things and that his demanding ways have long skewed perception.
“The superintendent has grown leaps and bounds in the last 20 years,” Nicklaus says. “They were looked at as the guys who grew the grass. Now, the technology, the sophistication, the education, the schools, the knowledge available to them ... it’s all changed things so much.”
He adds that the advances in the superintendent’s profession have become integral to managing today’s courses, including their construction as well as their agronomy, which is why he says he prefers not to even start a project without a superintendent.
“A golf course has to have a superintendent on board from day one,” Nicklaus says. “That superintendent will make a lot of decisions for me in the building of that golf course that I might not have made if he hadn’t been there, like the selection of grasses and the proper maintenance equipment, coverage of the irrigation system and determining proper drainage areas.”
Advice and consent
Nicklaus says one of his final tasks in the evolution of a course is his interplay with the superintendent concerning the compatibility of the greens with maintenance.
“I’d just as soon go a little softer on green slopes to make sure the superintendent can cut and maintain them. There’s no question that I’ll vary my design a little because of the capabilities of the superintendent.”
A case in point is Tray Maltby, an 11-year GCSAA member who currently is director of golf maintenance for Ginn Golf’s Reunion Resort & Club of Orlando. About five years ago, Maltby worked with Nicklaus during the development of Ocean Hammock Golf Club in Palm Coast, Fla. Fittingly, there is now a reunion of sorts at the Reunion as Maltby is again working with Nicklaus on the construction of the resort’s Tradition Course, which will complement the two completed venues designed by Palmer (the Legacy) and Tom Watson (the Independence).
“At the Ocean (Hammock) course, Mr. Nicklaus was very interested and very involved, which I guess I wasn’t expecting,” Maltby says. “He made several site visits. Before any green was grassed he walked it and inspected it. He was very particular about things like that. If there was a slope in question, he’d say, ‘Supe, do you think you can mow that? If it’s too steep we’ll tone it down a little,’ and we were able to deal with it. I was very impressed by that.”
Walking the walk
Nicklaus says he believes that the sharing of knowledge among golf turf managers has helped them grow as a group as much or more than any other in the industry. To that end, he also credits the work of GCSAA, which, in turn, causes him to reflect on being the 23rd recipient of the Old Tom Morris Award.
“I see it as a very satisfying recognition of me from the standpoint that superintendents actually understand that I’m on their side and that I’m trying to do golf courses that they can maintain,” he says. “To be recognized by this group is a very nice honor. We’re all in this together.”
That Nicklaus has set himself apart from his peers on and off the golf course is understating even the facts already related here. He won 73 PGA Tour titles, but, moreover, he was second or third an astounding 94 times. In scattered appearances in 14 years on the Champions Tour he won 10 times, eight of them coming in that circuit’s major championships. He was the consensus Golfer of the 20th Century and Sports Illustrated’s Best Individual Male Athlete of the Century.
In his adjoining career of golf course design and development that is now approaching 300 facilities, Nicklaus has produced three dozen world-ranked venues and 77 of his courses have hosted nearly 500 professional and top amateur events. Along the way he has been consistently rated No. 1 in the industry for the value he brings to a golf project by Golf Research Group and he has received the highest awards given by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the Golf Course Builders Association of America and now GCSAA.
Home fires burn brightly
As the saying goes, he couldn’t have done it alone, and Nicklaus didn’t. The secret behind his unparalleled records and commitment to golf is hardly a secret at all to most in the industry — support of family, and the Nicklaus clan is a big one in many ways, nurtured by love, loyalty and its famed perseverance.
Jack and Barbara Nicklaus were married in July 1960. Five children arrived within a 12-year span — Jack II, Steve, Nan, Gary and Michael. Today there are also 17 grandchildren. Everybody lives in or near North Palm Beach, Fla., where the Nicklauses moved in the late 1960s.
Jack has always said his life’s priorities were family, golf and business, in that order. For Barbara, it’s been family, period. It’s worked well, Jack says, because they been able to separate their marriage and the family from the obvious outside interests and distractions.
“I don’t take golf home. I never have,” Nicklaus said in an interview last year. “If you come into my office or my home, there is not a golf thing. Nothing. Zero.”
He says much of the success he and Barbara have had in an area where other famous sports figures have failed is basically because the two of them came from similar backgrounds and share the same standards and values.
“. . . Despite the millions of miles we travel, the glitzy places we visit, the famous people we know, and the many material comforts that grow from a successful career, we are both at heart still pretty simple-living homebodies who get their greatest joys and satisfactions from within the family unit,” Nicklaus says in his autobiography.
He adds that very early in his career he promised that he would never be away from home more than 14 days at a stretch unless his wife and children were along. One of the more notable Jack-and-Barbara stories came out of the 1975 Ryder Cup at Laurel Valley Golf Club in Pennsylvania. Women weren’t allowed in the clubhouse, so Jack went to Palmer, the American team captain, and said if he couldn’t have lunch there with Barbara he was quitting the team and going home. Jack and Barbara had their lunch, and Jack led the U.S. to victory.
Nicklaus admits that his family-first attitude has not always sat well with his golf and business interests, as well as with some of the media.
“. . . Be that as it may,” he says, “the result has been a strong and secure marriage, plus five temperamentally different but basically normal, generally healthy, and — I sincerely hope — reasonably happy children. Case closed.”
New priorities
All four of Nicklaus’ sons, plus his son-in-law, Bill O’Leary, are involved in Nicklaus Design and related entities. His two oldest, Jack II and Steve, have assumed the leading roles in running Muirfield Village GC and the Memorial Tournament. One would assume that Nicklaus, who will be 65 next month, is going to slow down and pass a baton or two.
Not likely. While he has virtually retired from competitive golf and may enjoy a little more of his two non-golf passions, fishing and tennis, and spend more time with his grandchildren, Nicklaus’ work ethic in the design and development realm is more robust than ever. Many of his colleagues continue to marvel at his tireless schedule.
“I enjoy the work, being in the office with the guys and especially out on the land, which is the fun part for me,” he says.
Appropriately, Nicklaus Design is on the cutting edge of innovation to facilitate its huge workload. It has its own software, T2Green, a proprietary set of design tools that are largely responsible for the fact that while the company did its first 100 courses in about 25 years, it was able to do its next 100 and then some in less than 10 years. Nicklaus also admits that more work in redesigns and renovations are imminent — it’s a major direction for the industry as suitable sites, customer bases and finances for new developments continue to shrink.
“I don’t know how he does it, but Jack’s doing a super job all over the world,” says Pete Dye. “And he’s not only into the design, but also the mechanics, like drainage and irrigation, getting his hands dirty. I know one thing, Jack has jumped into the agronomic end of golf courses big time. He’s interested in all the grasses. He’s always trying something and gets involved in it personally.”
Nicklaus’ old friend adds that golf is certainly better for it. Nicklaus’ love for the game of golf has fueled a career that shaped not only the style of play, but also the landscape on which it is played.
“I really believe that golf is going to continue to grow and I want to be a part of that future,” Nicklaus says. “People enjoy being outdoors and doing things. I’ve found that people enjoy living in a golf course community-type atmosphere and open green space, whether they play golf or not. That’s great for developing the game and that’s great for all of us.”
RELATED articles
IMGE archive
AD archive
RECENT issues
 |
 |
November |
October 2004 |