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 Literally speaking, then, there has never been a legendary World Series game, a legendary quarterback or a legendary golfer. Newspapers, TV and radio broadcasts, however, prove that all these things, and all these people, really happened or really existed. But there is a second definition: “A notable person whose deeds and exploits are much talked about in his day and time.” And that describes Jack Nicklaus. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. The greatest golfer of the 20th century has 73 PGA Tour victories and 18 major championships. He was the oldest man to win the Masters and the first to win four major championships on the PGA Tour and Champions Tour. He was named the PGA Tour’s player of the year five times and earned the honor of best individual athlete of the century from Sports Illustrated. But while Nicklaus is a living legend, he no longer will be a playing legend after this month’s British Open at St. Andrews. After 43 years of playing professional golf, the Golden Bear has announced that he will no longer tee it up competitively at the conclusion of this year’s third major. “His body just isn’t up to it anymore,” said friend and rival Hale Irwin. “And Jack is the type of person who, if he can’t compete at the level he wants to compete at, won’t compete.” Nicklaus, who announced his farewell to Augusta at this year’s Masters, said in May that this year’s British Open will mark “the end of my tournament golf … Augusta and St. Andrews are my two favorite places in the game of golf, and I thought it was appropriate to end it at one of those two. What the R&A did in changing their date [moving this year’s British Open to St. Andrews a year earlier to accommodate his retirement] was a pretty nice compliment and I thought that would be a pretty good place to stop.” But not everyone is certain that Nicklaus will stop playing competitively, and he left the door open a little by saying he might tee it up again at the Memorial, a PGA Tour event he hosts each May in Ohio. While saying he understands why Nicklaus wants to retire, Gary Player said, “My criticism of Jack and Arnold Palmer is that they have both ‘retired’ and ‘unretired’ several times. It will be interesting to see if Jack plays in another major, the Memorial or on the Champions Tour ever again. I think if you announce your retirement, then that’s it.” Irwin believes the main reason Nicklaus is retiring at a time when he can still fire a practice round or two in the low 70s is because his body can no longer pull off what his mind tells him to do on the course. “One thing that all the great players, from Byron Nelson and Tiger Woods to Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, had is great pride,” Irwin said. “They don’t accept less than what they know they’re capable of. And I think that is what he’s faced with now. His expectations of his game are not in synch with what his body can produce. He could still do a lot for the Champions Tour and the game in general if he’d show up and play from time to time, but I don’t think that’s enough for him. He still wants to compete and to win.” Nicklaus agrees. “I like playing anywhere if I can play well,” he said at this year’s Memorial. “But I just don’t play well enough anymore. The game has passed me by, and that’s fine. I’ve been part of the game, I enjoy being part of the game, but I don’t enjoy being part of the game when I can’t compete. It’s certainly no fun to play that way. It’s no fun to go out there and hack it around and struggle to try to figure out some way to break 80. That’s never been the way I’ve operated, and I don’t believe that I should be out there.” Nicklaus’ inability to live up to his rigorous standards is forcing his decision to retire at a time when other golfers his age would love to shoot in the 80s. “The word that comes to mind when I think of Jack Nicklaus is quality,” said Eddie Merrins, the longtime pro at Bel Air Country Club. “He’s going to give a quality performance whether he’s playing, giving a clinic or designing a golf course. Everything he does is accented by quality and that’s one reason why I can’t think of any sport with a champion greater than he.” Merrins knew early that Nicklaus was something special. He first met him when Nicklaus was 15 and playing in a national amateur championship that Merrins had won years earlier. “I could tell the first time I met him that he had the competitive instincts and physical attributes that would allow him to win something significant,” Merrins said. “But I don’t think anyone could ever have guessed that (his career) would be that significant, because no one had ever done what he did before.” Merrins, who has remained in touch with Nicklaus and gets a Christmas card from him every year, believes that he is “the best golfer ever. He’s also the epitome of what a champion is. He has the record to substantiate it but also the character traits of what a champion should be. He will always give the opponent the better of things and then set out to beat him squarely, according to the rules.” Unlike other competitive golfers who