Jack Nicklaus was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Charlie and Helen Nicklaus. He attended the Upper Arlington High School, where he competed in basketball, baseball and track and field. Within three years of taking up golf at the age of ten, he had broken 70 at his father’s club, Scioto, and was playing off a +3 handicap.

Nicklaus participated in the first of forty-four consecutive US Opens in 1957 but it was the US Amateur where he first tasted national success, winning the championship in 1959 and 1961 whilst still attending Ohio State University. He studied pharmacy there with the intention of following his father into that profession but he later switched to insurance.

After marrying Barbara Bash, a nursing student at the same university, Jack cut short his studies in 1961 to turn professional though he didn’t win his first event until the following year (at his 17th attempt) when he beat 

 at Oakmont in a playoff for the US Open – the Golden Bear was already on his way to racking up a record number of Major victories.

Although Jack was fully immersed in the business of winning competitions on the PGA Tour during the 1960s, he was also dipping his big toe into the bathtub of golf course design. For example, 

 had asked Jack to take a look at one of the first courses he had ever designed for an insurance company in New Albany, Ohio and he was impressed with what Jack had to say about the par three 3rd hole, in particular.

Jack didn’t want to get involved in a project just to endorse what somebody else was doing. He had a contribution to make and wanted his voice to be heard. Another offer came his way to work with Press Maxwell on a course in Long Beach, California but, after flying out to meet the architect on site, he found out none of his suggestions would probably be implemented.

Jack called the oil company behind the project to give back his design fee: “I take some pride in the fact that at 28 years old I was able to walk away from the situation that presented plenty of money but no credibility,” he said later. “ It sounds obvious, but you’ve got to be paid to do a job and you’ve got to do something to be paid… I would have diluted my reputation in design before my career even got started.”

Mark McCormack, who oversaw Jack’s business interests, then offered him the chance to design the Harbour Town course at Hilton Head Island for a developer called Charles Fraser. Remembering his tie up with Pete Dye a few years earlier, Jack called Pete in to work on the layout with him, making twenty-three trips back and forward to the site during the design and construction. As Jack later said: “I was just getting my feet wet, but I enjoyed it.”

Pete and Jack worked on a few other courses before Putnam Pierman, the financier for Muirfield Village, introduced Jack to Desmond Muirhead, who might best be described as an iconoclast, having visited the great courses of North America and Great Britain and Ireland then declaring: “those courses have no mystique whatsoever. I owe very little allegiance to St Andrews.”

Muirhead had studied architecture and engineering at Cambridge and horticulture at the University of British Columbia and Oregon University before working as a landscape planner on retirement villages in Canada and the United States. Jack and Desmond worked on several commissions: two public courses in Cincinnati; St Andrews in Japan; Mayacoo Lakes in Florida; a couple courses at La Moraleja in Spain, as well as their best known assignment, the 18-hole layout at Muirfield Village in Ohio.

The land for this course was acquired during the mid-1960s but construction didn’t start until 1972, with the official opening taking place two years later. The first edition of Jack’s Memorial Tournament took place in 1974 and it’s been a permanent fixture on the PGA Tour ever since then. The Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, US Amateur and US Junior have all been held here too so there’s absolutely no doubt about its major tournament credentials.

After parting ways with Desmond Muirhead, Jack was ready to start out on his own. His first solo design was for Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario, home of the Royal Canadian Golf Association and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. The Canadian Open was played here the year after the course opened in 1976 and the event has returned to this venue many times since then.

The rest, as they say, is history – golfing history, both on and off the course. Jack’s name will forever be associated with greatness on the golf course – 18 professional major championships testify to that – but it’s his golf course design work that should also be remembered in equal measure to his magnificent competitive achievements on the links.

Nicklaus Design now has more than four hundred courses in play – number 400 debuted in 2016 when Jack’s company installed a new nine-hole circuit for free at the American Lake Veterans Golf Course in the grounds of the VA Hospital in Lakewood, Washington – and they’re located throughout nearly every state in the United States and in almost fifty countries around the world.

Expect that number of worldwide courses to keep climbing as, at any one point in time, there might be fifty or more under construction or in some stage of planning.

Of course, Jack can’t do everything by himself so he’s actually the head of a talented team that includes designers who work both in the field and in the design studio. It’s a large group of people who are trained in landscape architecture, agronomy and state-of-the-art technology, working out of eight offices in six nations across three continents.

 and Jay Morrish back in the early days and they were followed by others such as Gene Bates, 

, Rick Jacobsen and Greg Letsche. His sons Jack Jr. and Steve are also involved in the business, as is his son-in-law Bill O’Leary. Gary, Jack's fourth of five children, was also involved in the business and has a handful of designs to his name, including Dalhousie and Machynys Peninsula.

Senior designers include Dirk Bouts, who oversees the European office; Chris Cochrane, who now works from the Florida office; Chad Goetz, who’s also now based in Florida; and Sean Quinn, who heads up the operation in South Africa.


