Q and A: Jack Nicklaus — Still carving out a place in the game

Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004 | 10:54 a.m.

Sun reporter Adam Candee met with Jack Nicklaus at the Four Seasons Hotel on Monday night as Nicklaus stopped in Las Vegas to promote his involvement in the future Coyote Springs master-planned development north of Las Vegas. The discussion ranged far beyond course design and land development.

Sun: Tell me more about your involvement in this development.

JN: It's a big project. When (developer) Harvey (Whittemore) came to us three or four years ago, we didn't know what was going to happen. We checked Harvey out and Harvey's got a great reputation. He's a doer. We thought I could be involved. We saw Desert Mountain happen in a similar type of situation outside of Scottsdale. I was involved in all of that from day one.

With this project from day one, it's going to be a lot of fun. All the mistakes you make, you know you've made them yourself. And all the things you do right, you know you take a little credit for. It's going to be fun.

Sun: Since you first got into the design business, how has your design evolved?

JN: It just continually changes. It continually changes ideas as you learn to develop. I suppose when I first started, I could do golf courses one, maybe one and a half different kinds of ways. I say one and a half meaning I was trying to do something else and I wasn't sure I could do it. I can do golf courses now probably a dozen -- at least -- different ways.

Different ways to put things together, make everything look different -- that's something you learn and you do it. It's like anything else. I've enjoyed it. It's been a natural extension of what I've done playing golf, obviously. I started back in the '60s, really when I was in the middle of my career. I've enjoyed doing that as I've gone on. As I've played less golf, design has increased.

It's been something that's been a blessing for me to be able to stay involved in the game that I love and to be able to put something on a piece of ground that's going to be here long beyond my golf game and lifetime.

Sun: Has there ever been a point in your life when you've considered what your life would have been like without this game?

JN: I never really thought much about it. My father was a pharmacist. I went to college to be a pharmacist. I went to three years of pre-pharmacy. I was getting ready to go into pharmacy school and my dad talked me out of it. He said, "With your golf game, you don't want to get stuck behind a counter."

So I switched over to the business school -- actually, an insurance major and I sold insurance for a couple, three years as I finished up college. I didn't like that. I made a pretty good living at it. When I turned pro, financially, I wasn't sure I could make as much money playing golf as I could selling insurance.

That was back in 1961 and I was making about $30,000 a year selling insurance at that time as a 21-year-old kid. That was a lot of money in 1961. So I wasn't sure I could make that kind of money.

So it wasn't a dollar issue. What it really became is an issue, to me, of I loved competition, I loved sports, and golf was just another sport probably until I was about 19 or 20. When I won the national amateur, it obviously became a more important sport to me because I realized I was pretty good at it.

I never really thought about what my life would have been without golf because golf was just part of what I was doing. When I turned pro, I already had one child. We got married when we were 20, and Jackie, we had him when we were 21. I had him, I guess, about a week after I won my second national amateur. My family was the most important thing to me.

The things I was doing in golf -- it was a game. I never thought about it being a means to an end. It was just part of what my life became.

Sun: You talked about the work you had outside of golf. That seems to be a major difference from players today, who really from juniors are bred to play on tour.

JN: For college, I was offered scholarships to maybe 100 different universities and I said, "No, don't bother. I'm going to go to Ohio State." They didn't offer me a scholarship. They recruited me for basketball. I said that I want to go to Ohio State because I grew up in Columbus, I grew up watching Ohio State football and I grew up going to Ohio State basketball games. I wanted to be an Ohio State student and I wanted to have a college life.

Golf was not in my factor, and maybe that was a great part about it for me because it was not something that until I was probably 22 years old that it would dominate what I did. I had all the other things I was doing. My dad was the same way. He played football, basketball, baseball at Ohio State.

He was the city tennis champion. He played golf as a kid -- not very much, but he played. So it was never a major part of his life. It was all just part of our life, not just a major part of our life. And I think that was probably a blessing for me. So when I was old enough to dive into it, I was old enough to realize what I was doing.

And then of course, the golf course design happened by pure accident. Pete Dye was in Columbus doing the golf club. It was his first or second or third course -- I don't know; he hadn't done very many. Pete and I had been friends for years; I played amateur golf against him. He asked me to come out and take a look at it, and I came out and he asked me for some suggestions. I gave him some suggestions and he used them and asked me to consult with him.

I mean, just by pure accident, I got involved in golf course design. And I had that more as an avocation than a vocation for probably a dozen years anyway.

Sun: Ryan Moore at UNLV has accomplished something amazing with his Amateur Slam.

JN: Oh, he had a great year.