might try to get in a rival’s head by pacing on the green while an opponent is lining up a putt or challenge a rule’s interpretation, Merrins doesn’t recall Nicklaus “ever trying to gain the upper hand on an opponent or a playing partner, even though no one ever competed any harder than he. He always won or lost graciously.” That sense of sportsmanship typifies Merrins’ two enduring memories of Nicklaus. The first was in the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1959, when Nicklaus was playing defending champion Charlie Coe. The duo was tied heading to the 36th, and last, hole. Nicklaus had a 12-foot putt while Coe was off the green. However, Coe pitched a ball onto the green that ended one revolution from going in the cup. “In his anxiety, Coe raked the ball away from the hole with his club and he realized the instant he did it that he’d done something wrong,” Merrins said. “Nicklaus caught the expression on his face and told Charlie to not worry about it, that it was good. Had he wanted to, Nicklaus could have penalized Coe. But he didn’t. And he still rolled in his putt to win, which is a great display of character for anyone, let alone a 19-year-old.” Another instance of Nicklaus’ champion demeanor came years later in the Ryder Cup. Nicklaus was facing Tony Jacklin in the last and deciding singles match. A win or a tie would allow the United States to keep the trophy. On the final hole, Nicklaus had a 4-foot putt while Jacklin faced a 2-footer. “Jack made his putt first and then conceded the putt to Jacklin,” Merrins said. “Sam Snead was the American captain and he almost had a heart attack because he wanted no concessions. But Jack didn’t want Jacklin to miss the putt and have that stigma over his head the rest of his life. The fact America would keep the trophy even in a tie was more important than outright winning. And that was another great example of his personal character showing up on the golf course.” Nicklaus wasn’t known for his character early in his PGA career. Not because he didn’t possess it, but few people wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Before he was the Golden Bear, he was Fat Jack. He turned professional in 1962 at the height of Arnie’s Army, the name given to the legions of fans who adored Palmer. The younger, brasher and cocky Nicklaus earned plenty of boos and jeers in those days, recalls Bob Johns, the director of golf for the city of Anaheim. “They called him Fat Jack and booed him because he was beating up Palmer, our icon,” said Johns, who graduated from high school in 1962, the same year Nicklaus won his first U.S. Open by beating Palmer in a playoff at Oakmont. “He was so good people hated him. And there was a difference. Arnold was dashing and in good shape and looked like a dynamic guy, and then you had Nicklaus, who wasn’t in the greatest shape. I don’t think it was until Watson came around in the ’70s and started challenging him that he became more beloved because now there was a new young buck out to topple the king.” By the early ’80s, no golfer earned as much respect and applause as Nicklaus, and golfers such as Watson, Irwin and Johnny Miller were out to steal his crown. “He was the man. If you hit a golf ball just once in the ’70s or ’80s you knew who Jack Nicklaus was,” said Brett Massingham, a Rancho Santa Margarita professional and a national spokesperson for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. “He was the Tiger Woods of golf without the huge exposure. Whenever I got the chance to see him on TV I’d watch and just be awestruck. He was the epitome of golf in the ’70s.” Massingham revered Nicklaus so much that he resorted to bribery for the experience of playing with him. While a freshman at San Diego State in 1985, Massingham was a member of the golf team and asked to marshal the Skins Game, which was held at Bear Creek Golf Club. During the team’s orientation, Massingham heard that Nicklaus was playing the course later in the day. “So I went to the caddy master and gave him some money and asked if there was any way I could play a few holes with him,” said Massingham, who played three holes with Nicklaus and his son, Jack II. “It was an unbelievable experience,” he recalled. “He hit his third shot on a par 5 into a bunker and joked that it was shots like that that kept him from winning more majors. And I told him, ‘You’re going to win the Masters next year.’” While Massingham’s prediction was true, it was the demeanor of Nicklaus that day that will always stick with him. “He was a perfect gentlemen out there, laughing and hitting golf shots,” Massingham said. “But he also explained the golf course and he took a very real interest in my life and why I got into golf. He was very inviting and pleasant, which you wouldn’t think a great player like that would be.” The Golden Bear’s influence on young golfers hasn’t waned. Eric Lohman, the director of golf at Black Gold Golf Club in Yorba Linda, grew up “idolizing Jack Nicklaus and reading about him in magazines and watching him on TV.” “I don’t know if he had any direct influence on me as far as wanting to become a player, but when you’re young you