Jack Nicklaus may have hailed from landlocked Columbus, Ohio, but his career has been tied to the
ocean from the very earliest days. While practicing for the 1961 U.S. Amateur
Championship he would go on to win, where Nicklaus first lost his heart to
coastal California and the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
Later, he would win the ’72 U.S. Open and three Crosby National Pro-Ams at
Pebble.
In his second career as a golf course architect, Nicklaus has
continually returned to the sea. Nicklaus returned to Pebble Beach in 1998 to design the course’s new
5th hole, an oceanfront par 3 to replace the inland one.
Nicklaus designed the spectacular Ocean Course at Cabo del
Sol and 27 equally stunning holes at Palmilla Resort, both on the Sea of Cortez
in Mexico. He has fashioned a number of
ocean courses in Hawaii. And, for almost four decades, Nicklaus
and his wife, Barbara, have lived in North Palm
Beach, Florida—a smooth 6-iron from
the Atlantic.
Another Nicklaus connection to the sea is Ocean Hammock Golf
Club, the new centerpiece of northeast Florida’s Palm Coast Resort. It features six
holes overlooking the Atlantic and is Florida’s first true oceanfront course in more
than 70 years.
Ocean Hammock features plenty of classic Nicklaus design
features: visually stimulating yet daunting par 4s to close each nine; a mix of
reachable yet demanding par 5s; and a variety of holes that dogleg left and
right, flow uphill and downhill, and play to greens both large and small. In
many ways, Ocean Hammock is a perfect resort layout—dramatic yet
player-friendly, visually explicit yet possessing plenty of options for
low-handicappers. And in general, the greens are far more soothing and playable
than the notoriously difficult putting surfaces drawn by Nicklaus in the mid
’80s.
