Golf Architects/Designers: Jack Nicklaus

Jack William Nicklaus, also known as “The Golden Bear”, is a golf legend and if his mark on the 20th century was his golf game, his legacy in the 21st century will be his golf course design. For more than 30 years, Nicklaus courses have blanketed the globe, establishing Jack Nicklaus as one of the world’s premier golf course designers, in 1999, Golf Digest ranked Jack as the world’s leading active golf course designer.

Nicklaus devotes much of his time to golf course design and operates one of the largest golf design practices in the world. In the mid-1960s, Pete Dye initially requested Nicklaus’ opinion in the architecture process of The Golf Club in suburban Columbus, U.S.A. and the input increased from that point forward. Nicklaus considered golf course design another facet of the game that kept him involved and offered a challenge. His first design, Harbour Town Golf Links, was opened for play in 1969. A subsequent early, yet more prominent design was Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, U.S.A. which opened in 1974 and has hosted the Memorial Tournament since its inception in 1976. This course has also hosted the 1987 Ryder Cup and the 1998 Solheim Cup matches. For the first few years, all of his projects were co-designs with either Pete Dye or Desmond Muirhead, who were two of the leading golf course architects of that era.

His first solo design, Glen Abbey Golf Course in Oakville, Ontario, opened for play in 1976. This course served as the host site for the Canadian Open for many years, the first being in 1977. In 2000, the King & Bear opened in St. Augustine, FL as a joint collaboration between Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. In 2006, the Concession Golf Club opened in Sarasota, U.S.A. as a joint collaboration between Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin to commemorate their historic Ryder Cup singles match in 1969.

Nicklaus is in partnership with his four sons and his son-in-law through Nicklaus Design, and they had established themselves as industry leaders; the firm has entered the new millennium with well over 240 golf course designs. Of those Jack has been involved in 207 of them, at least 63 Nicklaus Design courses have been ranked by major industry publications like Golf Digest, Golfweek, GOLF Magazine and Travel and Leisure Golf, in various national or international Top-100 lists, and no fewer than 88 Nicklaus Design courses have hosted a combined total of over 600 professional golf tournaments worldwide or significant national amateur championships including events on the PGA Tour, the Champions Tour, the LPGA Tour and the Nationwide Tour, among others.