How the legend lives: See video of Shaq’s $1m pond surrounded by putting greens

A Bendigo landscaper has built a dream backyard for basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, with a $1m pond, waterfall and beach — surrounded by putting and chipping greens. Check it out.

A Bendigo landscaper has filled a tall order from Shaquille O’Neal, helping build a $1m mega pond, sand beach and waterfalls in the basketball legend’s U.S. backyard.

Daniel O’Callaghan was part of a team of contractors from America, Canada and Australia employed to create an “epic” water feature for Shaq — surrounded by golf putting and chipping greens — at the champ’s sprawling McDonough, Georgia, estate.

“Shaq absolutely loves it, he thinks it’s awesome,” Mr O’Callaghan, 38, told the Herald Sun on Friday.

Known for his striking, large scale and natural looking water features, the landscaper — who is based in the Bendigo and Castlemaine area of central Victoria — was asked to be part of a 30-strong crew to work on the pond project by Aquascape, a leading manufacturer of pumps and filtration systems.

Daniel O'Callaghan and Shaquille O'Neal.

The Bendigo landscaper built Shaq’s ‘epic’ pond in Georgia.

The CEO of Aquascape, Greg Wittstock, better known as The Pond Guy, had worked for Shaq before as well as other high profile sporting identities and celebrities, including Logan Paul, Mr O’Callaghan said.

When Shaq wanted “a very big pond” at his Georgia home, he turned to Wittstock, who turned to Waterscapes Australia owner Patrick Handley — the first landscaper to bring Aquascapes technology to Australia and a chief distributor — who then turned to Mr O’Callaghan.

“It was it was awesome — a great experience but a lot of hard work obviously,” he said.

“About a million pounds of stone and pebbles were moved within a week, which is pretty amazing. It was a fantastic experience.

A million pounds (in U.S. terms) was shifted in a week.

The entire giant pond was lined with black plastic.

“I got to meet Shaq the week after that and present the water feature to him with Greg and a few of the other guys as well and that was pretty awesome.”

The pond was actually more the size of small lake at 30 metres long by about 15 metres wide, and featured “big, wide, falls at the top, a big waterfall with some big split rocks and logs and stuff, and a wetland system that’s fully planted out”, Mr O’Callaghan said.

Cascading water falls and river rocks are a feature.

Putting and chipping greens surround the water.

“It’s got big stumps and water lilies and then a big intake bay and then we built a sand beach entry on the other side, so when they’re walking down from the house, they can walk onto the beach and come into the pond that way.

“And and then we worked with Court Dreams to build putting greens and chipping greens and stuff all around the pond as well, so Shaq can chip the ball over the top of the pond. There’s seating areas and pathways as well.”

A father of two, Mr O’Callaghan said he had built up his landscaping business over the last 12 years and now focused strongly on water features and Japanese gardens.

His faithful foreman, Adam Marshall, had worked alongside him for six of those years, he said.