When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Thanks to Jay Busbee at Yahoo for noticing a post at The Golf Watch about J.B. Holmes taking a rain check on shaking Jack's hand following his final round 77.
I knew I shouldn't have deleted the telecast before watching it!
Jack Nicklaus weighed in on several topics during his Memorial Tuesday chat with the media, ranging from Boo Weekley to furrowed bunkers to the golf ball. For a summary of his lengthy Ryder Cup dialogue, check out Steve Elling's blog summation. Elling also offered this overview of the press conference if you don't want to read the entire transcript. Mark Soltau summarizes a Jack anecdote related to Tiger's decision not to play (it doesn't sound great with his knee) and also on the topic of thank-you cards from players.
And separate of his press conference, Nicklaus offered this to Doug Ferguson in response to a question about his support of the USGA's new deal with RBS.
Jack Nicklaus has been barking about technology for at least a decade, with seemingly no help from the USGA. But he took part in an announcement earlier this month when golf’s governing body in the United States and Mexico announced it had signed its fourth corporate partner in the last 18 months.
He was asked about any perception that the USGA is more interested in getting corporate support than governing the game.
“I wish I had a good answer to that,” Nicklaus replied. “I haven’t had a good answer from the USGA on it. I think their heart is in the right place. I don’t think they’re trying to avoid being a good steward to the game. They’re probably between a rock and a hard place.
“Their efforts in the grassroots of the game, being involved in youth, certainly has been good,” he said. “They do so many good things. It’s just the one thing they aren’t having success at is controlling the length of the golf ball.”
Okay, now the highlights from the press conference.
Q. Furrowed bunkers again this year?
JACK NICKLAUS: We went to about halfway between what we were. I think that the first year we probably were a little severe. Probably the second year we were probably too light and this year we're somewhere in the middle. It's about the same exact same thing that basically I was at Birkdale last week and the rakes are almost identical to Birkdale. So I think it's pretty much the standard rake. It's just not a smooth surface.
And the intention is, as I've said in here many times, the intention is not to make it a penalty, but to have it in a player's mind that it could be a penalty. And so if you're going to hit the ball, you got to challenge a bunker and you're going to say, you know, well, if I hit in there what difference does it make, I'm just going to take my whatever club it is and knock it out and knock it on the green. The players don't worry about it.
But if you got it where you might not get a perfect lie -- and you can get a good lie in the bunkers the way we got them, but you can get a bad lie. And if that's the case, then you're going to think about whether you want to really challenge that bunker in a way that you wouldn't even consider. So it's just forcing the players to strategize, to play the strategy of the golf course.
I came up with it, the reason I did it was we just kept changing bunkers and lowering them and it didn't make that much difference. I always go through what they did at the Masters and there's two bunkers at the fifth hole at the Masters and, you know, you can't hardly shoot a gun out of them over the top, but -- they're so deep. And but Hootie saw that and didn't know if they could get out. And I said, Hootie, I promise you they're going to get out. There will be no problems. The first round Mickelson knocked it in the bunkers, knocked a 9-iron out of the bunker onto the green and made birdie. End of question there, end of subject.
So if you keep taking the bunkers and keep doing things to them, you just are destroying your membership. The membership can't play out of those bunkers. The membership is having a hard time playing, a hard time playing out of a lot of them over here. So I said basically let's not make the bunkers any tougher. Just one week a year rough it up a little bit. They call it rough raking it. And that's what we have done and that's -- I don't think they will find it to be much of a deal.
It certainly will not be a big deal around the greens. That's not where they have to worry. It's more in the fairways, because the fairway bunkers here have always been fairly easy to play out of because the guys will take whatever club they need and just pop it out of them because we just have them so perfect. And we'll just sort of rough rake them a little bit.
I loved this question. Now if we could just get Jack and the field staff on the same page!
Q. You talked about 14, a couple weeks ago about practicing, preparing your driving for the U.S. Open there. Have you ever thought about maybe one day during the tournament moving it up, moving the tee up just a little bit to put the thought in their head to give it a crack?
