by Jeff Skinner
It’s Memorial Week on the PGA Tour and that means a trip to Jack Nicklaus territory and his beloved and meticulously crafted Muirfield Village Golf Club. Since it is Jack’s place we get to hear from The Greatest of All Time and I’m glad to see I’m not the only one with a man-crush on The Golden Bear. 
Rex Hoggard of The Golf Channel thinks that while Jack’s 18 majors is the defining accomplishment of his career The Memorial Tournament comes in a close second. Officially, Nicklaus has five children and 22 grandchildren, but Muirfield Village has been every bit his progeny. Throughout the years, the Golden Bear has tinkered and tweaked the layout to improve and change with the times.
He talks about how the course has changed to accommodate the longer ball but The Memorial was meant to be more than just a golf tournament. The one thing that hasn’t changed throughout the decades is Nicklaus’ vision for his tournament, which ranks just below the majors and World Golf Championships on the Tour dance card.
Much like he did throughout his legendary career, Nicklaus has always had a good handle on what he wanted his tournament, and his golf course, to be – nothing more, nothing less.
“We positioned ourselves to try to be a service to the game of golf, no different than what Augusta started out to do,” Nicklaus said. “That was sort of my guiding light to what I wanted to do.”
Gary Williams of The Morning Drive spent a few minutes with Nicklaus and it’s easy to see that like most of us Gary is a Nicklaus groupie also.
He and Jack share a few laughs and he gets Nicklaus to talk about how it got the idea to bring a Masters-like tournament to Ohio.
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