COVER STORY: Miles to Go

by Victor Williams

The Golden Bear logs hundreds of hours in the air each year to reach his far-flung projects. Photo by Jim Mandeville

It was a fete fit for a president or pope. But for the people of the Dominican Republic, on this particular muggy November night, the party’s Guest of Honor trumped any head of state or religious icon.With the Caribbean Sea spinning its ever-present turquoise yarn in waves and crashes not 100 yards away and a spanking-new resort surrounding them in marble-and-palm elegance, a decked-out crowd settled in for an evening with the current king of golf course design who, in a previous life, won a few golf tournaments here and there. They applauded his entrance, hung on his every word as a trio of writers peppered him with questions and, during a bountiful buffet of sushi and beef and salads and desserts washed down with Mojitos and cabernet, they bid thousands of dollars for paintings bearing his likeness to benefit a local orphanage.

Their savior had come, and his name was Nicklaus. A savior in the economic sense, that is, to this country of roughly 8 million residents.

The message to the world was clear, too: Jack Nicklaus, who turns 67 in January, is arguably more powerful as an architect than he ever was as a player.

And that’s saying something.

By signing on to design three courses at Cap Cana, a stunning stretch of coral cliffs and low-slung jungle at the eastern tip of the island of Hispaniola, Nicklaus will without a doubt help put the Dominican Republic onto the upper tier of Caribbean golf destinations

Not that there hasn’t been golf and tourism on the “D.R.” before; with about 30 courses and more than 10 resorts mostly along its north shore, it’s been a favorite among sun-seeking Europeans for decades. But with Jack and his crew of outstanding co-designers on board and Cap Cana setting new standards for product, service and price (both on the golf and real estate fronts), things are going world class around here, and the natives are ecstatic. This year American visitors outnumbered Europeans for the first time in history.

“Certainly here at Cap Cana where I’m involved, with three courses, with an awful lot of people coming here to live or stay in the hotels — and my son is doing a course on the other side of the island — there are people coming to play golf,” Nicklaus said the next day before his ritual opening round on the mind-blowing, Signature Punta Espada course, which serves up seven holes hard against the roiling sea and perhaps the best par 5 he’s ever done. “Your weather’s great, the food is good, the hospitality is good, what more do you want? People will come here to play golf.”

Let’s hold that thought and move to the Coyote Springs development north of Las Vegas. A few weeks before the Cap Cana bash, Jack was on site with developer Harvey Whittemore, tweaking the bunkers, greens and landing areas at his Signature Course there — again, the first of a planned three Nicklaus championship tracks. A day earlier Whittemore had welcomed dozens of PGA of America members to Coyote Springs for a peek at the full-scale learning center that will accompany Jack’s work, giving thousands of teachers and learners a West Coast version of Florida’s PGA Village. The fact that Nicklaus is involved gives the whole enterprise — which, Whittemore envisions, could include up to a dozen courses serving tens of thousands of residents and millions of visitors in the next 30 years — a cachet that no other current architect can match. There might be more respected designers out there, or more purely talented ones in the iconoclastic Pete Dye or neo-classic Tom Doak modes, but if they really asked themselves who has opened the planet up to their work over the past three decades, they’d all utter one quick word: “Jack.”

If they don’t, they’re fooling themselves. No way would a guy like Doak or Tom Fazio command million-dollar fees if Nicklaus hadn’t decided to get into the design game in 1969, apprenticing with the great Dye at Harbourtown, on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. Before then, an architect’s name was never mentioned on the scorecard or in most mainstream golf publications, unless it was an esteemed member of the Old Guard — Alister MacKenzie, Donald Ross, A.W. Tillinghast, men of that lot. While a guy brought his design ideas from paper to dirt with passion and the final product brought praise, his name bore zero marketing value. But once Jack (and, to a lesser extent, Arnold Palmer) got the blueprint bug, the architect’s stock started soaring.

“It’s done great things for the game of golf, and great things for golf architecture,” Fazio told FG Magazine in November. “If you go back to rankings and ratings [of courses], they didn’t really evolve until the late 1960s and early 70s. Not many people knew who a golf designer was. Now it’s common, with huge marketing potential. It’s hard to find a golf shirt without somebody’s name on it. And it’s not just this business, it’s every business — clothes, cars and so on. It’s been going on in America for 30 or 40 years. What Jack has done was take the greatest name in golf and put it on a billboard, or on the place you live.”

Fazio knows what he’s talking about. He builds masterpieces for Steve Wynn and racks up raves for his work from Palm Desert to Scottsdale to Seattle. But from his first days as a designer he’s refused to hide his respect for Nicklaus.

