Jack Nicklaus II

Jack Nicklaus II, born on 23 September 1961, is an American golf course architect. He is the eldest of the five children of Jack Nicklaus and his wife Barbara, and is known in golf by the nickname Jackie. He played on the golf team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and took a Bachelor of Arts there in 1985. In the same year he won the North and South Amateur, the long-established amateur championship played at Pinehurst, North Carolina.

He is remembered too for caddying for his father. The first time was in 1976, at fourteen, carrying the bag at the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale. The best known was the 1986 Masters, where he stood beside his 46-year-old father through the final round that brought him a sixth green jacket. As a player he competed on the PGA Tour and the European Tour, but never won on the PGA Tour.

He began designing in 1991 and has since become the central figure at his father’s firm, Nicklaus Design. He is its President today, a director of Nicklaus Companies, and general chairman of both the Memorial Tournament, which his father hosts, and Muirfield Village Golf Club. In 2000 Golfweek named him in its 40 Under 40. Among his solo designs, Arzaga Golf Club in Italy was named Best New Course in Italy in 1998 and Aspen Glen in Colorado took Golf Digest’s Best New Course award the same year, while Pinehills Golf Club in Massachusetts entered GOLF Magazine’s Top 100 You Can Play in 2006. His other work includes Superstition Mountain and Estrella Mountain Ranch in Arizona and The Legacy Golf Links at Pinehurst, North Carolina, and he is a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA).

The first course he designed in Asia was Bukit Darmo Golf at Surabaya in Indonesia. In Nicklaus Design’s own course notes he says, “Bukit Darmo is a special course for me because it was my first opportunity to design a course in Asia,” and of flat sites he adds that on flat land the architect is neither limited in his ideas nor pulled in a particular direction by the terrain.

Two of the courses listed on GoGolf involve him: Bukit Darmo Golf, and Forest City Golf Course Resort in Johor, Malaysia. The Legacy Course at Forest City was designed jointly with his father, Jack Nicklaus — eighteen holes threaded through the mangrove country along the Pulai river. Neither course is currently open for booking through GoGolf; both appear as information pages only.

Courses listed for information only

The following two courses are not currently open for booking through GoGolf. They appear on the site as information pages only.

• Bukit Darmo Golf (Surabaya, Indonesia) — opened 1995. The first course Nicklaus II designed in Asia
• Forest City Golf Course Resort (Johor, Malaysia) — the Legacy Course, designed with his father Jack Nicklaus. A layout that runs out through mangrove country

See the other golf course architects here.