Jack Nicklaus

So, how’s your game, Jack?

“Well, until three days ago I wouldn’t have really been in a position to comment. I hadn’t picked up a club since my last round at the British Open, but I played for the first time this week. I shot level par, which I was very happy with.”

Do you have a favourite club at the moment?

“What, like a 1-iron or something?”

That sort of thing… “No, I don’t. I never have done. The way I look at it, my favourite club is the one I take out of the bag to hit my next shot with.”

Do you miss the heat of competition?

“To be honest, yes I do. That’s what I loved about playing golf. But I now have the family over for dinner on Sunday; and for many years that was just not possible. It’s a lot of fun.” It’s difficult to imagine you losing your competitive streak...

“My competition today comes from how well I can design a golf course, or maybe trying to land a trout. These are things I know I can get better at. I think it’s about time I did something other than play golf. I love golf, I really do love golf, but I don’t play well anymore, or at least well by my own standards.”

Do you have to consider how far people might hit the ball in ten years’ time when you design a golf course these days?

“We do that anyway. This golf course is 7,500 yards from what I like to call the ‘gorilla’ tees. There’s an interesting statistic that 98.2 per cent of the golf played on a course will be from the regular tees and so it would be crazy to design a course just with that 1.8 per cent in mind. I try not to make my golf course difficult for the average golfer, but a real challenge from the back tees.”

What do you make of tournament courses having to carve out extra yards every year? “I’m not a fan of golf courses that just add strictly length. If you have a golf course over 7,500 yards, you make it too friendly for the big hitter. I dislike what has happened at Augusta, for example. It’s still a wonderful golf course, but it’s really lent itself to be too much to the ultra-long hitters. I mean, Ben Hogan and Gary Player, they were not long hitters, but they were pretty good golfers, you know. Golf courses should be able to challenge the very long hitters and the short hitters too.

“The game I played to the highest level was about 20 per cent power and about 80 per cent putting the ball where you needed to put it. Power was a great advantage if you had it. And I had power, so I always had a great advantage. Today, I think the game is about 80 per cent power and 20 per cent position. And I feel that if you look at the top five money winners last year on the US tour, all five were in the top five or ten in driving distance, but not one of them was in the top 110 in driving accuracy. The way I see it, players don’t have to care whether they hit it straight or not. I feel that’s wrong. I don’t like what technology has done to golf because of that.”

» Jack Nicklaus part 3