Dear Hugh,
I'd never heard before that Jack Nicklaus was color blind. There are a number of forms of color blindness, so I will assume he cannot see any color at all and sees the world solely in shades of gray. [Total color blindness is extremely rare; the most common form of color blindness is red-green, meaning the person has difficulty distinguishing hues and shades of reds, greens, oranges, and yellows.]
If that is the case, total color blindness may be a help in golf, at least in some ways. Color vision is a late entry in evolution, and seems to be an add-on on top of a more basic, primitive colorless vision that relies primarily upon brightness contrast and motion. Black-and-white, stick-figure, uncomplicated visual appreciation of space and targets and objects in space is a good thing for targeting and movement accuracy. Colors add a great deal of visual information that usually relates more to the "what" of an object rather than to the "where," and often when the color relates to "where" it is for the purpose of camoflauging the "where" instead of revealing the "where."
Colors help in assessing boundaries when the boundaries have sharp opponent colors with significant contrast, such as red and green or yellow and blue. The natural world, however, is mostly a blend of blues and greens in vegetation, sky, and water, with some red-yellow in rock and sand. The peak receptivity of human eyes is usually in the green wavelength. This is because we live in a world where this is the most useful wavelength to perceive. Blues are a little difficult to see accurately, and can tend to stress the eyes' chemistry. Hence, golf sunglasses are cinnamon hued (redddish-brown) to filter out the sky blues and water glares. These glasses can make green surface perception a little better throughout a round.
The main contrast on a golf course is between sand and grass. The contrast between fairway and rough or fringe and green is not pronounced in terms of hue or brightness contrast.
Flower colors may help with distance and location (the white azelea 10 yards short of the OB stake in the shadows of the trees), and some colors help with the firmness of the surface (lush greens versus straw-dry greens). In terms of depth perception and distance perception and surface contour perception on a green, the main cue is slant detection from texture-detail gradient change, as in a checker board tilted up to the face or down away from level. I would imagine that a person habituated to a world without color would not especially miss color cues in reading a green.
The brute fact seems to be that we could get along quite well without any color at all, and indeed there persists in the brain a fundamental monochromatic grayscale system for perceiving objects and motion.
I wouldn't bet against a longterm colorblind golfer in a match against a color-sighted golfer just on that ground, and I wouldn't expect much performance difference due to this visual difference.
But it's an interesting question, and I'd like to know more, so I'll look around.
Cheers!
Geoff Mangum
Putting Theorist and Instructor
Geoff Mangum's PuttingZone
Golf's most advanced and comprehensive putting instruction.
Over 755,000 visits and growing strong ...
518 Woodlawn Ave
Greensboro NC 27401
336.230.0612 home
