Adam Barr of The Golf Channel interview with Jack Nicklaus after receiving the Old Tom Morris Award at the 2005 GCSAA Annual Conference (Feb. 10, 2005).

"Whether it's in sport or business, any time you receive an honor presented by your peers, it's truly significant," Nicklaus said.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, the first time I went there was the Walker Cup matches in 1959 and we played at Muirfield and I fell in love with it. I thought it was a great golf course. It was the only experience I had, but still it was a wonderful golf course. It was sort of, I'll take you a little bit through the tournament, but we played the whole tournament with an east wind. And I went back in 1966 for The Open championship and I'd been close prior to that winning the British Open, but everybody said a high ball hitter couldn't really play well at Muirfield. And when we walked into the golf course and the rough was right up to your knees. Right off the edge of the fairways. You guys didn't have to worry about cutting rough there. Because it had never been cut for a year. You walked in and if you hit a bad shot into it, you went hunting for your ball and you're not going to find it. If you put your bag down, you're probably going to have a good shot at losing your bag. If you had a short caddy you might lose him too. I had good discipline that week. We had a west wind all week during the tournament except for the last round. And when the wind shifted back to the east, I was the only one that had practiced in it and I remembered it from seven years previously. And being able to adjust to that, being able to handle the rough, the discipline I had. I only used my driver 17 times. It was four times a round, I used it five times in the last round and it was a mistake to use it the fifth time in the last round because I drove it in the bunker and made a bogey. And it was something I was very proud of. So I started with my own golf course in Columbus and the Memorial tournament was really sort of to bring golf back to my hometown, a place that had given me so much. And I wanted to bring golf back to the people that had supported me through the years. Well, Muirfield was the name that obviously just jumped out at me. I had loved Muirfield, it was the feeling that I had there, the acceptance that I had there, and so that's why Muirfield Village became Muirfield Village.

Q.: Now Muirfield in Scotland hangs over the sea. Muirfield Village is a property you used to hunt on as a kid with two streams running through it in Dublin. Did you try to work in things that you saw in your youth into the course?

JACK NICKLAUS: No, they don't have any resemblance whatsoever as properties. Muirfield Scotland is a seaside golf course, links golf. Muirfield Village is an inland, woodland golf course. It's totally different. There are no features I tried to bring in from one to the other. The only thing I tried to bring in was good quality golf in both.

Q.: When you began your career you began with a bang taking on Arnold Palmer at Oakmont. When you started out with that big win, how did golf courses look and feel compared to today? Height of the fairway turf, what did greens feel like? Was there any similarity or are things that much different today?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I think things--I mean, it's still golf. You learn to adjust to all conditions. Oakmont in 1962 was the fastest greens we ever putted on. They probably were about seven and a half or eight. And I don't know what they were, but they weren't very fast by today's standards. But Oakmont has so much pitch that you get a ball rolling and it would roll-- most--a lot of those old German bent grass greens there, I think it was, and it was, it all sort of was lying down the slope. So you get a ball started, there was nothing to stop a ball. It would keep going. Today with modern grasses that are very upright the ball will stop going down the slope. So you have to cut them shorter to get more speed. And I think it was South German bent it was. But whatever. And of course it had that and then there was a very high percentage of poa annua anyway. But the fairways were not cut at the length they are today. The guys today maintain fairways the way they used to maintain greens. Oakmont in '62 they had the furrowed bunkers, which meant if you got it in the bunkers you just chopped it out. Frankly, I wish they would bring it back.

Q.: I think they put weights on top of the rakes.

JACK NICKLAUS: I think the rakes were heavy enough. And if you tried to rake one you would find that out. But the game today, the bunkers have to be perfect. And they're never a penalty any more. And frankly that's what your membership sort of asks for. If I went back to furrowed bunkers and making a bunker an actual penalty? Oh, my gosh, everybody would scream. But that's, frankly, that's what it was in '62 at Oakmont.

Q.: Now as a kid you said in your autobiography you are a confessed sports nut. When did the creative side of you begin to come out? When did you start cataloguing golf experiences and thinking, I want to do this, I want to shape land, I want to make golf courses out of raw land.

