Jack Nicklaus: Meeting with a legend

Tiger Woods has been everyone’s hero for the past ten years. During this period he has been the dominant player in world golf and has made he No 1 spot in the world rankings his own property for nearly ten straight years. 13 “major” or “grand slam” championship titles and 66 US PGA Tour victories. No current player even comes close. The only other player who dominated the sport like Tiger is doing now is American Jack Nicklaus who was the supreme player in world golf during the 60’s and 70’s. Jack is a living legend and still leads in major titles – 18 in fact. The question on every golf fan’s mind right now – is Tiger going to beat Jack’s major titles record and if so then when will that milestone be reached ? Imagine getting the opportunity to ask Jack Nicklaus himself this question. Well Jack was in Bangalore just recently to examine a potential golf course design project and I was fortunate enough to be able to ask him this question in person. His answer: “I think Tiger probably will break my record although it is not a given. He still has to get the job done. He might do it soon if he wins 2-3 of them in one year and it might never get done – who knows ? But I think it will take him 5-6 years to get the next 6 to get to 19 and go past my record of 18 majors. He has to stay in good health. He just had a 2nd surgery on the same knee. “ This was Jack’s candid opinion. “ I was lucky with my health – had very few injuries in my career.” “ Tiger certainly seems to have his sights set on my records just like I had my sights set on Bobby Jones record of 12. I am happy to just sit back – watch him chase the record and enjoy it”. Obviously this is not something Jack thinks too much about. Tiger’s chase of Jack’s records is more anticipated by fans and media across the globe. So I talked to Mr Nicklaus about comparing the type of game Tiger plays today to the game in his days with so much technological improvement in equipment. Jack said “ Tiger plays a different game today than what I did. But he is a bit of a hybrid player because although he uses a really high tech driver his irons are not very different from the type I used. But Tiger is different from a lot of the other players today because he shapes his shots a lot like we used to do in our time. He fades and draws the ball the way we used to.
This gives him an advantage over other modern players who basically just hit the same type of shot repeatedly. “He added “ Today some of the clubs are designed such that it is difficult to shape your shots. They don’t allow you to be creative. But Tiger’s driver is high tech and it is the club that gives him the most trouble”. His final assessment on Tiger was “ The game is in good hands today with Tiger – he is a good person and liked by his peers which is important”. With Tiger’s near complete domination currently ( Tiger has either won or finished 2nd in all 10 events he has played in 2008), Jack had this to say on Tiger’s challengers: “ In my time I had Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino who all won at least 8 major championships. Today Tiger’s rivals have a maximum of 3 major titles – Phil Mickleson, Vijay Singh and Ernie Els. I also had Tom Watson who won another bunch of majors. Today Tiger’s rivals have not won so often so they are not good at closing the door when they have a chance to win. Tiger is just so much better at that. When he is in a position to win, he doesn’t back down – he gets the job done. ” I asked Jack how much his close rivalry with players like Arnold Palmer and Gary Player affected his game during his prime years and he said “ I never really gave much thought to what my rivals were doing. In this game you can only control your own game – you can’t control what others are doing. But if I looked at the leaderboard when I was not in the lead - it was always one of those guys who was getting in position to win. That’s not the case today. When you look at the leaderboard today – you really don’t know who is going to win. “ So it was with obvious admiration and excitement that I took notes from my first person encounter with a living legend. We will all be watching Mr Woods chase the record but you can be sure of one thing. Its not something Jack loses much sleep over! The author is a former Asian Games gold medalist