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't control the tees. The tees are controlled by the TOUR. Would I object to it if they put it up? Probably wouldn't if we would talk about it ahead of time so I could prepare the hole so it would play for that, as far as the occasional guy who stands back and whacks it today, but I haven't really -- I really haven't prepared and thought a whole lot about the second shot, that landing area up there as relates to receiving a tee shot. And I would bet there are going to be 10 players this week who will take a run at that. If they do, then I probably will prepare the fairway a little differently and probably -- meaning would I probably eliminate any rough that comes along the edge of it. So if you're going to take a run at it and you don't hit it where you're supposed to, you're probably going to get a little bit more -- the water will come into play a little bit more. But it's never been a big issue yet. But that would be what we would probably do.
I went out there, I used to practice from the ladies' tee and it was a perfect tee shot practice for me because it was left-to-right slope hitting up the left edge, and sort of working the ball I could run it up into the green there. And I thought that was good practice. And the guys today, I mean, you know, they could go back on 13 fairway and drive it up there they hit the ball so far today.
And the proverbial technology talk turned interesting when it came to Augusta National.
Q. You were talking about equipment.
(Laughter.)
JACK NICKLAUS: Well surprise there.
(Laughter.)
We talk about the game has changed tremendously because of equipment and I think largely the golf ball. And yet we're asked to play the same golf courses.
So I mean obviously if the golf ball goes further and equipment hits the ball straighter, and the guys are bigger, all those combinations would only, common sense would say, duh, scores are going to be lower.
Well, okay. But then you take the golf courses and we keep changing them and changing them and changing them and spend millions of dollars to protect almighty par. Is that really the right thing to do? I think that we're trying to, we try to take today's golf courses and make them -- we take equipment, which has no relevance whatsoever to the equipment that I played or we played versus what Jones played. Yet we want to make the golf course play, to be relevant. Does that make sense?
I mean why would you want to take -- I mean it's a different game, it's different equipment. Why would you worry about that it's relevant? Though we spend millions of dollars trying to make it so. And so that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Augusta is the perfect example. I think Augusta is a, to what it is right now, frankly, I think it's a great golf course. And I think what they have done to it is what they had to do to it if they wanted to protect par. Would Bobby Jones have liked that? Probably not. His philosophy was very much the St. Andrews philosophy. And that's wide fairways, second shot golf, put the ball in the right position, you got the right angle to the hole. You do that, you take advantage of the golf course and you can score it. Okay. Well obviously with today's equipment you just take a golf course apart.
But they have changed the golf course and probably rightly so. I have two thoughts on it. Rightly so. They changed the golf course to fit today's game. But they have taken the golf course away from Jones' philosophy of what the game was to him.
So you got two things happening there. Which do you protect? And they could have had the -- they're the only place that had the option probably to say, okay, we can do, take the golf ball and make them play a certain golf ball there. And they could have gotten away with that.
But I think they did the right thing there again, as I said to you before, in not putting themselves above the game. So I don't know what the answer really is. What was your question? Was that your question?
Nicklaus made similar complimentary comments regarding ANGC to ESPN.com's Jason Sobel in this interview. Well, complimentary if you read it a certain way!
Jeff Shain in the Miami Herald examines the design operations of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Thanks to reader Nick for the link, which includes quotes from Brad Klein about the nature of the mass produced player-architect model.
First, a Palmer anecdote:
'This is certainly an ideal situation for me to stay in the business of golf,'' Palmer said during his visit to Deering Bay. ``We'd like to hope that [golfers] appreciate what we're trying to do.''There's always hope.
Not that Palmer and Nicklaus have the capability to get intimately engaged in each design -- though it's available for developers willing to pay higher prices.Well, better there than in the field where they could do real damage.
Both, though, leave a mark on nearly every blueprint that crosses their desk.
''He's real careful with not pushing his thoughts on us,'' said Erik Larson, Palmer Design's vice president and one of his lead designers. ``But there are certain design philosophical items that he embraces that he wants to make sure we incorporate.''
Hazards and greens should be visible. Subtly rolling greens, rather than severe humps and bumps. Make the round visually pleasing.
''Give the golfer something to look at,'' Palmer said, standing on the 13th tee of PGA National's Palmer course. The par-3 green slopes off to a collection area behind, but it all runs together.