“I was doing this before Jack was,” Fazio says. “I started with my uncle [former Tour pro George Fazio] when Jack was winning U.S. Opens. I remember designing a course in South Carolina called Wild Dunes, and Jack was doing Kiawah. Every town I went to, I was hoping there would be a Jack Nicklaus or Pete Dye course in the area. It was great competition, and you knew the high level of their product, that it would help me get my clients there. It raised the bar for everybody.”

It also keeps the creative fires burning for Fazio, especially when he’s going up against the game’s all-time major winner — on the central Oregon plains, for instance, where Nicklaus’ design at the high-end Pronghorn development is turning heads and attracting zillionaire homebuyers. “Jack has his golf course already in play at Pronghorn, and we’re doing one next to it, so my job is to go head-to-head against Jack,” Fazio says. “I love it. It’s just great to do.”

No doubt Fazio’s contemporaries from every corner of the design arena — player, non-player, classically trained, free-formers, minimalists, whatever — agree. After all, thanks to Jack’s name and prolific output (250 courses worldwide with 59 more under construction as we speak), they’ve all tapped into a lucrative well that shows few signs of going dry. Greg Norman’s been in the game for close to 20 years now. Ben Crenshaw, too. Fred Couples, Tom Watson, Fuzzy Zoeller, Peter Jacobsen, Phil Mickelson, Annika Sorenstam: They’ve all taken to the T-square and survey scope with sometimes spectacular results. And as Nicklaus helped open Punta Espada in November, Tiger Woods announced his entry into the architecture sweepstakes.

“Tiger came down and asked for some advice, and I told him he should start designing full-time so he doesn’t have to play any more golf,” Jack laughed. “That would be my preference.”

No chance. Tiger will have Jack’s 18 majors in his sights until the deal is done, but in the meantime, the Golden Bear isn’t about to hibernate on the design front. He’s determined to keep pushing so that nobody, not even Tiger, will catch him.

“I don’t expect to see him doing a lot of [designing] right away,” Nicklaus said. “He’s a very talented young man, very private, so he doesn’t ask me for a lot of advice. How will he design courses? Will he just build them for himself so every hole is 900 yards long? I don’t see that happening, but we’ll just have to wait and see what his ideas are. I like Tiger, but when I read that press release, I said, ‘Now he’s the competition.’”

At that word, Nicklaus gets an impish glow in his blue eyes. Competition. His playing days are history and he’ll never go mano-a-mano with Tiger with the sticks, at least in this world. He’s lucky to play one round a month, and that’s usually at a course opening (when he always seems to shoot par, even if he chews out his caddie for bad yardages or not knowing his every on-course need in advance; the man still obviously cares about how he plays). But give him a fresh canvas, a big-bucks budget, a full tank of jet fuel in his private plane and his best-in-the-business support staff — including sons Jack II, Steve, Gary and Micheal, longtime lead designer Jim Lipe and otherworldly shaper John Cope — and he’ll take the best any other designer, Tiger included, can throw at him.

One thing’s for sure: They’ll never out-travel him. Nicklaus says he spent 700 hours in the air last year and can’t imagine that number shrinking anytime soon. Globe-trotting from his south Florida home to his satellite offices in Hong Kong and Belgium and far-flung sites from Patagonia to Australia seems to keep him sane.

“I’m traveling a lot more. I used to play maybe 20 weeks a year in tournament golf, and I was always working on courses during that same period. But now that I’m not playing, I get bored to death,” he told the Cap Cana crowd. “I love being home with my wife and kids and grandkids, but I need to be productive and challenged. I loved tournament golf from that standpoint — of competition. I don’t have that anymore. I used to go to a place and spend a week playing golf. Now I’m here, I’ve got a function tomorrow, another Monday and Tuesday. I keep moving. I don’t mind the travel, and I enjoy the work. It’s been a lot of fun, a nice transition for me. And I haven’t had time to think how much I miss tournament golf. Which is great.”

With so many projects in the dirt at any given time, it’s tough to fathom how he keeps them all straight and ends up doing such fine work. Call it a heady cocktail of experience, creativity, tried-and-true methodology and, of course, epic teamwork. Jack himself shows up at a Nicklaus Signature Design site at least three times during its development — more if it’s particularly difficult terrain, if an owner asks for more of his time or if Nicklaus himself, for some reason, feels it needs a little more hands-on care. Like all designers, he finds out what the owner wants out of the project, who’s going to play it most often (resort visitors, members, Tour pros) and figures the “big five” of any modern design: available acreage, soil content, water quality, drainage and timeline. Then he gets with his crew to forge a skeleton gameplan and is very active in the original routing of a course. It’s usually then that things get interesting, bringing every team member’s talents into play. Nicklaus is the first to sing their praises and acknowledge they’ve helped him broaden his horizons as an architect.

