81 the following year and are breaking 70 while your voice is still changing at 13, the tingly sting of the golf bug can bite you like fire ants at a Georgia pig pickin’. The terms “natural” and “prodigy” are thrown out way too loosely by fawning sportswriters looking for the surefire way to explain off-the-charts performance. Nicklaus’s majestic long and high lofting drives and his pinpoint iron shots did not come as the result of punching a winning genetic lottery ticket. Nicklaus’s ambition exceeded his greatest tape-measure shots. As a young buck, he would sky 500 practice balls a day at the Scioto Country Club driving range in Columbus, Ohio, hitting from dawn to dusk. Nicklaus wouldn’t even let the elements deprive him of his golf fix, clearing a spot from which to hit balls in the dead of winter. After trouncing the field at the Ohio Open in 1956 as a teenage sensation, there was no turning back for Nicklaus.
MAJOR # 1
PHOTOS: Jack Nicklaus hits out the bunker on the 4th hole during the Par 3 contest prior to the Masters at the Augusta National Golf Club on April 5, 2006 in Augusta, Georgia. Photo: Getty Images Left (bottom): Champion golfers Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus pose with their golf clubs before a practice round at the Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, September 1962. Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS. Left (top): Jack Nicklaus at the British Open Golf Championship, 1978. Photo: Leo Mason/CORBIS Opener photo: Jack Nicklaus oversees his golf course design work at the Polaris World site on February 1, 2006 in Murcia, Spain. Photo: Steve Read/Getty Images Next page: US team captain Jack Nicklaus tips his cap on the 18th hole during the third day four-ball matches at the Presidents Cup at the Royal Montreal Golf Club in Montreal, Canada, September 29, 2007. The US leads the International team 14 1/2 to 7 1/2 going into the final day of singles matches. Photo: Andrew Gompert/ EPA
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In his prime, Nicklaus swung his clubs with such control and confidence, it was almost as if he made mental metrologic adjustments in head depending on the distance and trajectory he required and then just made it happen. And J.W.’s ability to conjure up wondrous strokes on demand didn’t stop once he reached the putting green. Many pros throw up (golfer parlance for letting your nerves get the best of you) when the pressure is on. Buckling just wasn’t the Bear’s way. Faced with a treacherous double-breaking 40-footer on the 16th hole of the 1975 Masters, Nicklaus knew he could find the line, concentrated intently, and then tapped his ball hole-ward bound. As a kid, Jack was a jock of all sports excelling in every game he got a whiff of, from track & field to table tennis. But when you shoot 91 from the men’s tees at the tender age of 10, shave that down to
“Everybody says there’s only one favorite, and that’s me. But you better watch the fat boy,” quipped Arnold Palmer to the press when they asked him who would win the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont. Palmer’s backhanded compliment might seem churlish to those unfamiliar with Nicklaus, but even his wife Barbara called him “fat boy” back then, a vast improvement over “Blobbo,” which was what his Ohio State fraternity brothers called the big boned blonde kid with the crew cut who could have easily played fullback for the Buckeyes. Remember this was a decade before he’d stop popping shrimp cocktails like candy, lose the paunch, and let his golden locks grow long. Now let’s return to the tournament. Deadlocked at one under par after four rounds in Oakmont, Nicklaus proved the King’s little pregame shoutout to be right on the money, as Fat Jack went on to outduel Palmer by three strokes in the deciding 18-hole playoff. “Now that the big guy’s out of the cage, everybody better run for cover,” warned Palmer when it was over, tipping his hat to the 22-yearold rookie, 10 years his junior. This was Jack William Nicklaus’s first victory as a professional golfer, and achieving the milestone in Palmer’s home state of Pennsylvania in front of a gallery of golf fans almost uniformly enlisted in
“Arnie’s Army” made the accomplishment even more of a watershed moment. Palmer’s conciliatory quip proved to be quite a prescient prediction; it also marked the start of the golfing titans’ 50-year rivalry that continues to this day. But golf fans didn’t immediately embrace the upstart. Unlike Palmer, a downto-earth magnetic character who was fully aware that he was in the sports entertainment business, Nicklaus was often too keyed into the golf to realize that his was a television sport. And while Palmer was always acknowledging and connecting with his gallery of fans while blasting off shots with joyful abandon, Nicklaus came off as more aloof. Nicklaus wasn’t much of an extrovert, and when he emerged on the scene, he had what we’d characterize today as an image problem. He seemed to walk the fairways with tunnel vision. Not only did he tune out everything around him, but his powers of concentration were so jacked up before each swing that it was as if he was plotting a multivariable regression line to the hole and using an internal anemometer to factor in wind speed. So, with whom would you rather play a round in the early ‘60s? Someone like Palmer who marched to his balls and stroked his clubs with the vim of a lumberjack wailing away at a giant oak trunk, or with Nicklaus, a master technician who
had shot-making down to a science and often wore the equation-mulling expression of a professor of algebraic topology while hovering over his lie? It's not surprising that despite topping the PGA money list for the last time in 1963, Arnie’s star and brand power would pay much higher dividends than Jack’s or any other golfer’s over the decades, continuing to reap fruits long after Palmer’s playing days were over. Palmer picked up his last PGA tour win in 1973, yet in the 1980s his star continued to rise, banking at least $5 million annually from endorsement contracts, more than any other athlete in the world until the Michael Jordan advertising slam-dunk finally knocked Palmer down a few pegs in 1991, easily trumping the celebrated golfer’s $9-million take that year.
JACK ATTACKS While Palmer was pitchman supreme, on the golf course Nicklaus was, to crib the LL Cool J lyric, something like a phenomenon. His 18 major victories dwarf Palmer’s seven, and by the time the ‘70s rolled round, every golf fan from Pebble Beach to Hilton Head was familiar with the infectious ear-to-ear smile that would crease Jack’s face whenever he holed one. But more infectious still, for the sportsobsessed hoi polloi, was the fact that he was a winner.
FIVE GOLDEN NICKLAUS NUGGETS 1
Jack earned $33.33 for finishing in his professional debut at the Los Angeles Open in 1962 after finishing tied for 50th.
2
Jack is so money that the Royal Bank of Scotland released two million fivepound notes with a picture of Jack smiling, wearing a familiar argyle sweater and clutching the claret jug. He was only the third living person after the Queen and Queen Mother to be depicted on Scottish currency.
3
In 1963, Jazz pianist Billy Maxted wrote a song honouring his friend Jack called “The Golden Bear.” Appropriately, the song is on an album titled The Big Swingers.
4
If Jack knew he could only play one more round of golf in his life, he said he’d play it at Pebble Beach.
5
At the 1980 U.S. Open, a 40-year-old Jack Nicklaus became the only golfer to win a major championship in each of three decades. Six years later at Augusta he added “oldest golfer to win a Masters” to his long list of records. SPRING 2008 | THE BAY STREET BULL | 29