Palmer suggests two bunkers instead.
''One on the left and one on the right,'' he said. ``That'll make a better target.''
Hey, how about a big highway stripe down the center of the fairway too?
As the caravan gets ready to move on, he adds: ``This is potentially the best hole on the course.''
He has a stronger suggestion for No. 18, where a fairway bunker melds into a larger waste area bordering water.
''We have a beautiful hazard here and it's not showcased,'' he said, all but ordering up sod and vegetation.
Palmer's suggestions will be incorporated this summer.
All in a hard day's work.
As for Nicklaus, he did reluctantly admit in his book that he favored the left-to-right approach shot in his green designs. Still, it's nice to read it in a newspaper.
'[Nicklaus has] evolved dramatically,'' Klein said, ``both as a function of the market as well as changes in Jack's own game.''
Early Nicklaus creations frequently caught criticism for favoring a left-to-right ball flight -- matching Nicklaus' playing style. As time has evolved, though, so have the patterns.
''Pretty soon I found out,'' Nicklaus acknowledged. ``I learned from that and adjusted what I did.''
I think his work was more interesting when he was designing for himself.
Bob Baptist in the Columbus Dispatch lets Michael Hurdzan tell the story of Scioto Country Club's renovation where he had a little help from Jack Nicklaus.The eighth hole at Scioto Country Club is the club's "postcard hole," a 500-yard par-5 on which a stream crosses the fairway, feeds into a lake left of the green and then feeds back out through a stone moat encircling the other three sides of the green.
"It's been a picturesque hole for us for many years," course superintendent Mark Yoder said.
Its beauty, though, was not in the eye of the beholder one day last spring as Jack Nicklaus walked toward a members committee on No. 8 and said, "Well, what do you guys think of this green?"
"The members said, 'We love it,' " said Mike Hurdzan, a local golf course architect who also was there that day. "They said, 'This is our favorite green. It doesn't get any better than this. This is our signature hole.'
"And Jack said, 'Well, I think it's just awful,' " Hurdzan said with a smile, "and I'm saying to myself, 'Oh, my God, this is really going to get fun.'
"Jack said, 'What makes you think this is such a good hole?' Now, all of a sudden, he's (challenging) these members to try to explain to Mr. Jack Nicklaus, winner of 18 majors, why this is such a good golf green? And all of a sudden people are looking at it and saying, 'Well, maybe it isn't so good.' "
The message was that the game is worldwide, and retaining that popularity is why Nicklaus is concerned about one trend -- the widening gap between the average player and the touring pro. He said the pros can do more with the new equipment -- the longer balls and perimeter-weighted club heads -- and that separates them way too much from Mr. and Ms. 15 handicap.
"For years and years, they weren't that far apart," Nicklaus said. "Today, we've gone exactly the opposite of where we should go. Can you imagine playing against Tiger Woods today, the average club pro trying to compete with him?
"I used to play exhibitions, and the club pro, because he knew the course, had a chance to beat me. There isn't anybody who is going to beat Tiger or Phil or these guys today."
Nicklaus said the average golfer hits it farther now, but the pros hit it so much farther that it has become a different game. They hit it farther, but can control it. Most amateurs can't.
"We lose people when they hit the ball 330 yards and then they can't find it," he said. "If they hit it 230-240, they can find it and keep playing. It speeds up the game."
The architect press release quotes are getting more torturous every day.
Jack Nicklaus, on the Tucson course he's started that will reportedly land the WGC Match Play when it's done, assuming the design proves worthy...well, and that site licensing fee check clears in Ponte Vedra...
"Golf course design has been a blessing for me," said Nicklaus. "It has allowed me to take what I learned playing the game of golf and apply it to a piece of ground to create a legacy that will live well beyond what I accomplished as a golfer. If I can design The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, Dove Mountain to take advantage of its spectacular high desert setting and beautiful vistas, while integrating solid strategy and good, fair golf shots, then I've done what should be done."
Jack Nicklaus sat down to talk about the President's Cup and as usual, offered his take on several issues along with many more enjoyable anecdotes. The entire session is worth reading, but here are some highlights.
