{"id":2145,"date":"2017-01-01T21:42:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T04:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2017-01-01T21:42:15","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T04:42:15","slug":"nick-saban-hits-the-course-during-the-offseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/golf\/courses-and-travel\/2145\/nick-saban-hits-the-course-during-the-offseason","title":{"rendered":"Nick Saban Hits the Course During the Offseason"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jerry

Jerry Pate’s Colony Club design in Bonita Springs, Floirda<\/p><\/div>\n

As the University of Alabama football team lines up for yet another run at a national title, one of the Crimson Tide\u2019s finest golfing alums, 1976 U.S. Open-champion Jerry Pate, still lines up putts and is on the line often with football coach Nick Saban.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick doesn\u2019t \u2018chit chat\u2019 a lot but I talk with him at least once a week. It\u2019s at about 7:10<\/span> in the morning. He\u2019s on a tight schedule,\u201d says Pate. \u201cI don\u2019t think Donald Trump\u2019s schedule would match Nick Saban\u2019s. Nick\u2019s schedule would dwarf any president\u2019s or CEO\u2019s schedule. He\u2019s the guy. I have never seen a person work so hard or be so focused and so deserving as Nick Saban. Friends will often text me to ask how the Alabama football team keeps winning. I answer with two words: \u2018Nick Saban.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Pate and Saban share a love of golf, but now they share friends from Lansing too. Saban used to be head coach at Michigan State.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick asked me to join him for golf down here in Tuscaloosa with MSU basketball coach Tom Izzo and trustee Joel Ferguson when they came in for Nick\u2019s daughter Chelsea\u2019s wedding. We had some laughs and now I have some new friends in Lansing and I am a big MSU fan,\u201d says Pate, who designed the home course of the Crimson Tide golf team and now lives in Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe call you folks who come down from Michigan \u2018blue tags.\u2019 We love to see \u2018blue tags\u2019 his Florida in the winter because it helps our economy,\u201d says Pate, who just renovated WCI\u2019s Colony Golf and Bay Club in Bonita Springs, an upscale, gated community now home to a growing number of Michigan transplants. \u201cI enjoyed working in Michigan for a while, too, when I built a course at Indianwood County Club in Lake Orion for Stan Aldridge. I renovated the old Wilfrid Reid-designed golf course and then Bob Cupp and I built the \u2018New Course\u2019 there. A couple of Women\u2019s U.S. Opens have been contested there and a Senior U.S. Open.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pate, won eight times on the PGA Tour, including a Canadian Open victory in the same summer as his U.S. Open triumph, and a win in the very first Players Championship held at the infamously difficult TPC Sawgrass near Jacksonville, designed by his mentor Pete Dye.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe players were testy all week because we\u2019d never seen a golf course that hard,\u201d recalls Pate, who, during the trophy ceremony on the 18th<\/sup> green, threw Dye and PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman over the greenside bulkhead and into the lake before jumping in himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Florida. There were gators in there,\u201d he now laughs.<\/p>\n

Pate won a U.S. Amateur and was a PGA Championship runner-up. He also has two Champions Tour titles. The Kiva Dunes resort course he designed in Gulf Shores, Alabama is also very popular, as is that beach destination for Michiganders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the University of Alabama football team lines up for yet another run at a national title, one of the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[94915,202,977361],"class_list":["post-2145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courses-and-travel","tag-golf-2","tag-football","tag-nick-saban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2017\/01\/Colony.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}