The company employs around twenty Design Associates worldwide, tasked with ensuring Jack's vision is carried out on every golf development. They also take the lead role on every course branded as a "Nicklaus Design" layout. Jack is proud of the many designers who have worked with his company since the mid-1970s, with literally dozens of them going on to attain membership of the prestigious American Society of Golf Course Architects.

Jack’s collaborations have been limited down the years but three readily spring to mind: World Golf Village (King & Bear) in St Augustine, Florida with 

 in 2000; The Concession in Bradenton, Florida with Tony Jacklin in 2005; Sebonack in Southampton, New York with 

concludes his profile of the Golden Bear with this: “Jack is widely recognised as a ‘signature’ designer. The Nicklaus name is well known throughout the world and that association is highly sought after by developers or owners, seeking to heighten their project’s reputation. Furthermore, over the years – and perhaps more regularly than any other modern golf architect – Nicklaus has modified his design style and marketing focus to mimic popular trends (links-style golf, for example) within the industry. Ultimately, his abilities, coupled with those he employs to oversee his projects, have produced several Top 100 golf courses in the world.”

 by Jack Nicklaus and Chris Millard, Pete Dye had this to say about working with Jack:

“We worked on four or five course together, but the best-known fruit of that partnership is certainly Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Since I was in my mid-forties when we took on that project and Jack was only 28, and since I was the design ‘veteran’ of our twosome, most people assume I brought Jack in on that project.

The fact is that Jack was the one who was originally approached for the job. He probably could have done it on his own, but he brought me in. He has always been gracious enough to give me the lion’s share of the credit for Harbour Town, but the course would never have been so well accepted if it hadn’t been for his involvement.

Our partnership lasted only a few years. Jack was thinking bigger than I was. He’d been that way in everything he’d ever done. I never really wanted to expand and Jack did. He threw himself into the design scene worldwide. I didn’t. Those were lifestyle decisions made in mutual respect and understanding. I admire Jack. I have enormous regards for what he has accomplished and still is accomplishing in and for the good of golf design.”

In the same book, Jack concludes the final chapter with this:

“I never could have guessed, back in 1965, that a walk in the woods with Pete Dye would put me where I am today. Since then it’s been a lot of work, hundreds of thousands of miles travelled, but always thoroughly enjoyable. Even now, when I struggle with my golf game, design keeps me close to the sport I love. I’ve been able to make money at it, and to meet fascinating people all over the world.

My work has been singled out for honors and my courses have been ranked (they’ve also been criticized but that’s fair). It keeps me young, and it keeps me close to my family. But the best part of being a course designer is knowing that the courses I design today will be around long after I’m gone. I hope they serve as living, growing testimonials to my love of the game.”

 by Jack Nicklaus and Chris Millard (2002)

World Golf Hall of Fame – Class of 1974: “I never could have guessed, back in 1965, that a walk in the woods with Pete Dye would put me where I am today. Since then it’s been a lot of work, hundreds of thousands of miles traveled, but always thoroughly enjoyable."

Jack Nicklaus

Jack Nicklaus will forever be associated with greatness on the golf course, but it’s his design work that should also be remembered in equal measure to his magnificent competitive achievements on the links.

Ron Kirby studied at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts in the late 1940s before attending the University of Massachusetts Stockbridge School of Agriculture on a Francis Ouimet Scholarship, graduating with an Associate degree in Agronomy in 1953.

He served as a golf course superintendent with a number of clubs before becoming a design associate with 

 in 1958. During the five years he was with Dick, he worked on projects in Paradise Island in the Bahamas and several South Florida courses.

In 1963, Ron became a design associate with 

, assisting the old master with a number of assignments in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. After eight years with the company, he decided to branch out on his own.

From 1970 to 1986, his Atlanta-based firm worked closely with 

 as a consultant and their collaborative efforts spanned the world. Ron then sold his firm (which also included Denis Griffiths) to Golden Bear Inc. and joined 

 Design Services, where he oversaw the company’s European projects for the next decade.

Ron retired from the Nicklaus organization in the mid-1990s but he’s been retained by a number of firms as a special consultant. Currently he’s attached to the design practice of his son-in-law Gene Bates.

One of Ron’s more interesting one-off projects in recent times was the co-design of a one-hole course at a luxury 4-bedroomed chalet called San Lorenzo Mountain Lodge in the Italian region of South Tyrol.

Located at an altitude of 1,200 metres above sea level and overlooking three heavily wooded valleys, this spectacular “Hole in Heaven” course features nine potential pin positions, three of which are always in play from six different tee boxes.

The on-site accommodation comprises an old 16th century hunting lodge which has been transformed into a fabulous 4-bedroomed mountain retreat and ablutions are taken care of by an external whirlpool, a spa, Finnish sauna, Turkish bath and emotional shower.