On Rory Sabbatini and Tiger:
Q. You know the background, right?
JACK NICKLAUS: Oh, yeah. How could you miss it (laughter)?
I don't know, a lot of times, too, I'll ask Tiger, and I'm sure that Gary will ask his guys, who would you like to play? In other words, at the matches the last time, I went down and I had -- Phil said, "I'd like to play Cabrera." "Tiger, who would you like to play?" "I don't care, it doesn't make any difference to me." Freddie said, "I'd like to play Vijay." I don't know what Gary's guys did.
Those are the only two that I had a mandate if I could get them. As the selection process goes, I pick a player, Gary matches him, Gary picks a player, I match. So forth and so on, it goes back and forth.
It's like the last two times I captained prior to that, I had -- let's see, I had Tiger in Australia ask me to pick Norman for him. I got him Norman. We were in South Africa, and both Ernie and Tiger would like to play each other, so Gary and I talked and tried to figure out, can we get Tiger and Ernie to play. So that's fine.
So if Gary comes to me and says, Jack, I've got Sabbatini wants to play Tiger and Tiger says he wants to play Sabbatini, then we'll try to make that happen. But if Tiger says I don't care and I've got somebody else -- a lot of guys, they say, I want that guy. I had one guy on the other team I had five of my guys say I'd like to have him. They just want to try to beat him. I'm not going to tell you who that is.
That's sort of the way it works. If it turns out that that's a good match, it's a good match. I think frankly that probably Tiger and Vijay or Tiger and Ernie would be a better TV match, but Sabbatini has had a great year. He's played very, very well. He's had a lot of press.
And on his rivals making comments ala Sabbatini:
Q. How did you handle it? And is this atmosphere a lot different in the sense that everybody seems a little bit more sensitive, so to speak?
JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I don't know. We didn't have that much press. The only time -- I had several times, but the one that I remember a lot was -- I was still an amateur, and I was a defending champion. I had won in '59 and '60 going into St. Louis. Phil Rogers in those days, Phil just (motioning talking with hand), and he was holding court at St. Louis about -- he said, "I see in the brackets here if Nicklaus wins his first few matches, he gets to play me." Like he had a bye the first two rounds.
My dad heard it, and my dad said I heard that in conversation, Phil was really running his mouth. I said, I've got to win my first two matches. I won the first two matches, and we went out and played 12 holes and Phil was one under par and the match was over. I beat him 8 & 7.
It turned out Phil turned out to be one of my best friends. I mean, he's a wonderful guy. But in those guys Phil was just all mouth.
And Rory is a little bit going this way a little bit right now. So I think when you get that kind of a thing, a guy says, "I think I want to take care of that situation." And I think Tiger probably said he wanted to take care of that situation.
Now, did I get a little bit of that as I went along? Yeah. But I didn't pay much attention. When I was a 20-year old kid it got my dander up a little bit. I'm sure Tiger is very used to it, I don't think Tiger paid a whole lot of attention to it. He just paid attention, took care of business and went out and played very, very well, as usual.
Q. But it is an slightly extra incentive do you think?
JACK NICKLAUS: A guy doesn't miss it (smiling). You don't miss that comment. It doesn't pass by the way.
And on the FedEx Cup:
Q. We're in week two of a new playoff system. Just curious to get your take on it. Does it interest you at all?
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't understand it to be very honest with you. Tim told me it was supposed to be good for the game of golf so I went along with him (laughter). I think that the whole objective was to get the guys to play, and the first week Tiger skips. So I didn't understand that at all.
I sort of thought that the system was that when you had the Playoffs that everybody started over. But no, the Playoffs carry on.
Now, I can understand that if they didn't carry on and Tiger decided to play the first week and Phil missed the cut, they're gone.
But I would like to find out what does a guy have to do that's 100th on the Money List or 120th to win the FedExCup? What does he have to do?
Here he tried to be more upbeat about it...
Do I like the idea? Yeah, I think it's great to try to get the guys to play at the end of the year, great to have a season-ending playoff. My bet is that it'll get tweaked after this year. Like every event we have ever had the first year we have it, we'll have tweaks in it, and I think the whole objective was to get the guys to play. That was what it was, beyond the PGA Championship, and to be able to have a season-ending thing.