JACK NICKLAUS: Never did. I have a hard time taking a pencil and making a circle. My artistic skills are not great. I learned to sketch a little bit now and people can understand what I'm drawing. At least my design guys can. They can interpret what I'm doing. But I never had any interest in golf course design whatsoever. And about 1966 or '67 Pete Dye was doing the golf club in Columbus and Pete and I played a lot of amateur golf together and been good friends for years. And he said, Jack, he says, come on out to the Golf Club, I would like to show you what I'm doing out there for Fred Jones. So I went out to the Golf Club. Didn't have a clue what I was looking at. First hole was fairly simple, I hit off a hill and into a valley played up to the green. I understood that one. We went to the second hole and all of a sudden we were going over the crest of this hill and he had some sort of bunker on the top of the hill and I think it was probably a rendition from Prestwick or something, I don't know where it was from. But I said, what in the world is that, Pete? He says, oh, that's, this is a Scottish, we use this, I'm going to play over here and do this. I said okay. I had no clue what I was looking at. We went to the third hole and he had this green and it looked like it was something out of Disneyland here. There was a big round green with four round bunkers and I said, what's that? he says well what do you think. I said I think it looks horrible. He says, I do too. What would you do? And I gave him my idea and Pete said he used it. And it was fun. He started asking me some questions and I had no idea that he would ever use any. Nor did I have an idea that I was contributing. A few months later Pete came back to me or maybe a year later, I don't even remember, he said Jack we had a lot of fun that day, he says how about working with me on some golf courses. Would you consult with me. And I said Pete, I think that would be heck of a lot of fun, I would enjoy doing that. That would be fun. So actually I was with IMG at the time and Mark McCormack got a call from Charles Frasier at Sea Pines and Hilton Head. And said that we want to do a golf course, do you have somebody up there that would like to do a golf course. And he said Jack's getting involved in golf courses would you have Jack get involved. He said, oh, sure. So actually I got Pete Dye the job at Harbour Town. I said I hadn't done anything. I said I'm working with a guy and his name is Pete Dye. Well Pete was just starting too. So anyway, so we got Pete involved in the job and of course obviously Pete took the lead, I just, I was obviously consulting with him and I made 23 trips during that construction of that golf course and probably more than I have any place else except for maybe Muirfield or the Bear's Club at home.

Q.: It worked out well. People fell in love with your golf courses.

JACK NICKLAUS: I got started and I had fun and enjoyed it. And Pete and I did about a dozen courses together and I really enjoyed that. And then I started Muirfield and I wanted more of my own expression at Muirfield village. And so Desmond Muirhead was around at the time and I wanted somebody who could help me with land planning. So he had been pretty good at putting land and golf courses together. And so I asked Desmond if he would work with me on the golf course and the land development. I learned a lot from him how to bring the outside to the inside and inside to the outside. And we did about a half a dozen courses and then I started, wanted to have my own expression totally and I thought I learned enough. And I was fortunate that I had two fellows that were both very accomplished to start with Jay Morrish and Bob Cupp. Both of those guys came with me and they worked Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside, basically. And we started working golf courses and Glen Abbey was my first solo design. And I don't ever consider anything a solo design. I feel like no matter what we do it's a design and it's a team effort. A team effort consists of myself, it consists of my design associate, design coordinator, the lot owners, the construction company. And the first thing I like to have is the superintendent on from the start of construction because there's so many decisions, grass decisions, slope decisions, tree decisions, the super can help me with that. And it's been invaluable to have those guys on to start with. So that's the team. And I give everybody a little bit of individual room to be able to do their own thing. That way we don't end up with something that I put on paper and it's like this (Indicating). We end up with a little bit of individuality from my coordinator and my associate, my bulldozer operator, I give him a little freedom of how he wants to do something. And the super with the grasses and stuff. Now you take and put all that together and we end up with a golf course that's a team effort and one that's been fun to do, but the next golf course we do we'll have a different team and so it won't be the same.

Q.: But you'll be on it.