“I completed my first course when I was 29, and back then I might have had two ways to design one,” he says. “Now I might have 12 or 15 ways. I never go in with a preconceived idea of what the course will be. We figure in the terrain, the land, the weather, all those things. I go in and see the shot values, where I want the holes to go, and my team comes in and does all the facade work at the edges.”

If he comes back and that “facade” work doesn’t do it for him, Nicklaus makes sure it’s massaged to his liking — and fits the developer’s pocketbook. During his recent Coyote Springs trek, he admonished his team for trying to pull off an element that, in his words, would “cost Harvey [Whittemore] so much to maintain that he won’t have any money left to build another course.” And that would mean Jack himself would be one job short. Not good.

Then again, the opportunities and venues just keep coming his way, from Russia to South Africa, Croatia to Southeast Asia, New Zealand to Northern California. Most of them are resort oriented, keyed to increasing a foreign land’s share of the tourism pie. Some are private, and while they tend to be a little tougher strategically, Nicklaus takes care to include golf’s largest demographic by far — the lesser player who may never break 100 but loves the game just the same — out of the equation.

“The earlier courses I designed were for tournament golf, because that’s what I was asked to do,” he says. “What I’ve learned to do is design for member play. I try to keep those people playing from 6,100 yards to 6,700 yards — the seniors at the lower number, and better mid-handicappers toward the higher number. Only 1.8 percent of players should be back at the tips. There’s a certain number of those gorillas who will say, ‘this course isn’t long enough for me,’ so what they need to do is go back to those tees or mix and match, which works well. For some gorillas, though, a course is never going to be long enough for them, whether it’s 7,400, 7,500 or 7,600 yards.”

Though two Nicklaus designs are among the longest on the PGA Tour — Montrêux in Reno and Castle Pines in Colorado — he’s long looked at “the tips” as a necessary evil in modern design. Sure, he was the Tour’s big bomber back in the day (who can safely say he wouldn’t be right out there with Tiger in the days of persimmon woods and nail file-thin irons?), but Nicklaus decries the effect of technology, especially the golf ball, on today’s game, and on the courses he loves to play, from Pebble Beach to Merion to St. Andrews. For years he’s led the clamor for instituting a “competition standard” ball, at least in majors, to no avail.

“They don’t play the same game now that I played,” he says. “Power was maybe 20 percent of the game when I played, and now it’s 80 percent. I don’t like that, but everybody thinks the game they played was the right game. Every generation says that. I’m sure the game today is fine, it’s just different.”

Though it seems the distance race may be slowing down — the tour’s stats have flattened out of late and there are fewer avenues for manufacturers to take when it comes to materials in club and balls — Nicklaus and his colleagues will continue to ask for bigger chunks of terra firma to make sure their new courses are relevant. And he’ll strive to keep raising the bar.

“You always hope your most recent course is the best. I don’t rank my courses, because if I did, I’d have 250 very angry owners. Punta Espana will rank very high. I brought Jim Lipe out here; he’s been my employee the longest of anybody. We went around it and he said, ‘You know, this is a really good golf course.’ But I love all my children.”

West Coast denizens looking for the Next Big Thing from the Golden Bear will have plenty of places to find over the next couple of years, starting with the first Coyote Springs course, which opens in 2007. Nicklaus made his initial Vegas marks at Lake Las Vegas (Reflection Bay and the private South Shore) and Bear’s Best, but this is something truly different — a trailblazing layout in a broad and secluded desert valley. Then comes the second-ever Nicklaus/Dye collaboration laced along rocky, cactus-studded bluffs and earmarked from the start to host a top-tier pro event.

“Here you have the freedom to move around wherever you want to move, and do the things you need to do,” Nicklaus said during a recent Coyote Springs visit. “We’ve got plenty of corridor, plenty of space and a great amphitheater situation. It’s a gorgeous spot.”

