Sebonack Golf Club, the highly acclaimed collaboration between Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak, officially opens today in Southampton, N.Y.
It was in 1969 when a young Jack Nicklaus, seven years into his meteoric rise to fame in professional golf, matched up with an up-and-coming course designer name Pete Dye to create Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C. That was, in essence, the beginning of Nicklaus Design. Now the irony moves up the East Coast to the famous zip code that belongs to some of golf’s most venerable layouts. Making room and a name for itself is Sebonack Golf Club—the 300th Nicklaus Design golf course to open worldwide, and fitting, the collaboration of Jack Nicklaus and another up-and-coming designer in Tom Doak.
Situated on 300 majestic waterfront acres in Southampton, N.Y., and neighboring the historic National Golf Links of America and Shinnecock Hills Golf Course, Sebonack is being celebrated as one of the most anticipated and innovative course designs to be unveiled in years. Sebonack opened to member play on Memorial Day weekend and in the three months since has received rave reviews. Today, the course designers, along with owner Michael Pascucci, will play a grand opening round that will be followed by a press conference moderated by National Sportscaster of the Year winner Jim Nantz of CBS.
"I always look forward to the day I officially open a golf course, and this one is particularly special to me," Nicklaus said. "Not only is it a milestone for our company, with it being Nicklaus Design’s 300th golf course to open, but it’s also a very unique project that I have immensely enjoyed being a part of the last couple of years.
"It’s funny when I think back to my first golf course, Harbour Town. Pete Dye and I had known each other for years and had played amateur golf against each other, but we had never worked together. I think during the design of Harbour Town, we learned a lot from each other. Now 37 or so years later, I think the same could be said about Tom and me. I am always interested in other people’s ideas and what I might glean from them. The Sebonack project has impacted Tom and I in positive ways, and it was a very pleasant experience. We are very proud of the end product."
The end product at Sebonack features holes that offer sweeping panoramic views of Long Island’s Great Peconic Bay and Cold Spring Pond. The visual impact of the dominant water vistas competes for the golfer’s eye with the awe-inspiring contours of fairways, expansive bunkers and waste dunes, and undulating greens that present tricky swales and borrows. Meant to look as if manicured by time, Sebonack appears to have fashioned itself from the wild terrain.
Sebonack measures 7,220 yards from the back tees, plays to a par 72 and is a challenging but not intimidating golf course. Three other sets of tees test golfers with total yardages that range from 6,717 to 5,244. The par-5, 560-yard 18th, which runs along the bluff of Great Peconic Bay, may rate as one of golf’s more dramatic finishing holes. The par-4 11th is viewed by Nicklaus and Doak as one of the most beautiful of Sebonack’s holes, but one that has teeth to it and requires precision on both the tee shot and the downhill second shot.
"Both Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak have given Sebonack a lot of their attention and time," said Michael Pascucci, Sebonack’s owner. "My goal in securing this extraordinary alliance of experience and talent was to get the best 18 holes out of this piece of land as possible. What I had hoped for was to have Tom’s minimalist style successfully mesh with Jack’s strategic mind as the greatest golfer ever and one of the game’s finest designers, in order to result in a course of beauty and a pure test of golf skills. I believe we have achieved something very special with Sebonack."
Since the Sebonack opening at the end May, Nicklaus Design has opened four additional courses. Of the 304 golf courses open for play at this time, Jack Nicklaus has been involved in 250 of those, including 208 solo designs, 30 co-designs and 12 re-designs. Nicklaus Design is represented in 29 countries and 38 states, and has 47 courses that have been ranked in various national and international Top-100 lists. Nicklaus Design currently has more than 50 courses under construction and projects under development in 32 different countries.
For this press release and additional information on Jack Nicklaus or Nicklaus Design, please visit www.nicklaus.com.
Contact:
On Course Strategies
Pat Norton/Jane Dally
Tel: (203) 454-0232
info@oncoursegolf-pr.com
Nicklaus Design/Nicklaus Companies
Scott Tolley
Director of Communications
11780 U.S. Highway #1, Suite 500
North Palm Beach, FL. 33408
Tel: 561-227-0300
Fax: 561-227-0351
scott.tolley@nicklaus.com