Sun: It got some attention, but do you think the respect for amateur golf has changed over the years? It doesn't seem like it's quite the same as it was when you played.

JN: It's different. It's become (an issue of) media focus. I mean, sports are (about) media focus. To me, the national amateur champion is a heck of an accomplishment, but the media focus is not focused on lesser events, you might say.

They only focus on the Super Bowl or who's going to get to the playoffs. It's all they focus on: Who's going to be the No. 1 in the country? The playoff system, who's going to be in the BCS? Six teams are going to play in the BCS bowls; they only really focus on the top two.

It's not like when I grew up. If you went and had a 6-3 year playing football, it was a nice year. A 6-3 team today -- or actually, it would be 8-3 today because they play 11 games -- you don't even look at it anymore. It's just an OK team. Well, that's a pretty darn good year.

It's just like, unless you do what Vijay (Singh) did this year or unless you do what Tiger did the last couple of years, nobody pays much attention to anybody else. The focus is basically on No. 1 and, really, the game is not for No. 1. The game is for millions of people who play.

Sun: The criticism that came up of Phil Mickelson a couple of years ago was not only that he hadn't won a major, but people wondered if he was focused on being the No. 1 player or was he happy being top 10 or top 15 and making a wonderful living for his family and having a great career.

JN: Yeah, but it's the media's focus. I mean, who in the world would ever have thought that they'd develop a fake category of who was the best player not to have won a major? When I was playing, that didn't even enter anybody's mind. Nobody even asked me if I'm worried about the number of majors that I'd won until 1970. I walked in the pressroom at St. Andrews when I won the British Open and they said, 'Jack, that's 10 -- only three more to tie Bobby Jones.'

That was the first time -- I promise you, it was the first time I had added the number. I'd never even thought about it. And all of a sudden, (I thought) Bobby Jones won 13 -- oh my gosh, I'm only three away. That was the first time I'd ever thought about it. It never entered my mind!

You put on SportsCenter in the morning and you see that somebody hit two home runs in the fifth and sixth inning of a night game on Tuesday after 7:30 -- you know what I'm saying? Oh, there's only been three people who have done that in history -- it's ridiculous what they come up with.

We never had any of that stuff, so we never thought about it. It was never an issue.

Sun: Going back to Coyote Springs for a second, the majority of majors are played in the East. Is this the kind of facility that could bring, say, a PGA Championship out West?

JN: My guess is the answer would be very definitely yes. I would be very surprised if it didn't.

I did Valhalla (in Louisville, Ky.) and the PGA of America bought Valhalla and they did it for one reason: They wanted to have a tournament facility back east where they could hold a PGA Championship. They have the PGA down in Palm Beach Gardens -- what'd they hold down there? They held a PGA Championship, didn't they? And they held the Ryder Cup matches.

So my guess is they're going to do exactly the same thing here.

Sun: You mentioned the Ryder Cup, so I'll bring up the question of the day and ask how you feel about Tom (Lehman) stepping in and take over the captaincy, and what the future holds for the Americans in the Ryder Cup for the next couple of years.

JN: Frankly, I think they make too big a deal out of it. I think the Ryder Cup is a great event. I think the President's Cup is a great event. I think they're great international events for goodwill. I just think too much is made over who wins it. Everybody wants to win because they want the bragging rights to win. But, in the scope of things, who wins doesn't make much difference.

It's just like the President's Cup last year ended up in a tie. People were upset to start with, but it turned out, as soon as they thought about it, they changed the whole rules of the President's Cup because of it -- because after they reflected on it, they thought it was the right thing.

Really, what did the President's Cup do? The real winner of the President's Cup was the game of golf, the country of South Africa, the goodwill that it brought to so many people.

Don't make it the Battle of the Bulge or the War on the Shore, or whatever it might be (laughs). Let the Ryder Cup be what it is, which is a goodwill event for bragging rights and for the guys to get together, have fun together. It brings the golfing nations together and that's what it's for.

Sun: If you had the ability to write that legacy for yourself of what you'll have meant to the game of golf and to the sporting world, how would you write that?

JN: I hadn't even thought about it. I suppose you might say that I would just hope that I entered the golfing world as a young kid and I hope I leave the golfing world and have the golfing world better for my being there. It's made the entire difference in my life.

Everything that's happened to me -- what's happening here tonight -- is because of how I play golf, not because of how I can design golf courses. I'd have never gotten to design a golf course if I hadn't been able to play. It's been my life, my passion outside of my family and if I can leave it and the game is better, that's the most important thing. The game is far bigger than any individual and it needs to stay that way.

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