When it comes to Will Nicholson Jr., and the impact he’s had on golf both in Colorado and nationally, perhaps Dow Finsterwald said it best.
“Over my 60 years around the game of golf, both as an amateur and a professional, I firmly believe Will is one of maybe five people who have given the most to the sport while not actually playing,” said Finsterwald, the 1958 PGA Championship winner and a former longtime director of golf at the Broadmoor Golf Club.
And on Tuesday, all that giving back to the game of golf
resulted in Nicholson being voted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. The lifelong Colorado resident, who has volunteered countless hours to golf over the last four decades, will be inducted — along with five others — on April 10 at the Marriott City Center in Denver.
The other 2012 inductees will be former Colorado Avalanche star Peter Forsberg, former Colorado Rapids and USA World Cup soccer player Marcelo Balboa, former Boulder High School and Denver Nuggets basketball player Glen Gondrezick, ex-Colorado State football All-American Greg Myers, and longtime basketball coach Frank Carbajal, an all-conference basketball and baseball player at Northern Colorado.
“Obviously I’m honored to join all those people” in the Sports Hall of Fame, Nicholson said Tuesday. “It’s a great tribute to golf.”
The induction will be a busy time for Nicholson. It will come just two days after the conclusion of the Masters, where Nicholson has played such a key role during his 30 years as a member at Augusta National Golf Club. As chairman of the Competition Committee from 1992 through 2006 — and a prominent authority on the Rules of Golf — Nicholson was responsible for setting up the course for the Masters.
As John Feinstein wrote in his 1999 book, “The Majors”, “… Nicholson runs the actual golf tournament, playing a major role in setting up tee locations and hole locations, putting together Thursday’s pairings, dealing with problems as they come up during the week, and overseeing changes in the course from year to year.”
Nicholson also was chairman of the Masters Rules Committee for 17 years, starting in 1989.
And though he doesn’t play as prominent a role at the Masters anymore, the first major of the year remains a fixture on his calendar. Next spring, he’ll probably return home from Augusta on Monday, April 9, then attend his induction the next day.
The work Nicholson has done at the Masters is but one of many roles he’s volunteered his time for over the years:
— The highest-profile position he ever took on was as president of the USGA in 1980 and 1981, which culminated his 11-year run on the USGA Executive Committee. Nicholson is one of just three Coloradans who have held the USGA presidency since the position was established in 1894 — Frank Woodward of Denver (1915-16), Nicholson and Judy Bell of Colorado Springs (1996-97).
— In Colorado, Nicholson has served on the CGA Board of Governors since 1973, and he was part of the board that helped make the CGA/CWGA-owned CommonGround Golf Course become a reality. He’s also played key roles in many prominent tournaments that have been held in Colorado, including the PGA Tour’s International, which was contested at Castle Pines Golf Club from 1986 through 2006. When Denver Country Club hosted the USGA’s Curtis Cup Matches in 1982, Nicholson was the general chairman. He’s long been a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, as was his father, former Denver mayor Will Nicholson Sr.
— Nicholson captained the U.S. squad at the 1984 World Amateur Team Championship.
— Since the late 1980s, Nicholson has been a member of the Captain’s Club for Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament. That club also includes such prominent individuals as Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Sean Connery, George H.W. Bush and Bell.
“I learned early on in my life if you have something you enjoy and you’re successful at, one of the obligations is to give back,” said Nicholson, a prominent banker (and onetime chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) who still goes into the office each day at age 82. “I’ve been around the game and wanted to give back the best I could. I’m a hacker as a player, but I could do things on the administrative end.”
Appropriately, a Nicholson Award has been given in recent years to honorees who have shown a lifetime of commitment and dedication to the game of golf. And it’s indicative of how highly Nicholson is regarded in golf that the four out-of-state recipients of the award — Palmer, Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Ben Crenshaw — have made time to come to Denver to receive the honor personally.
Said Crenshaw of Nicholson: “Not many people have been that devoted to the game in a lot of different capacities.”
