That quote was enough to gag a dog. While R.T. Jones Sr. was the Typhoid Mary of golf architecture, Jack Nicklaus was the AIDS virus. Over the many years, I have played and rated 29 Nicklaus courses and with one lone exception (Mayacama), they are indulgent, arrogant and abusive towards the average player. The New Course at Grand Cypress doesn’t count because Jack was trying to build a homage St. Andrews - although even his Road Hole has a bias to the high cut.
If I want to be horsewhipped, there are plenty of S&M bars all over San Francisco. Given the popularity of Nicklaus courses, there must be an insatiable demand for self-flagellation, where middle-handicappers stand in line to pay 200 bucks a fuck to have the greatest player who ever lived urinate on them 18 times in a row. Last time I endured Pasadera, we played behind a group of cigar-smoking 30-something imbeciles who insisted on “playing the whole golf course” - which meant a six hour round in a hurricane where not one of them broke 100.
Naturally, because I’m a snarky prick, I asked them in the bar how they liked the course and their rousing endorsement cemented my view that nobody ought to play from the back tees unless they can show a handicap card of five or less. Even a five handicap is iffy. Dove Mountain was the final straw - after which I announced my retirement from electroshock therapy on my 55 year-old testicles.
The event is called “Golf ‘Till You Drop” - the object being to play as much golf in 2 1/2 days as possible. The venue moves every year and my coterie and I normally average 45 holes a day, stopping only for beer and a sandwich between rounds. At Dove Mountain - and we do not suck in the skill department - after 27 holes everybody looked like abused dogs in an animal rescue shelter. If reasonably good players are exhausted and frustrated from the 6500 yard tees, who did Jack think was going to play this golf course? Yes, there was a PGA Tour event there, but what about the other 99.99% of the rounds?
We can all thank C&C, Doak, Eckenrode, DeVries, Neal and the rest for helping chase the creature back into the lagoon where he belongs. Maybe the economic downturn of golf will force some sanity back into the game. I don’t want to hear any bullshit about owner expectations and demands, Emperor Tommy and I went out to Rustic Canyon late yesterday and nobody is going to tell me top quality golf cannot be obtained for a fraction of the usual wasteful madness.
The Superintendent (who does a fabulous job) uses almost zero chemicals and a bare minimum of water. The place makes money hand-over-fist with green fees so cheap I thought the pro shop was being nice to me because I’m a rater (I never accept freebies on cheap public tracks). For $39 I had an absolute blast. The whole mess mirrors what is happening in my other life. Studios cannot even imagine a legitimate feature film like ours made for less than eight figures - yet indie filmmakers consistently produce terrific movies for a fraction of the cost.
Yes, land costs vary - but I stumbled across one of the best courses I’ve played in years (Ridge Creek- John Fought) in the middle of downtown Dinuba. For $46, I played a wonderfully creative golf course that could easily hold its own in Bandon. Not hyperbole, I mean that - yet construction costs were modest and the place turns a healthy profit for Kemper every year. Given the same piece of land, can you imagine what kind of monstrous bucket of phlegm Jack or (shudder) Rees would have coughed up?
Jack, Rees and Fazio (although his courses are not generally too difficult for the average player) richly deserve the firehose of criticism they get for turning golf back into a rich man’s sport. Like everything else, the market is starting to correct itself - and perhaps the current generation will have the opportunity to remodel all these indulgent disasters into courses that serve the game instead of designer egos.