The evolution of Jack Nicklaus as a designer

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Kirk, I have not played there in 5 years so you clearly have a local knowledge edge. I would not call it less punitive at all. I would call it a better design than the vast majority. I think of punitive as but one value not the only one. Jim Lipe did the majoruty of work on this one. I think Jim Lipe was the more significant member of the team on Seboack. I think if it as more a doak course than a Nicklaus though.

[Dan Herrmann]

Andy - what were the course ratings of the courses you mention?  Slope by itself doesn't tell the whole picture sometimes.

[David Kelly]

I agree that Mayacama is a nutcracker and I thought the par 3s were especially hard. 

Andy gets it right when he talks about how a nice flow through the course doesn't develop when it is just tough hole after tough hole.  I played Nicklaus' Kinloch in New Zealand recently and while there is a lot to recommend about the course it sometimes felt as just an endless precession of hard holes. 

[Ally Mcintosh]

There was a definite subtle shift between his two Irish designs at Mount Juliet (1995) and Killeen Castle (2007).... I quite like these courses and prefer both of them to any of the Nicklaus company's work I've seen in Scotland, England or Germany but the latter one has had more micro-contour and short grass run-offs added to his signature sweeps and shapes...

It's a good course in my book... Solheim Cup is there in a couple of months so you'll all get to see it... Absolutely hideous shamrock bunker on the 1st didn't give me the best initial impression either...

[Andy Troeger]

The Concession (155), 77.6
Promontory (155), 78.7
Red Ledges (151), 76.9
Old Corkscrew (153), 77.6
Broadmoor Mountain (149) 75.7
Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain (147) 77.1

If anyone knows the rating/slope of The Idaho Club, please feel free to post. I imagine it would be similar.

[Jim Franklin]

I can't wait to see Mayacama in a couple of weeks. I will chime in later.

[Tim Gavrich]

The Nicklaus course I am most familiar with was built in 1988--Pawleys Plantation--and is a real toughie.  I recently played his course at Bayside Resort in Fenwick Island, Delaware, which opened in 2005.  Both courses are par 72.  Here are the tee yardages/ratings/slopes from the back three sets at each course:

PAWLEYS PLANTATION
7026/75.3/146
6522/72.5/137
6126/70.8/130

BAYSIDE
7545/77.4/146
6835/73.6/142
6418/71.5/140

So the ratings and slopes are pretty comparable, especially adjusting for the yardage difference.  But the way in which both golf courses achieve that level of difficulty seems to be quite different.  At Pawleys, the fairways are pretty doggone narrow, such that missing them on a bunch of holes brings woods (playable, oftentimes) or OB into play.  The greens, though sometimes elusive, are not too difficult at all to putt once you're there.  At Bayside, however, the fairways are much wider and the greens bigger, but they're more undulating and often feature big runoffs and chipping areas that give higher handicappers fits.  In short--judging from these two, anyway--it would appear that Nicklaus' designs have gone from brutal tee-to-green to more brutal around the green.  What say those who've played more JN courses than I?

[Matthew Petersen]

The Concession (155), 77.6
Promontory (155), 78.7
Red Ledges (151), 76.9
Old Corkscrew (153), 77.6
Broadmoor Mountain (149) 75.7
Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain (147) 77.1

If anyone knows the rating/slope of The Idaho Club, please feel free to post. I imagine it would be similar.

I don't know if posting the rating/slope from the tips is the most accurate way to measure whether his courses have softened at all in recent years.

Take the Dove Mountain course. It's an undeniably difficult course from the tips, in every facet. It's very long, features tough greens and some severe hazards, etc. But if you move up a couple decks, I think it's actually very playable for a typical high handicap resort guest (and this is a credit because it was exactly this dual purpose the course was meant for--it was meant to host a match play tournament for the best in the world, and also be a resort course).

The resort player will see a course with wide fairways, so even many a wayward drive isn't necessarily doomed to finding the desert, and very big greens. While the severity of those greens makes shooting low tough for scratch player, they aren't severe to the point where a resort guest is likely to be putting off them. They will assuredly have some three putts, but a high handicapper can do that on flat greens, too. There are severe areas wher you just do not want to be on the course, certainly.

There are some really deep bunkers, a water hazard, and a few holes with the requirement of crossing a desert wash to reach the green. And yet again on the holes with severe bunkering, there are always routes a lesser player could take around, less desirable maybe, but that's golf. As for the carries over desert washes, none are severely long and none of them really immediately abut the green. The wash in front of 18 green is probably the closest to the front of the green and I'd say there's still a good 30 yards of fairway over the wash before the green. The wash on 10 may be closer to the surface but that one has been cleaned out and plays more like a waste bunker than "desert."

The effect of all that is to make a shot look demanding, but still not necessarily result in a huge number of lost balls for a golfer who isn't hitting the ball great.

Compare all this to the other Nicklaus course in the area, La Paloma, which is a private/resort course and is demanding in the extreme. Nearly every hole features a forced carry over desert to the green and there are many fewer forgiving angles for a lesser player to bail out. The course was built in 1984 and, to me, almost typifies the way a Nicklaus design of the period seemed to ignore that vanishingly few golfers had the high soft iron game that Mr. Nicklaus possessed. Without that ability, everyone is going to struggle around that course. And that one, again, is a resort course. It's one thing for him to have built an absolute beast of a course for the private clientele of Desert Highlands or Desert Mountain up in Phoenix ... but La Paloma was presumably built for a different clientele being part of a resort. That's where I see the most growth in Nicklaus designs.