Nelson: AAC is A-OK

Three-time major golf champion Larry Nelson likes what they have done to the place at Atlanta Athletic Club.

It has been 30 years since Nelson won the PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club (AAC), and he plans to test the Highland Course there Aug. 11-14 when the PGA Championship returns to the AAC. Nelson has sent in his entry (all former PGA Championship winners are eligible), partly because his sons encouraged him to do so. No wonder, then, why Nelson recently paid a visit to AAC to check it out.

Nelson told me today that Ken Mangum, CGCS, director of golf courses and grounds at AAC and a 37-year GCSAA member, has done special things at the 7,467-yard par-70 golf course.

"Ken has done a terrific job," says Nelson, 63, a 2006 inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame. "What we're going to see is the Atlanta Athletic Club and Southern golf at its best in August."

AAC has changed quite a bit since Nelson won there in 1981. The grasses, including Diamond zoysia fairways, Tifton 10 bermuda rough and Champion ultradwarf bermuda greens, are a major difference. Renovations that were completed six years ago mean Nelson and David Toms, who won the 2001 PGA Championship at AAC, are in store for something different.

"Aesthetically, it is very pretty and will show up well on TV," says Nelson, who also won the 1983 U.S. Open and 1987 PGA Championship. "It's more open visually, but it will be tighter for the players. Players are going to be thrilled to play at a golf course that has so much bite."

Nelson has played in 10 events this year on the Champions Tour with one top 25 finish. He's overcome some medical issues in 2011 and likes the way he's striking the ball. His putting isn't in top form, but he is feeling good enough to be thinking about giving it his best shot at AAC.

"Right now, the way I feel, the golf course doesn't intimidate me," Nelson says.