always want to emulate the best, whether it was Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan or any of those guys,” said Lohman, 31. “And I loved watching Nicklaus play. He was so dominant, and hit it so long and managed the course better than most.” One of Lohman’s big influences as a young golfer was a Nicklaus instructional video that had extra meaning when he was a member of UCLA’s golf team and studied with Jim Flick, who founded a golf academy with Nicklaus. “Everything with Nicklaus is first class and Flick taught that way, with really defined practice schedules and understanding the basic fundamentals of the golf swing,” Lohman said. “The key is if you’re going to practice, make sure you practice the right way.” Contemporaries of Nicklaus are unanimous in their opinion of him as the greatest golfer of his time. Irwin, a fellow member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, is no exception. “One reason that he was clearly superior to the rest of us is that he was so steadfastly sure in what he was doing,” Irwin said. “He had this single-mindedness to him and he didn’t waver. He had a plan and he pretty much stuck to it, and that plan was consistent from hole one through 18.” Three attributes about Nicklaus as a player stand out to Irwin: his patience, consistency and tenacity. “I’d have to check all the stats, but I’m pretty sure that Nicklaus didn’t fire off a whole lot of rounds in the early ’60s in the mid to high 70s,” Irwin said. “He was always right there under par or at par and seemed to always wait for the other guy to beat himself.” And while 18 major championships is an incredible feat, Irwin believes Nicklaus’ 56 top-five finishes in majors is just as remarkable. “There’s so much that can go wrong in a round of golf and you’re not going to win every time, but for him to finish in the top two or three percent every time is equally impressive as winning 18 times,” he said. Irwin loved competing against Nicklaus and other great players because “it usually meant I was playing pretty well. The thing about Jack, though, is that you knew that he was more likely to be in the hunt at the end. He wasn’t going to disappear if he was in or near the lead. He wasn’t going to do something to take himself out of the tournament. So he was always in your head somewhere.” Player said that he never changed his mindset when playing Nicklaus but agreed that “you knew that if you were both in contention, you could not afford to make a mistake, and he certainly wasn’t going to back down. So, if anything, you needed to be more aggressive.” Would Nicklaus be as great today as he was in his glory years? “Definitely,” Irwin said. “The technology has brought his records closer to the grasp of Tiger and others, but I don’t think anyone is any better qualified a golfer as Jack. There were other guys who could drive it by him, but when he really wanted to hit it, he could hit it past anyone. Whatever he wanted to do, he was capable of doing and he certainly had a better grasp of the mental side of things than anyone I’ve ever seen.” For Irwin, like anyone who played alongside him or watched him play, the Golden Bear’s retirement is bittersweet. If the man says it’s time to go, it’s time to go, and the memories he’s left behind will never fade as long as sports is discussed. It’s also the end of an era and a reminder that time catches up to everyone. But Irwin also knows that there’s a lot more to Nicklaus than golf. “We think of players like him as legends, but they’re also real people and it’s the odd time you spend with contemporaries off the course, maybe having dinner with them, or meeting their wives and children, or even fishing, when you see them as a real people,” Irwin said. “On the course, golfers tend to retreat to their private jail cells, but off the course is when you glimpse the real person. Jack is a good friend and I wish him well. We’ve been through a lot together and I understand him and I think he understands me. I like to think of Arnie and Jack and Lee [Trevino] and Gary as good friends more so than good players.” Some sports stars retire too early. Others hang on too long. But the great ones have an instinct that tells them it’s time — whether we like it or not. “Yeah we’re going to miss him,” Massingham said. “But his personality won’t allow him to go out there and play golf at a level that is anything less than how he wants to compete. I think Mr. Nicklaus is a great man as a golfer and a person, and if he says it’s time to quit, who am I to question it?” n TOP SOUTHLAND MOMENTS Jack Nicklaus has had many notable moments on Southern California golf courses in five decades. Here are 10: 1962: Turns professional and earns his first paycheck — $33.32 — in the Los Angeles Open at Rancho Park Municipal Golf Course. 1963: Wins the Palm Springs Golf Classic (now known as the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic) in a playoff over Gary Player. It marks the only time Nicklaus won the Hope, although he and Johnny Miller finished second to Arnold Palmer in 1973. 1969: Wins the San Diego Open (now the Buick Invitational) by outlasting hometown hero Gene Littler by a stroke at Torrey Pines. It’s his lone victory in seven attempts. 