Jack Nicklaus won 18 career major championships on the PGA Tour over a span of 24 years and is widely regarded as the greatest professional golfer of all time. At 71 years old, he still maintains a highly successful golf course design business and active promotional schedule such as his recent appearance at a tournament sponsored by Vince Gill to benefit junior golf in Tennessee.
Despite all of his success, Jack Nicklaus is deeply worried about the game he loves. “Since 2006, we’ve lost 20 percent of the women in the game and we’ve lost 20 percent of the juniors in the game,” Nicklaus said. “If you’re the CEO of a corporation and have those numbers, you say, ‘What do I do?’ The professional game is great. The showcase is great. But is the showcase bringing people into the game, or is it running them out of the game? It’s a good question.”
The new technological advances in equipment, in golf balls, have forced developers to build longer golf courses. When members at local clubs want to host a PGA Tour event now, they have to put their back tees in another county. Or so it seems.
The 7,000-plus yard courses intimidate the average golfer, and they are the lifeline of the industry. If you run all of them out of the game, there are not enough single handicap golfers to support even the smallest of clubs.
Not only are the longer courses intimidating, they result in longer rounds. It’s difficult to play a round today in under four hours. Charity tournaments with full fields can run as long as six hours a round.
Nicklaus talked to PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem about the problem, telling Finchem that every sport you play can be played in two, maybe three hours. Except a round of golf.
“The kids are all playing soccer or lacrosse or basketball.’’
Looking forward, Nicklaus believes cutting a round of golf to 12 holes would be more palatable for golfers who don’t want to make it a day-long process.
He tossed the idea past Finchem, who pooh-poohed it six or seven months ago. Finchem talked to Nicklaus at the Masters this year, and Nicklaus said Finchem is starting to consider the idea.
At two of Nicklaus’ courses — Muirfield and the Bear’s Club — he had them make up 12-hole scorecards.
“My seniors are loving it,” he said. “The game is so difficult to start with. You take kids. They start basketball at a 6-foot hoop, 7-foot hoop, small ball, big ball…. All the sports work their selves up. In golf, you start with a set of clubs and a hard golf ball and it’s not easy.
“It’s the health of the game, the growth of the game, keeping people in the game, that I’m interested in.”
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