JACK NICKLAUS: I'm be on it. I'll try to be on that team, yeah. And I've got a half a dozen guys that have been with me over 20 years. And they are perfectly quite capable to go out on their own and a lot of guys have gone on their only. Jay and Bob obviously. But one of the things I'm very proud of is that I have 14 guys that I've worked with that are now members of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

Q.: And some of them started in your backyard.

JACK NICKLAUS: I have 10 superintendents that started in my backyard, 10 kids that started as supers and a lot of them have worked on--?Toby? has probably been on six or seven of my golf courses and he was the first one in my yard.

Q.: Talking about collaborators and influences, Pete Dye, let's talk about Bob Jones. Mr. Jones and what you have called second shot thinking. And how it influenced the way you design golf courses.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I grew up at Scioto, which was a Donald Ross golf course. A wonderful golf course. It was changed in the early '60s by Dick Wilson. But originally, the course I grew up on, was a Ross golf course. Still a good golf course, but it's not the course I grew up on. Then I played my college golf at Ohio State, which was an Alister MacKenzie design, but Alister had passed away before that. But it had his influence, the green areas were his. I then started playing around the country, but Augusta National was my favorite place to go play golf. So the influence of Augusta National with the influence of Ross and the influence of MacKenzie and then the influence of Augusta National and Bob Jones was, I loved Augusta because you could stand up, and of course I had a little bit of power in those days, and I used to be able to knock it out there and hit it anywhere I want to within reason. But I knew if I don't put it in the right side of the fairway I couldn't play the hole properly. And I loved the concept of being able to have room off the tee, make it a second shot golf course. And the members could play it, the members would have fun with it. All you did was move the tees back, hide the pins and you got a championship golf course. Well, I used that philosophy basically through the years. I think that probably with equipment today we brought the fairways in more because you really can hit the ball a lot straighter today. And, but basically it's still the same philosophy I used.

Q.: Now you don't do necessarily five sets of tees, you don't do as many sets of tees as you can, but you do place tees strategically. Once you've done that, what else can you do to make the same golf hole play for a Tour player and also be fun for a recreational player?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I used to do about five sets of tees. Maybe sometimes six sets of tees. And I found that with the golf equipment and particularly the golf ball, it doesn't become practical any more. Because you need 65 or 7,000 yards to challenge the good player and less than 2 percent of the players play from the back tees. The average golfer, member to a golf course, they don't want to feel like a second class citizen, they want to feel on the golf course, to go to the next set of tees and that's where they feel, my ego says I'm a 10, I ought to be able to play from there. Well, if you have 65 or 7,000 yards, they can't play 7200 yards. The next logical is about 69, they can't play 6900. So what I've done is I designed more from the members tees today than I do from the back tees. I create a strategy that the average golfer can play and I try to keep that between 62 and 67 hundred yards. I don't think that or statistics will tell us that the average golfer really isn't any better handicap-wise having gone down through the years. Anyhow equipment is theoretically more user friendly, I don't think that's the case, frankly. But what I've done is I have a ladies set of tees and I have that at 62 to 67, usually around 65. I have 62 to 67, ladies championship tees will sit on the front of the members tee and then what happens is we'll build a back tee and they'll say, I'm not going to play that, but we want to play tees where they can play. And I think that is what that is, it helps the ego of the average golfer not to think he's a second class citizen. And so I don't put anything in the middle. So now if a player, a guy is a two or three handicap, wants to mix and match and take a few back tees with his course, he can do that. Well, the members tell me, geez, I would like to have another tee on this golf course, that sits between the members tees and the back tees and that's not Jack Nicklaus putting it there making the course too tough, it's the members requesting that. The biggest thing we talked about this earlier when I received my award was that it's not the idea to bring people into the game, it's to keep them in. And if a golf course is too tough and they can't play the game, they're not going to stay.

Q.: Doesn't this go back to your central question when you start, who will be playing the golf course?

