Jack Nicklaus: the Golden Bear draws a course

Who he is

Jack William Nicklaus, nicknamed “the Golden Bear”, was born on 21 January 1940 in Columbus, Ohio, and grew up in the suburb of Upper Arlington. He took up golf at ten, scoring 51 for his first nine holes at Scioto Country Club, where the club professional Jack Grout became his lifelong instructor.

He turned professional in 1961 at 21 and won his first professional title at the 1962 U.S. Open, beating Arnold Palmer in an 18-hole playoff. In all he won a record 18 major championships, the last at the 1986 Masters at the age of 46.

Before turning professional he won the U.S. Amateur in 1959 and 1961, and in 1965 and 1966 he became the Masters’ first back-to-back winner. He is the subject of the Jack Nicklaus Museum on the campus of Ohio State University, his alma mater.

How he came to design

Design arrived as another challenge. In the mid-1960s Pete Dye asked for his opinion on The Golf Club near Columbus, and Nicklaus’s input grew from there. He saw architecture as a further facet of the game that kept him involved.

His first design, Harbour Town Golf Links, opened in 1969 and was co-credited with Dye. Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio, followed in 1974, co-designed with Desmond Muirhead; it has hosted the Memorial Tournament, which Nicklaus founded, since 1976, and also the 1987 Ryder Cup, the 1998 Solheim Cup and the 2013 Presidents Cup.

For the first few years all his projects were co-designs, before Glen Abbey in 1976 became his first solo work. The oldest golf club in the United States, Saint Andrew’s in New York, was redesigned by him in 1983.

His design ideas

Nicklaus credits Dye with a significant influence on his own approach, and also wrote a book on his golf course design methods and philosophy. Today the practice is a family business: Nicklaus Design, which he runs with his four sons and his son-in-law, is described as one of the world’s largest golf course design and construction companies.

The firm’s output is broad; it has designed courses in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe and Mexico as well as the United States. In 1973 Nicklaus became the first PGA Tour player to win a Tour event on a course that he had designed himself, the Ohio Kings Island Open.

On ULTIMATE Golf

At Gleneagles in Perthshire, Scotland, the PGA Centenary Course is the contemporary counterpart to the King’s Course by James Braid and the Queen’s. Created by Nicklaus, it hosted the Ryder Cup in 2014 and the Solheim Cup in 2019. Gleneagles describes its 54 holes as a celebration of the history and evolution of golf itself.

Reflection Bay Golf Club, at Lake Las Vegas, was built in 1998. Set on a 320-acre man-made lake about twenty minutes east of the Las Vegas Strip, it is designated a Jack Nicklaus Signature Design, the only such course in Nevada, and has hosted the Wendy’s 3Tour Challenge.

In Nassau, the Bahamas, Baha Mar’s Royal Blue is also a Jack Nicklaus Signature course. The front nine runs among undulating fairways and rolling white sand dunes; the back nine moves across limestone “moonscapes” with changes in elevation.

Our advice: three very different settings show the range of one name. Take Gleneagles for its heathland and history, Royal Blue for the dunes and the limestone, and Reflection Bay for the lake.