Hiring the best golf course designer means little if you don't hire construction people who can turn those visions, schematics and blueprints into living golf holes. Thus Governors Club and Jack Nicklaus brought Gus Grantham into play.

“He is a true artist in every sense of the word,” says John Copeland, course construction coordinator. “Some artists use a paint brush on canvas. Gus uses a bulldozer in the ground. There are a lot of operators, but there's a big a difference between an operator and a golf course shaper. Gus, in my opinion, would certainly rank as one of the top five golf course shapers in the country, or the world for that matter.”

They hollow out areas for grass bunkers, built elevated tees, shape the mounds in the greens, and place the rock walls that bulkhead streams and lakes. They know about quality golf courses, as Grantham and several of his crew mates have worked on many previous Nicklaus courses.

And they take tremendous pride in their work. “A lot of dozer operators in this line of work say you get to a certain point and you're at the max, you cannot improve any more,” Grantham says. “I don't feel that way. As long as you think you've got room to grow, you'll get better and better. I'd never like to be called the ‘best' at this or anything else. But if you're one of the best then you've got room to improve.”

Grantham now lives in South East Asia, along with the rest of his crew members. He'd been operating bulldozer on road jobs in '82 when a friend mentioned he knew of a golf course builder in the area who needed some help. One thing led to another and soon Grantham was bitten by a golf (construction) bug.

“One road looks pretty much like another,” Grantham says. “There's not a lot to it. But a golf course is a whole different thing. You might have a ridge, and the architect will ask you to work the ridge, to add a little character to it. That's more interesting to me”.

“I enjoy it. It's like anything else. I guess you do something for a while and it get in your blood.”