They end it with the TOUR Championship, so it's going to be the TOUR Championship, but it's how you get to the TOUR Championship and create more interest and so on and so forth. I commend them for that. I wish I understood what it was, and I think you guys fall into the same category trying to understand it, too.
If I were Rich Beem trying to figure out the projected 130, 124, when somebody makes birdie, par, bogey, give me a break. How does he win? I just don't know. I just don't know that. And frankly if I don't know it and I'm involved in the game of golf, how is Mr. Joe Public going to know it? That's the problem.
To get the public interested, they've got to understand what's going on. Very simple when you play a football game and you're in the Playoffs, you're a wildcard team and you're playing the division leader, you win, you go on. You lose, you go home. We don't exactly have that here. So I don't really -- I think they'll tweak it someplace.
And my question...
Q. Can you talk then in general about kind of the interest in short par 4s we're seeing at a lot of tournament venues and if that's maybe impacting your philosophy at all?
JACK NICKLAUS: My favorite holes are short par 4s. I think they're the most fun to design, and I think they're the most fun to play.
I think if you look at Muirfield Village, I think the players love the 14th hole at Muirfield Village, and that's a nasty little hole. It can be a nice hole, too. I mean, it can be a nasty little hole if you play it wrong. And I'm sure there are some other holes throughout the year on the TOUR that you'll find. Royal Montreal has one hole where we'll play the tee up and the tee back. I don't remember what number it is.
I was up there as I said in June, went around the golf course on a rainy day and we went around as fast as we could go because we were freezing to death. It's totally different than when I played there in the '70s, so I don't remember much about the actual holes.
And a really strange question...
Q. I just wonder if you've seen any of Tiger's designs yet, and if you have seen them what your opinion on them might be?
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't think Tiger has any designs yet.
Q. He has the course in Dubai that --
JACK NICKLAUS: He's got a contract. I don't know that he's got a golf course.
Q. He has laid out some of the holes already for it. I don't know if you've seen them at all?
JACK NICKLAUS: No, I'm not going to Dubai to see his golf course (laughter). He'll go through the same process as the rest of it if he is truly interested in design and learn the business.
And my favorite exchanged, started by Doug Ferguson...
Q. What's the last golf course you did for your ego?
JACK NICKLAUS: For my ego? Oh, gosh. I don't really know, but I would say probably -- I mean, I didn't even do the Bear's Club for my ego. I had a membership there that I thought was going to be a fairly elderly membership. I would have done that course a lot more difficult if it was for my ego. I would have made it a lot stronger and a lot different, but I didn't do that. It's still plenty tough enough.
But for my ego, oh, probably back to -- probably Castle Pines maybe, back in that area, early '80s because Jack Vickers really wanted a very difficult golf course. Jack Vickers keeps changing it and making it tougher. Of course you guys aren't going there anymore, but he'll have events there again. I'd say it's been 25 years since I've really done one for my ego. I've been involved with other people's ego, but that's okay.
Thanks to reader John for this Robert Frank-Wall Street Journal story on Jack Nicklaus, uh, expanding the brand for $145 million and just a tiny part of his sou...stake in the empire...
The golf icon is selling a substantial minority stake in his company to New York real-estate mogul Howard Milstein to expand the Nicklaus empire around the world, extending its reach in golf course-designs, clothing, equipment and real-estate.Loved this...
Under terms of the deal, expected to be announced today, Mr. Milstein will pay $145 million for the stake in the newly formed Nicklaus Cos. LLC -- which includes Mr. Nicklaus's business ventures, such as course design, licensing of his name, and golf clubs. Mr. Nicklaus will remain CEO and chairman, and the Nicklaus family will retain control.
In the design group, which accounts for at least half of the company's profits, the company plans to step up the growth overseas, where demand for golf courses is skyrocketing. While there are 31,000 courses in the world, 19,000 of them are in the U.S, with most of the new demand coming from abroad, according to Mr. Milstein and Mr. Nicklaus.
Mr. Nicklaus has courses under way or planned in India, Korea, China, Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Greece, Croatia and Turkey. Mr. Nicklaus, who logged more than 600 hours on his Gulfstream jet last year, this summer will travel to Kazakhstan to plan a course.