“To visit the Italian Dolomites should be on everyone’s ‘bucket list,’ said Kirby, “and for a golf designer this was a wonderful opportunity to create a golf experience for players to enjoy while viewing the mountain panorama. I’m happy and proud to have San Lorenzo Golf as part of my design history.”

In 2003, Kirby was elected a “Fellow” of the American Society of Golf Course Architects for his dedicated service to his profession and his outstanding contributions to the game of golf. He and his wife presently live in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

“The excitement comes in the mystery. If it’s an 18-hole project, where are you going to put them? And the fun part there is, you can’t use the first routing, meaning the way the holes circulate over the property. I love doing that. I love finding a place where I can say the course should start here and then go back this way.”

“Dick Wilson lit up my eyes about how you can use imagination. You don’t have to have a bunker left, a bunker right. He’d put two on the right and at different levels. I can do that? Of course, it makes for better strategy, makes a third dimension.”

“When I started there were probably 40 golf courses a year being built in America. It went from 40 to 50 to 60 and got to average about 150 golf courses a year in the 70s and by the 90s it got to 200 and went almost to 400 one year. Now you’ve got maybe four projects, it’s so bad. Four projects to share in America.

We all just overbuilt. It seemed like a good thing so everybody was going to do it and we built too many golf courses here and the reason was everybody thought they could have these property development courses. You see them now and it doesn’t work. There’s only so many players. The worse thing we did.”

“We made the golf courses too damn tough. You can’t play through all those nests of bunkers. Gary [Player] was the best of the bunch because he knows where to strategically place bunkers and that one bunker can be good enough.

Jack even agrees now that we made the golf courses too tough. I heard his last talk: ‘We’ve got to soften up and make them more friendly to play. What’s wrong with an easy golf course?’ Everybody’s getting older and the younger guys can’t afford to play because of the cost of maintaining all those bunkers.”

Ron on his association with Jack Nicklaus:

“I learned course routing from Trent Jones and strategy from Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus is the finishing school of strategy. He is so intense when he gets on the course he is designing that he has been mad at me plenty of times but he's a good buddy still.”

“Ron Kirby knew from a young age he wanted to make a career in the golf world. As a caddie, caddie master, and maintenance crew member at a local country club growing up, Ron gained all the incentives he needed to stay involved with the sport of golf. With a five-decade career under his belt, Ron has garnered the reputation as one of the most respected and appreciated golf course designers in the industry.” ASGCA

Ron Kirby

In 1963, Kirby became a design associate with Robert Trent Jones, assisting with a number of projects in the US, Europe and the Caribbean. After eight years with the company, he branched out on his own.

Kilkenny

Irish Open

Ireland

The course at Mount Juliet is set in lush, rolling parkland, part of a 1,500-acre old Irish country estate with an 18th century mansion as the clubhouse. Magnificent mature trees line the fairways. The River Nore cuts through the course and is popular for salmon fishing. This is the place to allow the Walter Mitty in you to daydream about having your very own private course. But wake up, because this is one of the best inland courses on the Emerald Isle.

Jack Nicklaus and Ron Kirby must have been delighted when asked to build a course on this beautiful country estate. They created a manicured parkland gem. In 1991, the Golden Bear opened the course himself with an exhibition match against Christy O’Connor Snr. It is not surprising that there is a distinctly American feel to this layout, with numerous teeing areas, plenty of bunkers and water hazards. The course even has concealed drainage and irrigation systems. Thankfully, the buggy paths are absent; it would be sacrilege to drive on these immaculate fairways.

This is a course that can cater for the very best golfers, measuring well over 7,000 yards from the back tees. Three of the world’s best have already won the Irish Open here: Faldo (1991), Langer (1992) and Torrance (1993). Another, less well-known golfer won the WGC - American Express Championship here in 2002, someone called Tiger Woods. The course, however, is eminently playable for the handicap golfer from a choice of forward tees.

Nicklaus has designed a fun golfer’s golf course. Water is the main hazard, but if you can avoid it, you will have a great time. Certainly Ernie Els enjoyed his stay here, beating a star-studded field to win the 2004 WGC - American Express Championship. Are you sure this is not America?

Mount Juliet was due to host the Irish Open in May 2020 for the first time since 1995, but the event was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The European Tour hoped to stage the Irish Open later in the year at Mount Juliet, but quarantine restrictions for travellers into the Republic of Ireland forced the European Tour to move the tournament to Galgorm Castle in Northern Ireland. The event did return to Kilkenny in 2021, however.

In late December 2021 it was announced that the Women's Irish Open will be staged at Mount Juliet for the first time following the tournament's 10-year hiatus from the Ladies European Tour.

Mount Juliet

Gowran Park

Britain & Ireland

The course at Mount Juliet is set in lush, rolling parkland, part of a 1,500 acres old Irish country estate with an 18th century mansion as the clubhouse...