Jack Turns 80!
He means more to me than many know. Personally, I owe him a lot!
- Steve Wolfard
It has been a few days since Jack Nicklaus’ 80th birthday and I have had time to reflect on my time working with him and just being around him for 13 years. To say he had in impact on my golf career path is an understatement of the highest order. Jack also had a lot of talent working with him and I was fortunate to learn from them as well. Guys like Jay Morrish, Bob Cupp, Scott Miller, Jim Lipe, Tom Pearson, Ed Etchells and many others who supported Jack were more than willing to share everything they knew and help me along my golf design path. Pete Dye was a significant influence on Jack and I am blessed to be from that golf design lineage.
I don’t have a ton of Jack stories by I do have a few. When I first moved to Florida to begin working with Jack’s agronomic team, I was helping out at Frenchman’s Creek in Jupiter. Jack had just finished up a 1979 PGA Tour campaign that resulted in no victories for the first time since joining the Tour in 1962. Approaching his 40 birthday, the experts were predicting that Jack was past his prime and certainly in the twilight of his amazing career. Over the winter I saw him most every day on the range at Frenchman’s with Jack Grout his first and only teacher. His hard work paid off in 1980 when he won the U. S. Open and PGA Championships.
In the early 1980’s Jack was scheduled to play Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw at the first Nicklaus designed golf course in Texas, The Hills of Lakeway, where I was the superintendent. The exhibition match was close. After completing the front nine, Ben and Tom were leading Jack by a stroke or two. Jack was clearly not happy with his play and proceeded to shoot a 30 on the back nine for a round of 65, besting the two UT alums by several strokes. Jack’s competitiveness was clearly evident even in an exhibition.
The 1986 Masters is an event that, if you were old enough to be a fan of golf, you certainly know where you were Sunday afternoon watching Jack win his sixth green jacket. I was alone in a Scottsdale condo leaping in the air and yelling encouragement to the guy who was scheduled for a site visit the following week at the Desert Mountain project. When he arrived onsite I really wanted to thank him for my thrilling Sunday afternoon, but that would have been really awkward and we just got to work as if nothing had happened!
It was during that same period of time that on another site visit Jack wanted to try some volcano bunkers. A chocolate drop mound with the top scooped out was what he described. He was back out a few weeks later and someone had the brilliant idea to put a couple of old tires in two of the bunkers, throw some diesel fuel on them and set them ablaze just before we walked up on the tee to look at the hole. The flumes of black smoke were just amazing but Jack did not say anything for a bit until he quietly muttered “smart asses”. We thought it was much more humorous than he did and the volcano bunkers did not make the cut.
Working with Jack was amazing in many ways. His memory was incredible. He was a designer who would gather a ton of information in order to make design decisions. Providing that information kept me on my toes and educated me on what information was needed to design a great golf course. One could argue that the strategy favored by Jack suited his game and fit his eye, but I contend that every golf designer does that even if it is unintentional. I have my own approach to golf design now, but I still pull from my time with Jack and those exhausting site visits. A few of those most basic principles are:
1. Never compromise on quality construction means and methods
2. Defend the Cardinal Rules of Golf Design
3. Strategy is important, but not at the expense of beauty or visibility