"We're getting the lion's share of the work for golf courses getting built," he said.
Hey, at least he didn't say something like "we're getting the bear's share." Though he would have scored major brand enhancement points.
While most of Mr. Nicklaus's designs lack the high aesthetic reputation of courses created by likes of Tom Fazio, Tom Doak and the team of Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, they are well-regarded and Mr. Nicklaus is deeply involved in about half of those his company produces. Those are known as Jack Nicklaus Signature courses and carry a premium design fee, typically between $2.5 and $5 million. Work on the other Nicklaus golf courses is carried out by veteran designers at Jack Nicklaus Design.
When do you think the first grandchild will debut his own signature design?
The Nicklaus name on any course significantly increases its worth to developers, because it allows them to sell the accompanying real estate or resort properties at a higher price. Under the traditional business model, Mr. Nicklaus got only the design fee and in some cases also a small cut of the developments' profits.
Working with the Mr. Milstein, however, the company expects to finance and develop more of its own real-estate. "We can help the Nicklaus companies capture more of those opportunities," Mr. Milstein says.
Didn't try this one before already, with not such great results?
That answers that.Twice Mr. Nicklaus has suffered serious setbacks. In the mid-1980s, his company, Golden Bear Golf Inc., overextended itself into areas such as oil and insurance, forcing Mr. Nicklaus to negotiate personal loans with banks to bail out the business. Then, in 1998, after Golden Bear went public, two executives were fired after the division they headed misrepresented more than $20 million in losses. The company had to restate its prior-year earnings, its market value sank and it went private again.
All four of Mr. Nicklaus's sons and his son-in-law work for his company. Mr. Nicklaus says his goal is to scale back his involvement in the courses, and build a company and brand that will outlast him.
"You look at Bobby Jones and that brand is worth more now than when he was alive," Mr. Nicklaus says.
You know I was going through my favorite Bobby Jones quotes the other day and stumbled on this one:
On the golf course, a man be the dogged victim of inexorable fate, be struck down by an appalling stroke of tragedy, become the hero of unbelievable melodrama, or the clown in a sidesplitting comedy--any of these with in a few hours, and all without having to bury a corpse or repair a tangled personality, but always at the risk of burnishing equity in his brand.
Thanks to reader Tom for this Lewine Mair piece on Jack Nicklaus criticizing player architects for mailing in designs. Oy vey...Jack. You can't have your son-in-law designing courses under your name and go on rants like this!
The ball, fine. But come on, this?
Mair writes:
Jack Nicklaus has let the cat out of the bag. In an interview for CNN, to appear on Saturday, Nicklaus confirms that there are top golfers who have lent their names to courses which they have never clapped eyes on.Nicklaus is interviewed on CNN International's Living Golf on Saturday at 6:30pm.
Nicklaus does not include Tiger Woods, whose first design project is under way in Dubai. Though he begins by saying: "Tiger doesn't know anything about designing golf courses at the moment", he makes it clear that when Woods lends his name to a project, "you know it's going to be good".
It is more the general trend of tour players assuming the role of designers with which Nicklaus is so uncomfortable. "There's a lot of fellas out here who know how to play the game, but they don't really understand a golf course," he says. "If they want to learn the business, they've got to pay their dues and go and work under some other people. That way, they'll not only be able to use their name to produce a facility, but they'll produce a facility they're proud of.
"What you don't want," he continues, "is to have people saying, 'This is a Joe Jones' course' when Joe Jones was probably never there."
Craig Dolch in the Palm Beach Post offers this on Jack Nicklaus's bunker furrowing plans for this week's Memorial:
This year, though, the tines on the rakes won't be spread as far apart as last year — they'll be 13/4 inches this year as opposed to 21/2 inches in 2006 — but the effect will be the same.
"All I want them to say is, 'That's a place I don't want to be,' " Nicklaus said Friday at his North Palm Beach offices. "I don't care about penalizing the guy. I'm trying to force him to play the strategy of the golf course by not wanting to be in a bunker. Guys aim for bunkers because it's an easy shot."
