Stars come out to play the course that Jacko built
No woNder Tony Jacklin is feeling an immense sense of pride as he contemplates this week’s wGC-workday Championship in Bradenton, Florida, featuring 48 of the world’s top 50.
The event will take place at The Concession, a course the englishman not only conceived but designed in tandem with his great friend, Jack Nicklaus. Now it will be tested for the first time by the best of the modern generation, with the likes of dustin Johnson, rory McIlroy, Bryson deChambeau and Tyrrell Hatton all heading to town.
‘It’s going to be fascinating to see how they get on,’ says the 76-year-old former open and US open champion, who lives just 40 minutes from the front entrance. ‘It’s a heck of a difficult golf course, and they can make it as long as they want. I know Jon rahm played it recently and went round in 65 but if we get a bit of wind, you are going to see a lot of disappointed fellas come Sunday.’
Jacklin’s imprint is such that the road leading to the course is Lindrick Lane, after the golf club where Britain and Ireland won the ryder Cup in 1957, the first he attended and where he fell in love with the game.
‘It was in 2001 when I had the idea of a club called The Concession,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘The three-foot putt that Nicklaus conceded to me so the ryder Cup was halved in 1969 at Birkdale was, to my mind, the greatest sporting gesture of all time and it left a huge mark on the game. why not have a course to commemorate it?’
Golf geeks such as McIlroy will certainly get a kick walking through the impressive clubhouse, filled with sepia-tinted photographs recalling that historic occasion. ‘That’s all down to the owner, Bruce Cassidy, who has thrown everything at the club to make it a world-class facility,’ adds Jacklin. ‘The members joke the club should be renamed The obsession. There’s a $2million budget to maintain it. I took Bruce to Augusta a few years ago. He came away less impressed than he is with his own venue.’
The chance to host the first event of what promises to be a glorious month-long Florida swing came about owing to the pandemic. The usual venue for this world Golf Championship event is in Mexico but asking players to travel overseas made no sense in the current climate.
Cassidy, who had been looking to bring the tour circus to town for a while, jumped at the chance to step in. ‘I’m thrilled for Bruce because he’s pulled out all the stops,’ says Jacklin. ‘There’s a great sense of pride for myself in seeing the course recognised to this extent. we’ve come a long way in 20 years. There’s a limited crowd of 1,000 people a day. It will be a fabulous way to kickstart all the wonderful golf leading up to the Masters.’
He is surely right about that. right around the corner is the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Players Championship and the wGC-Match Play. It all kicks off on Thursday at the course that Jacko built.