Richard Youngscap

Honored in 1997

Dick Youngscap didn't hold a golf club in his hands until he was thirty. And ten years after earning his degree in architecture from the University of Nebraska when Dick began building homes in Southeast Lincoln he had absolutely no plans to build a golf course.

Yet tonight Dick Youngscap is being honored as the 1997 recipient of the Dr. Herbert H. Davis Memorial Award for his leadership role in the development of two of Nebraska's finest golfing facilities the Firethorn Golf Club in Lincoln and the Sand Hills Golf Club near Mullen.

"In 1965 I had a chance to buy 16 acres of land which is now adjacent to the 11th fairway at Firethorn, " Youngscap recalls, "My sole motivation as an architect was to preserve some beautiful land from high density urban development. I was disturbed by those who were bulldozing tracts of land flat and then building houses right next to one another. '

Later Dick formed a partnership and bought additional acres next to the original parcel. "It was after that when Dick Spangler suggested that if I wanted to preserve some open space, I ought to build a golf course. " Youngscap recalled.

"Such an idea had never entered my mind, but I decided to at least explore the possibility. I got a list of the members of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Back then their were just six names listed. The only two I'd ever heard of were Jack Nicklaus and Robert Trent Jones.

Youngscap says that from the other four he picked the name Pete Dye and contacted him in 1982.

"I didn't know he was the No. 1 man," Dick admits, "but he gave me a lot of attention and after we got involved I quickly realized why he was so highly regarded.'