JACK NICKLAUS: Oh, yeah. We're going to find out who is going to play it and what we're trying to accomplish. Now the main idea with a good golf course is not Augusta National or Pebble Beach or Shinnecock or whatever you might say, not good golf courses, but a good golf course ... if an owner comes to me and says, I need a golf course that I got to have and my average membership is going to be 70 years old and they're just beginning golfers--I'm being ridiculous about my example--but I'm going to do a golf course that they can play. And if it accomplishes that for the owner, and that's his people coming playing it, and they enjoy it, then it's a good golf course in my opinion. That's what a good golf course is all about. A good golf course, I mean if you allow, and we were talking about this, Steve and I were talking earlier, if I went to the central part of Kansas, where nobody plays golf. I mean, I have been out there for hunting and I leave my Sharpie at home out there. You go out there and you're going to find people out there that, if they don't play golf, the budget for the golf course would be very inexpensive, the fee would be very inexpensive, the level of maintenance would have to be relatively inexpensive. Otherwise people couldn't afford it. No sense in doing the golf course. And I had the philosophy with our company, I don't care whether somebody has a million dollars or 12 million dollars, they're going to get a golf course for whatever money they have. Now what I'll be able to do is a million dollars worth of good golf for somebody who has a million dollars and a 10 dollar green fee. They don't necessarily have to have 12 million dollars and a $300 green fee. What I'm able to do in a golf course though is bring it in within a budget. Because basically it's our job to bring people into the game and keep them in the game.

Q.: Let's talk about that. You mentioned that before today. What is the super's role, not only do they maintain more than just turf, they maintain the game. What is the super's role in not only getting people into the game, but keeping people into the game. What are the challenges that they face with modern equipment on their golf course?

JACK NICKLAUS: First of all from a maintenance standpoint, a super is given, we're talking earlier about some supers are given an unlimited budget and they exceed it. But owners, the real high majority have a limited budget and they're asked to try to make sure they can maintain within that budget the best they can. Now, if that, if costs continue to rise--and there's only one person that pays for that cost, whether it's for the land, for my part of the golf course, or the superintendent's maintenance, it's the member or the person who is going to play that golf course, the guy has to pay it. And if he can't afford it or she can't afford it, they're not going to stay in the game. So we got to keep golf affordable. And, see, that's why I'm saying, I don't care what kind of money you have. If you want a golf course you ought to be able to get it and maintain it. And it's the super's job to be able to do the best layout of the facility that he can for that member. On the golf course that I go to, every one has a budget. Every golf course I'm involved with will have a budget. And sometimes they say, we can't afford what we have there. And I say, well, let's say we got a million dollar budget, but we can only afford 500,000. So I say, okay, give me what you can give me for half a million dollars. What do you eliminate? Well, they can mow the rough once a week rather than three times a week. We can't fertilize such and such. We can't mow it, we can't, we can't, we, um, we verticut as much as we can, we can't top dress, we can't replace the sand as often.

Q.: But you can still make your best $500,000 investment?

JACK NICKLAUS: That's my point. My point is that you can do the best you can for what you have got. And when you do that, you're making the costs of the game affordable for people, you're not taking it out of their pocket. And it doesn't run people out of the game.

Q.: And of course time and cost are the main impediments to participation we know. One big question: How do you build a golf course nine feet below the level of the Mississippi river? English Turn is one of the best draining courses on Tour, but you wouldn't think it would be. Was that a problem property and how did you turn it into a positive?

JACK NICKLAUS: Let's start off with what the issues were. You go to the New Orleans area, you find a piece of ground that's not under sea level? You can't. It's difficult. And if we did find a piece of ground, what are we going to have to do to it to be able to do a golf course on it? But they looked to us about doing a golf course and this was for development.

Q.: Close to downtown.

JACK NICKLAUS: We looked for development and also a place to bring the tournament. And we looked and it was on the way out of town, we couldn't find any place near town except for property that was really basically totally flood plain.

Q.: Under water.

JACK NICKLAUS: Under water. So we found the English Turn area, which is in Algiers, not very far from where we were planning, I don't know which side of the river, I don't know if it's the west side or east side, I can't even remember. It doesn't make any difference. It was one of those sides or the other. Anyhow, it cost us, to take that property, we paid I think it was 10 million dollars was the price we paid for that property.