Nicklaus said he thinks Tour commissioner Tim Finchem has done "a great job." So I tell him he's been named Golf Czar and can change anything in the sport.
"Equipment," he said. "That would be one thing I would do. I would fix the friggin' equipment."
The problem is this: The difference between what a pro can do with the latest club technology compared to what an amateur can do with it continues to grow wider. Unless golf's two ruling bodies can figure out a way to even things up (a standardized golf ball?), the pros will continue to make courses obsolete and create a bigger disconnect with the amateur players.
"The whole idea of the R&A and the USGA is to try to play the same equipment for the average golfer and the pro, and they couldn't be friggin' further apart," Nicklaus said.
Does anyone know when Nicklaus made these comments? From an unbylined report from South Africa's Pretoria News:
Nicklaus played a social round at Augusta recently and came off the course disgusted with its new length.
"I played the members' tees. I can't play the back tees anymore," he told reporters. "Every tee I stood on I saw 73 to 91 yards before the back tee.
"The members tees at Augusta used to be 18 or 27 yards in front, which was a normal distance. It's so far now it is ridiculous, but every golf course is that way."
Finally, there were Jack's comments on Augusta National which I found interesting because last year he appeared to back off of his original assertions made during the Golf Digest Panelist Summit (and subsequently published in the April 2006 Digest).
No grey area here:
I miss the old Augusta National. Is the radically redesigned golf course a good one? Yes. Is it the golf course with the design principles that Bobby Jones and Alister Mackenzie intended? Absolutely not.
Augusta was generous off the tee, which made it great for everyday member play. But to score—to really play golf—you had to position the drive to get a good angle at the green. It was a second-shot golf course.
Now the tee shot is more restricted. Trees and new bunkering have narrowed the landing areas, making Augusta a tight course with few angles or options. I know the changes were made to provide an increased challenge for modern pros and keep them from overpowering the course, but it has taken the charm out of the Jones/Mackenzie design.
So much for any possible misinterpretation that Nicklaus thinks they are upholding the integrity of the original design.
I was disappointed that in doing the redesign, Augusta didn’t consult the five oldest multiple Masters champions who also are course designers [Palmer, Player, Nicklaus, Watson, Crenshaw]. We would have had a lot of good ideas, and we wouldn’t have clashed. We would have come to an agreement because we all have so much respect for what’s there.
Well, I don't know about the part about not clashing...but those five would be a lot better than what they've been doing!
Some more comments of interest from his co-authored piece with Jaime Diaz:
I hope we’re not running people out of the game. As it has become an easier game to play for the pros, the trend toward more severe courses has made it harder for the amateur.Oh and don't forget Jack, more dangerous for the townhomes on the rim. Sorry, continue...
In most cases, the farther the amateur is able to hit the ball, the farther the ball goes off line. The old average drive was in the 190-yard range, but now it’s more like 210 to 220. And on many of the newer courses, off line means searching for golf balls. It’s making the game slower, and a lot less fun.
The game is more popular than ever among avid golfers with the income and leisure to play a lot, but most people have less free time than ever. The current generation of younger parents spends a lot more time supervising their kids than previous generations, and it means they find it harder to justify a weekend round of golf. Leaving for the course at 7 in the morning and coming back at 3 in the afternoon is a hard sell for a family man. But getting back in time for lunch wouldn’t be.And this is the best part, addressing the ridiculous attacks made against him over the years by folks who, if confronted by the greatest of them all, would never dare to question his motives and would blabber all over him about being their hero. But behind his back...he's just bitter...right!
That’s why we should consider the possibility of making 12 holes a standard round. It might mean breaking up 18-hole facilities into three segments of six holes. Of course it would meet resistance, but eventually it would be accepted because it would make sense in people’s lives.
Those who say that my comments are intended to help my course-design business are wrong. As a designer, I benefit financially from more land used, more renovations, more penal features. As for people thinking I favor a rollback in equipment because I don’t want Tiger to break my record, going back to older-style equipment would help, not hurt, Tiger because his skill level would make a bigger difference. If we took equipment back today, he might win 30 majors instead of 20.
I’m more interested in the game of golf than in my records. I did what I could do in my time, and it was the best I could do. Now I just want what’s best for the game.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