Added Whittemore, “We really wanted to create a Jack Nicklaus Signature course. We felt that, if we’re going to come out of the ground with a PGA Jack Nicklaus-Pete Dye course, why would we start with a Nicklaus Design course? So Jack and I decided to make it a Signature course. The relationship has been building since early 2002. We’ve had an awesome time doing this. You see how professional and dedicated he is, what a gentleman he is, how he knows what he’s doing immediately, how he creates and sees things different from everybody else. That’s the fun part. I can see the vision of what we’re doing, but you can’t replicate it on the ground like he can.”

That’s a familiar refrain no matter where Nicklaus goes. He must be doing something right, or developers wouldn’t see him out to create what they hope will be the next great Jack-sterpiece, whether it’s in the Nevada desert or the rainforest of western Vancouver Island. Just as he did on the road to becoming the world’s greatest golfer, the man never fails to show up with a plan. And at least one competitor hopes he keeps rolling up the air miles, lending his signature to new courses and setting the golf architecture pace.

“One thing Jack has established is a level of quality,” Fazio says. “People can have different opinions about whether or not they like a Jack Nicklaus golf course. There’s usually some reason — jealousy, a different belief system. But Jack has established a quality that has raised the level of the golf design industry. When he really got strong into it in the ’80s, his level of commitment brought the total program — the level of maintenance, of expectation, and taking that to an international market. Other than Tiger Woods and Arnold Palmer, there’s probably no other name that’s recognized in the golf world, or sports world, more than Jack’s. Hopefully he will live a long time, and his career as a designer will be longer than his career as a player.”

Here’s to the Golden Years. FG

ON THE PROWL: NICKLAUS PROJECTS CURRENTLY IN THE PIPELINE ON THE WEST COAST

Anaverde

Palmdale, Calif.

Co-Designer: Bill O’Leary

Projected Opening: Late 2006

 

Asturiano Golf Club

Cuaulta, Mexico

Projected Opening: 2006

 

Bear Mountain — Valley Course

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

http://www.bearmountain.ca

Designer: Steve Nicklaus

Projected Opening: First Nine, Summer ’07

Second Nine - Summer 2008

 

Cabo Pacifica

Cabo San Lucas, BCS, Mexico

http://www.cabopacifica.com.mx

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Cedar City

Cedar City, Utah

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Club Campestre

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Designer: Gary Nicklaus

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Colina Tinta

Hurricane, Utah

Designer: Jack Nicklaus II

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Coyote Springs I

Las Vegas

http://www.coyotesprings.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Coyote Springs II

Las Vegas

http://www.coyotesprings.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus with Pete Dye

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Coyote Springs III

Las Vegas

http://www.coyotesprings.com

Designer: Gary Nicklaus, Nicklaus Design

Projected Opening: 2008

 

Cristallago

Lakeport, Calif.

www.cristallago.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Dove Mountain II

Tucson, Ariz.

www.dovemountain.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBA

 

Festival Ranch

Buckeye, Ariz.

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBA

 

Headwaters Golf Club

Granby, Colo.

Designer: Nicklaus Design

Projected Opening: TBA

 

Hideout Lake

Montrose, Colo.

www.hideoutlake.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Date of Projected Opening: TBD

 

James Island

British Columbia, Canada

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Kingman Arizona

Kingman, Ariz.

Designer: Nicklaus Design

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Montecito Country Club

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Mount Holly

Beaver, Utah

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Paradise Ranch Resort

Grants Pass, Ore.

Designer: Jack Nicklaus with Jack Nicklaus II

Projected Opening: 2008

 

Promontory, The Ranch Club

Park City, Utah

www.promontoryclub.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Puerto Los Cabo

Punta Gorda, Mexico

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Punta Gorda

Punta Gorda, Mexico

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBA

 

Red Ledges

Heber City, Utah

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Running Horse Golf & Country Club

Fresno, Calif.

www.runninghorsegolf.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus with Jack Nicklaus II

Projected Opening: 2007

 

The Idaho Club

Sand Point, Idaho

www.theidahoclub.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

The Links at Cougar Canyon

Trinidad, Colo.

www.cougarcanyonliving.com

Designer: Nicklaus Design

Projected Opening: Spring 2007

 

The Reserve at Moonlight Basin

Big Sky, Mont.

www.moonlightbasin.com/golf/

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Toscana Country Club II

Palm Springs, Calif.

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD

 

Tuscany Hills

Copperopolis, Calif.

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: 2008

 

Ute Lake Ranch Golf Course

Logan, N.M.

www.utelakeranch.com

Designer: Nicklaus Design

Projected Opening: 2007

 

Wyndandsea

Ucluelet, British Columbia, Canada

www.marinedriveproperties.com

Designer: Jack Nicklaus (Signature)

Projected Opening: TBD