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With Jack Nicklaus leading the design efforts, Valhalla Golf Club has evolved into a true major championship venue.(Photo: The PGA of America)

By Jody Demling, Special to PGA.com

Building a course for the world's best players has been an ambition since Valhalla Golf Club's humble beginnings.

It all started on a rainy Saturday afternoon in the late 1970s.

Sitting in his Kitchen Kompact offices in nearby Jeffersonville (Ind.), with his son, Louisville (Ky.) businessman Dwight Gahm was bemoaning his inability to get out on his regular country club at any time without having to scramble for a starting time.

And then it dawned on him.

Gahm owned 486 acres of property in the eastern part of Jefferson County. Louisville needed an upscale golf course and the land would be perfect for it.

"We had been saying, 'What can we do with the damn place?'" recalls Gahm, who was with his oldest son, Walt, on the rainy day.

Most of the property the Gahm family owned once was a quarter-horse farm and another segment housed a Boy Scout camp.

Aproposed development for the land once included some 2,200 housing units, various commercial properties and a very nondescript golf course. Those plans went awry when an easement for power lines was increased.

So, Gahm thought some more about his new plan. Not long after that gloomy day, the Gahms got in touch with Jack Nicklaus and the ball started to roll on what would eventually become Valhalla Golf Club.

Opened in 1986, the Nicklaus-designed course has become a popular venue. The PGA of America, which now owns the club, has visited Valhalla to play a pair of PGA Championships, a Senior PGA Championship and what is now the PGA Professional National Championship.

Now the course Gahm built "just to be able to play," will be the center of the golf world's attention again, this time for the 37th Ryder Cup.

"It's kind of an unimaginable dream," said Walt Gahm about Valhalla, a course named after the great hall in Norse mythology in which the souls of slain warriors were enshrined.

Added Dwight Gahm, who, at age 88, doesn't play as much as he used to: "All we knew is that we wanted a golf course that would be enjoyable to play. There's been a hell of a lot going on between then and now. I guess we just got lucky."

And to think, it all started on a rainy day. Dwight Gahm took on the project with the help of all three of his sons -- Walt, Gordy and Phil.

"He likes to tell the story and always talks about being lucky," said Mike Montague, the only general manager in Valhalla's history. "But I like to think about the old adage that the harder you work, the luckier you get."

Dwight Gahm likes to say his lucky streak started with getting Nicklaus to design the course, but many around the family patriarch point to well before that decision.

And it was mostly hard work, not luck, involved. Aproud and persistent man, Gahm moved to Louisville from Portsmouth, Ohio, as a 16-year-old kid in 1934. He started carrying a few bags around the golf course at age 8 and would use his earnings to pay for his round later in the day.

After graduating from Male High School, Gahm earned a football scholarship at Indiana University. He was the center and linebacker and was named the Hoosiers' most valuable player for the 1940 season.

After getting out of the Army, Gahm ran a successful diaper service back in the early '50s. He then sold his interests to a partner and in 1955 bought Kitchen Kompact, at the time a small manufacturer of kitchen cabinets. When Gahm made the purchase, Kitchen Kompact was manufacturing 20,000 cabinets with annual gross sales of $300,000. He has transformed the company into one of the nation's top producers of kitchen cabinets with estimated annual sales of $84 million.

So, the Gahm family was used to success.

The golf course venture was going to be tougher. The first hurdle to get over was trying to land Nicklaus as the designer.

"We knew you don't just pick up the phone and talk to Jack Nicklaus," Dwight Gahm would say later. "I'm sure he'd say, 'Who the hell is this?'"

But the family had a connection. Phil Gahm played football at Purdue University with former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese. He was a friend of Nicklaus and got a message to the Golden Bear at the PGA Tour's Doral Open in Miami.

Afew days later, Nicklaus called.

"Can we do a tournament here and do a PGA Championship on it? That was the first day I was on the property," Nicklaus said of the expectations that Gahm had for the course. "I said, 'Dwight, I think that we can do it.'"

And they did. It was almost eight years from the initial contact with Nicklaus, but the first dirt was moved in 1984 and around 100 members were signed up when Nicklaus hit the first shot on the course in '86.

"Jack did a hell of a job for us," Dwight said. "He made it perfect for us. I told Jack to take all the land he needed. I wasn't interested in building homes unless I was going broke. I told him, 'If I'm going broke, then I will sell.'"

Nicklaus liked the terrain. There were some hills in the area and he initially said "it has a lot of potential."

During the construction process, Nicklaus made upward of 10 trips to the site. But Dwight Gahm tried to keep his hands off.

"Dad's concept was that he wasn't going to tell Jack what to do," Walt Gahm told The Louisville Courier-Journal in 1996. "It was like, 'You don't tell me how to make kitchen cabinets and I won't tell you how to design golf courses.' But the three boys, we would always try to get our two cents in. And then the old man would look over and give us a dirty look, so that was where we'd stop."

Now the Gahm family had a course that was receiving the praise normally accorded to the best tracks in the nation. It was honored as one of the top new courses in the entire country in 1987.

So what about that tournament Gahm wanted to have? Montague recalls a meeting not long after the course had opened when one of the sons asked about holding an event, perhaps a U.S. Open or PGA Championship.

"We said, 'Oh, OK,'" Montague said. "We went back to the office and sent a letter to the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. The U.S. Open said, 'We're not interested,' and the PGA Championship said, 'We'll talk to you.'"

The courtship lasted several years, including the Valhalla contingent sending Louisville Slugger bats along with the slogan, "Bring the PGA Championship to Louisville and you will hit a home run," to every PGA of America board member.

Jim Awtrey, then the chief executive officer of The PGA of America, visited the city for the 1992 Kentucky Derby and later that year, Valhalla was awarded the 1996 PGA Championship.

But the plot thickened in 1993. As Gahm and Awtrey walked the course one afternoon, Awtrey asked if Gahm might be interested in a permanent relationship with the organization. The club's membership approved the deal in late 1994 and The PGA took over 25 percent of the club.

It was the first course The PGA had ever invested in, with the Association assuming 50 percent ownership after the '96 PGA Championship. In 2000, The PGA exercised its rights to purchase the remaining interest in Valhalla.

"A marriage made in heaven," Gahm said at the time.

"Valhalla is an ideal place for major championships," said Awtrey, who retired from The PGA in 2005. "It has been an ideal relationship for The PGA of America."

Valhalla has come a long way from the quarter-horse farm, which Dwight Gahm said came with "an old cowboy and a few horses."

"How in the world could anything like this happen?" Dwight asks. "It really has been a miracle for us."

Jody Demling covers golf for The Louisville Courier-Journal. This story appears courtesy of the 37th Ryder Cup Official Journal.