The piece of property out of town was going to cost us 25 million dollars. So we said, well, why don't we put a piece of property downtown and for us to take that property and bring it up and take it out of flood plain, it cost about 7 million dollars. Well, true, 17 million dollars versus 25 million dollars we had a site we can do a golf course on basically downtown. That was a decision of why English Turn was built where it was built. Then, so we went in, best thing that golf course had to be done with a drag line. There's no way you could get into that piece of property--

Q.: You had to put wood blanks down, right?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, that was afterwards. You couldn't put a piece of equipment on that property it would go straight down. You run your tracks of whatever machine you had, you would be pulling snakes up all day long. I think it was unbelievable. Anyway, the property was brought up and then as we started working it, we started bringing the planks into the property and running drag lines out on these planks. And the reason English Turn was basically 60 yards apart from water hazards, that's about the length of the drag line here. And to be able to do it without ruining it. And we had to design around that. And then once we designed the golf course and we never could shape it. It was flat. It just plopped down in the mud and you know it was going to settle over time. The mud was.

Q.: So those mounds went down 15 feet in 15 years?

JACK NICKLAUS: I'll get to that.

Q.: I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of you?

JACK NICKLAUS: But let me run through this here. Anyway, once we started we finished that and the bunker areas which we put in designed, and ground areas, we left them alone. We got sand in those areas and then shaped the sand in those areas. We pumped two feet of sand over the whole property. We put something under the fairways and we drained the golf course that way. Shaped the rest of it. Now out on the course the mounds were larger, there's a mound between the 2nd and 7th fairway which I think it was designed at 21 foot of elevation. Well, I think that's about 7 foot of elevation today. It's settled about 14 feet. And there will be more than that because last time I was there it was 7 feet. Whenever you put the dead land back in for your bunkering and so forth, the greens, it bubbles up through the greens. We had monumental problems. But the one thing that didn't happen, which I sort of felt was interesting, that the greens, I had made the greens a little bit more severe. I made them that way. They never changed because they were USGA greens and they were built basically within a basket and they stayed that way. So I had to come back and soften the greens later, even though when they settled, they settled straight down, they didn't settle out. So it was a very interesting project. It was fun. Oddly enough it was a the 7 million dollars to do the, to drain the property. 3 million dollars to build the golf course. That's what it cost to do the golf course.

Q.: It turned into a success. It can rain in New Orleans and you can play a half hour later.

JACK NICKLAUS: You can go to English Turn and a half an hour to an hour after play of a two inch rain you can go back out and play a golf tournament on it. And you have no place on that golf course that holds water. And you couldn't go on another golf course for a week.

Q.: Let's talk about the ideas that come up almost by accident, walking the center lines at Shoal Creek and turning around and walking the other way.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, that was one of the first golf courses I did. And I remember Jay Morrish and I were walking it with Hal Thompson. And we walked the front nine and we got done with the front nine and I didn't say anything to anybody I just turned around and started walking back to the ninth hole. And they said, where are you going? I said, just come along we'll see here in a minute. And I walked two or three holes backwards and I said, guys, we're going backwards. They said, what do you mean? I said, well, this golf course, there's two holes on the front nine I don't like because the way they have to be played uphill in a certain fashion. I says we can make it more of a softer range going the other way, coming the other way and I think I can do a better hole coming the other way. And they said, really? And I said, the first time I was on Shoal Creek I remember Hal Thompson and I were driving through the golf course and I said, and he said, what do you see? And I said, well, there's all these, there's all these logging roads, very severe oak and double oak mountain. And he said, I said, I said, well, I said, I see a lot of par-3s. I said, I don't know where I'm going put a golf course in here. It's obviously just solid trees. So we went back and I called him back that week and I said, not only can we get 18 holes, we can get 36. He didn't want that. But anyway, we got the 18 holes in there. And we did the back nine. The front nine went the other way and the back nine we maintained the original routing and it turned out to be a nice golf course.

Q.: Glen Abbey, for many years the home of the Canadian National Championship, was kind of a spoke and wheel type of thing for spectators and really the forerunner of the TPC concept. Explain how when you're at the club house you can see so much action.

