So much of the JN work for me is dependent on the designer.
This is what I'm afraid of I guess. Nicklaus Designed Courses and two of the first comments are like the one above by Mike.
To me Nicklaus Designed courses means, courses that he actually designed.
I'm not saying JN doesn't have input but I do think his style evolved or changed as his designers changed. IMHO he probably knows more about the design business than any of the other pros involved but I also think he had to rely heavily on his designer...
As does a modern day Tom Doak.
I'll disagree there.
I've had a bunch of talented associates, and I wouldn't trade the ones I have now for anybody. I give them a lot of leeway to shape cool stuff, and I rely on them to keep things moving forward productively when I'm away. And I think I've given them more credit publicly than other designers do ... just look for the names of Jack's associates on the Nicklaus Design web site.
But, sorry, I don't see my associates as the "designers" of my courses.
It's not like I have ever done 25-30 courses a year. I've done two or three a year, and spent 25-30 days on each of them, which is plenty of time to play around with every green and okay or change the bunkers. And we've never done a course where the routing wasn't mostly done by me personally. So, I'm not calling them "my" designs just because I sign the checks. If I just intended to turn most of the design work over to my staff, we'd have been doing a lot more projects per year than we have done.