Six decades ago, Jack Nicklaus bet on a Columbus-area golf idea born of passion and prestige

DUBLIN, Ohio — Jack Nicklaus was adamant. The Golden Bear, who was Mr. Money-on-Sunday long before becoming “Mr. Nicklaus,” insisted he gambled on golf only once during his career.

“My one and only wager I made in the game,” the Memorial Tournament host said Tuesday during an hour-long media session … Hour long. No one does news conferences better than Jack.

“I was 20 years old, playing in the (1960) U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, and my dad came up to me and said, ‘Jack … you’re 35 to 1. Do you want some of that?’

Did he ever.

“Dad, I’ll take $20 of that,” Nicklaus said. “I’m an amateur now, this is June and I’m getting married in July. So I took $20. Dad said, ‘Do you want to win, place or show?’ I said, ‘I’m not here for place or show.’ ”

The story ends with a Nicklaus life lesson, which loosely translates to “Better to bet on your golf course dream than on your short game.”

“I’m coming down the stretch (leading) the U.S. Open. I’m thinking about the $700 I might make to start our marriage,” he said. “Well, I didn’t win, so I didn’t get the $700. I lost the $20, my one and only bet in golf.”

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But not his last bet on golf. Upper Arlington’s most famous son may have lost money on the fairways and greens outside of Denver, but off the course he took a gamble on an inspired vision six decades ago that turned Dublin into a destination for both golf and living.

If not for Nicklaus deciding to pay back Columbus for how well it treated him while growing up, the 8,000 or so residents of Muirfield Village likely would be living elsewhere. Because there would be no Muirfield Village.

Then again, there almost wasn’t one in the first place. More on that momentarily.

The history of Muirfield Village and its world-renowned golf course, which Golfweek last month ranked No. 12 among U.S. courses built since 1960, is a story of passion, and power. In the early 1960s, Nicklaus had both. Still in his mid-20s, a chubbier version of the soon svelte Bear-to-be listened to his heart and heard it beating for Columbus.

“We started out to do a tournament for the central Ohio area, to bring golf back here to a place where I was supported as a youngster, to thank them for all that they did for my life,” Nicklaus said. “And part of that was I wanted to bring first-class golf here.”

But first he needed a first-class golf course to bait the hook so peers on the PGA Tour would get caught up in what Nicklaus was building.

I asked Nicklaus if it mattered whether his new endeavor was a start-from-scratch project or if he might have considered his boyhood course, Scioto Country Club, as site for what came to be known as the Memorial.

“No, Scioto was not equipped to do this, to start with,” he said. “Scioto is a wonderful golf course, and I grew up there.”

But Jack had other plans. Bigger plans.

“You’ve known me long enough. Nothing exceeds my expectations,” he said.

Nicklaus then laid out in detail how Muirfield Village Golf Club came to be. Vision-casting with fellow Upper Arlington graduate Ivor Young during off-hours at the 1966 Masters, the two friends talked of bringing a Masters Lite tournament to Columbus. Young, who worked in real estate, found nearly a dozen pieces of property for Nicklaus to consider.

“The first piece of property I looked at was right here,” Nicklaus said, approximating how the project began with the purchase of about 100 acres, then a second 100 and then 1,100 bought from a group in Cincinnati, which added land where holes 11, 12, 14 and 15 sit.

More land was purchased, prompting Nicklaus to wonder, “What do we want to do with this?”

The answer turned out to be the Muirfield Village residential piece. But truth be told, Nicklaus was not keen on the idea of homes surrounding his undulating, bouncy grass-covered baby.

“If I’d have had my druthers, I probably wouldn’t have had housing,” he said. “But you couldn’t possibly financially do it without it.”

So there you go, an upscale community birthed out of monetary necessity. The 82-year-old Nicklaus and his wife, Barbara, are scheduled for a short meet-and-greet Saturday with 91-year-old Chuck Nitschke and 93-year-old Jim Bassett, who developed and designed Muirfield Village in the late 1960s. (The first Memorial Tournament arrived in 1976). It’s a safe bet that none of the four could have predicted how 1,200 acres of farmland and forest would turn into a golf Shangri-La.

Rickie Fowler and his group walk down the fairway on the 1st hole during the Workday Golden Bear Pro-Am ahead of the 2022 Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. (Photo: Kyle Robertson/Columbus Dispatch)

Has there been occasional trouble in paradise? Of course. Show me a membership group and community association without sin, and I’ll show you heaven. But to hear Nicklaus tell it, his goal was to give and not receive.

“I structured a deal with the membership that they had from 1974 until 2004 to buy the golf course back from me at the amount that I had in the land ($445,000). So they bought it back. That was back in the day when the Japanese were offering $100 million and $200 million for golf courses, and I said, ‘No thank you. This is not going anywhere; it’s staying right here.’ ”

Nicklaus said he also structured things so “Jack Nicklaus couldn’t make a profit from this. That’s why I sold the club for what I did and didn’t get into the development. I didn’t want (my contemporaries) coming up here and saying, ‘Look, Jack is profiting off us.’ So I can honestly open my mouth to the guys that I played golf against and say, ‘Jack Nicklaus never got a penny.’ ”

You can critique Nicklaus for being too outspoken with his politics, too trusting in his business dealings and sometimes too quick to needle, but you cannot say he lacks generosity or pouts in defeat. He is golf’s greatest champion and one of the game’s most genuinely charitable givers, raising millions for Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Florida. The man, and his Memorial at Muirfield Village Golf Club, have graciously passed the test of time.

The bet paid off.