1971: Wins the Tournament of Champions (now known as the Mercedes Championship) at La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad by eight strokes over Player, Bruce Devlin and Dave Stockton. 1973: Wins the Tournament of Champions by one stroke over Lee Trevino. 1977: Beats Devlin in a playoff at the MONY Tournament of Champions, the third time he won the event at La Costa and the fifth time he won it overall. 1978: Finishes two strokes behind Gil Morgan in the Los Angeles Open. The second-place finish is the best Nicklaus ever did in the tournament, which is now the Nissan Open. “I think that always bugged him,” Bel Air head professional Eddie Merrins said. “He won most events sooner or later as an amateur or professional. I don't think it was the event or the courses, just happenstance.” 1983: Shoots a 66 on the final day of the PGA Championship at Riviera Country Club but loses to Hal Sutton by two strokes. “To win under that pressure with the greatest player in the world breathing down your neck was something,” Merrins recalled of Sutton’s performance. 1994: Wins the Senior Tour’s Mercedes Championship at La Costa by a shot over Bob Murphy. It’s Nicklaus’ only senior-circuit victory in Southern California. 1999-2000: He and Tom Watson win the Senior Tour division of the Diners Club Matches at Pelican Hill Golf Club in Newport Coast. They defend their crown the next year in the newly named Hyundai Team Matches. 2002: He is honored at the Buick Invitational with his enshrinement in the event’s Walk of Fame. — JOEL BEERS JACK’S TRACKS Jack Nicklaus left his mark on the PGA Tour record book as a player, but he’s also left his mark on the land as a course designer. Over the last 25 years, Nicklaus Design Co., the design arm of Nicklaus’ golf empire, has built 281 courses in 28 countries. The company shows no signs of slowing down, as 25 more courses are expected to open this year. Nicklaus has been involved in 235 of his company’s designs, either as a principal designer, co-designer or re-designer. Here’s a look at the company’s 10 Southern California golf courses: • The Club at Morningside, Rancho Mirage, 1981. Par 72, 6,773 yards. This private club was Nicklaus’ first Southern California track and his first signature course. An emphasis on visual aesthetics, such as 20 acres of lakes and pine trees, makes it vastly different from the typical desert layout. • Bear Creek Golf Club, Murrieta, 1982. Par 72, 7,003 yards. This signature course is one of his toughest area tracks. It features oak trees and natural terrain but is modeled like a traditional Scottish course with its difficult bunkering. • PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course, La Quinta, 1987. Par 72, 7,204 yards. While not the white-knuckle ride of Pete Dye’s TPC Stadium Course, the track is still considered one of Palm Spring’s toughest tests of golf and is one of two desert courses that hosts the finals of the PGA Tour’s Qualifying School. • PGA West’s Nicklaus Private Course, La Quinta, 1987. Par 72, 6,951 yards. This signature track is more user friendly than the Tournament Course. It’s shorter, more forgiving from the tees and features wide fairways, but Nicklaus’ love of large bunkers is definitely displayed. • Sherwood Country Club, Thousand Oaks, 1989. Par 72, 7,025 yards. This signature course features the Golden Bear’s trademark use of tiered greens and multiple hazards. • Dove Canyon Country Club, Newport Beach, 1999. Par 71, 6,903 yards. Orange County’s only Nicklaus Signature course, this private club offers members a worthy challenge with its undulating greens and testy bunkers. It sits next to Cleveland National Forest, providing one of the most bucolic settings in the region . • Aliso Viejo Golf Club, Aliso Viejo, 1999. Course has 27 holes. This course was a co-design between Nicklaus and his son, Jack II. The three nine-hole layouts rank among the shortest in the company’s arsenal — the longest 18-hole combination stretches 6,453 yards from the tips — but an emphasis on strategy and shot making is evident. • Angeles National Golf Club, Sunland, 2004. Par 72, 7,191 yards. This property at the base of the Angeles National Forest is the first Nicklaus Design course in Los Angeles County. It was helmed by Steve Nicklaus and, even though carved out of the mountains, possesses a desert feel. • Toscana Country Club, Indian Wells, 2004. Par 72, 7,349 yards. This signature course opened its first 18 holes last December and plans to open two more nine-hole layouts in the next two years. The look of the facility blends Spanish, Italian and early California sensibilities, and the course features some of the most dramatic vistas of any desert venue. The course is long from the tips — three holes stretch more than 565 yards — and includes 127 bunkers. • The Retreat Golf and Country Club, Corona, 2005. Par 72, 6,900 yards. Billed as the Inland Empire’s most exclusive private club, this Nicklaus Design Co. property was led by Nicklaus’ son-in-law, Bill O’Leary. |
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