Intending to follow in his pharmacist father’s professional footsteps, Jack Nicklaus enrolled in the Ohio State University’s pre-pharmacy program, but he never finished his undergraduate degree. After twice winning the U.S. Amateur during his college days, Nicklaus left Ohio State in 1961 and turned professional in order to support his young family. Nicklaus promptly usurped golf’s reigning king, Arnold Palmer, the following spring in the U.S. Open, and the rest, as they say, is history — for sports and his “almost” alma mater.
Ohio State conferred an honorary doctorate on Nicklaus in 1972. Then, in 2002, the university visibly enhanced his campus profile more with an even more remarkable accolade — an entire museum dedicated to Nicklaus’s many accomplishments on and off the links. Located in Ohio State’s athletic complex, the Jack Nicklaus Museum provides a decade-by-decade memoir of the world-famous golfer as a family man, sportsman, businessman, and philanthropist.
Exhibits range from his high school letter sweater and a reconstruction of the Nicklaus family room to a Masters “green jacket” and the “Golfer of the Century” statue awarded Nicklaus during a 1988 ceremony.