JACK NICKLAUS: Muirfield Village was the first golf course that was ever built for tournament golf with spectators mounds. Glen Abbey was the second. And Glen Abbey I tried to figure out, it was not much of a piece of property, it was an old golf course and it wasn't very much there. It was a pretty flat piece of ground. And then you had this, where it dropped off into the river bottom of, on 16 mile creek, I think. And I think-- and this creek went through the bottom there. Anyway, the idea was that we would take a central focus and create the club house up on a high mounding around that or high elevation. So that they can could view the first, the third, the 7th, the ninth, the 10th, the 11th, coming or, no, 10th, 10th, um, coming back into the 16th, 17, and 18 all from the club house area. And then I had another area which was about halfway down the holes that had another spoke that would go in there that you could view back to those same holes, but also view the other holes that went out.

That you could work from. And then we had originally designed that you could walk the cliff above the valley, and see the holes in the valley. Which was almost just a little spoke off of the main thing. Well, environmentally they wouldn't allow us to remove the trees from the slope. Which was fine. So we couldn't get that part of it. And the people had to walk the valley or stay up top and miss about four holes. But it was an interesting project, it was a fun project, and I'm very proud that they played the Canadian Open there for over 20 years, I suppose. And that was actually my first solo design.

Q.: The U.S. Open is coming up at Pinehurst No. 2. It brings up thoughts of Donald Ross and his true affection for long iron shots as the true test of golf. Let's suppose that the 10 percent solution were implemented on a U.S. Open like that and the average drive was 265 instead of 286 or whatever it happens to be, and long irons were back, we see guys hitting more 3-irons. Would they not be hitting 3-irons, would they be hitting modern hybrids and has technology outrushed even Ross' affection for the long iron as the true test of the game?

JACK NICKLAUS: Let's start with Pinehurst.

They adjusted Pinehurst for the last U.S. Open that was played there. And the golf courses at Pinehurst was a collection of golf courses with peril off the edge of the greens. And you had a lot of the errors that went over the green way down and away. But if you hit it inside the whirl, it would collect its way back to the hole, which I think is neat.

And then, you know how they played Pinehurst the last time? Where did they put the pins? On all of the knobs. That was never a pin placement in Donald Ross' design. You can hit it -- they had it on the crest or ridges all day long. Which I think is totally wrong. That's the only way you can make the golf course be defensible to modern-day equipment.

Now, we're going back to Pinehurst. I don't know what they're going to do at Pinehurst this time. I mean, Pinehurst is my ... Pinehurst has always been my favorite golf course from a design standpoint. Pebble Beach has been ... if I want to play one more round of golf, that's where I go. And Augusta National and St. Andrews are my two favorite places in the game. But Pinehurst has always been my favorite design.

Here you've got a perfectly tree-lined golf course without a tree in the strategy. Here I've got a golf course without any water. And you got a wonderful golf course played with a golf ball that, that keeps it within, within what the golf course was designed. So it's a wonderful golf course. But you take the golf equipment of today, and the distance the guys hit the golf ball, what are you going to do? I mean, Pinehurst was never designed with rough, it was designed to get the ball in the trees and out into the scrub and let it run off run off into the trees. I mean, every year Donald Ross would walk through that golf course and the trees and he would say, well, what about those trees? This tree is too big, let's pull it out. Because that recovery shot was one of the most beautiful shots in the game of golf. I mean, Arnold Palmer made a lot of wonderful recovery shots when he was a young guy. Arnold was exciting because Arnold wasn't a straight driver, but he hit the ball in the trees and he would make an exciting shot out of the trees and people just loved that. And the charisma of Arnold was fantastic. Now, what have they done? They have taken the golf courses and made the rough six inches deep, the ball never gets to the trees and all you do is chop it out with a wedge. Is that exciting? That's boring. And I don't think you want to make the game boring.

Q.: Don't get excited now.

JACK NICKLAUS: No, I never speak my mind. But to me a recovery shot is a wonderful shot. I mean, it gives you the opportunity to do it. But to put 6-inch rough where you chop it out and put it back in the fairway in play ... all it does is protect par. And to put the pins on the knobs where they were never intended to be on the knobs, that is not the golf course. So when we play Pinehurst are we going to go play Pinehurst or are we going to play a hybrid version of what is made to combat today's golf equipment? Or should we just go play Pinehurst the way it should be and let them shoot 30-under-par. Which is what they would do. Unless we change the golf ball.