At first glance, it might seem like Jack Nicklaus has taken a rather roundabout path to return, one final time, to the home of golf. In the past 10 days Nicklaus has gone to Florida, Texas, California, Nebraska and Canada – all virtual pit stops en route to this week’s British Open at St. Andrews.
Only occasionally during his travels did Nicklaus pick up a club. If that seems like a strange way to prepare for the last major championship of his career, rest assured the Golden Bear was perfectly fine with it.
“I have no desire to continue what I’ve done all my life, which is for 12 months a year keep my golf game ready and sharp to go play in a golf tournament,” Nicklaus said during a recent conference call. “I really have other things I want to do that I enjoy doing.”
It is only fitting that, after more than 40 years of providing thrills for fans and inspiring awe among fellow players, of touching lives to the point where parents named their children after him, Nicklaus, 65, is exiting championship golf on his terms. In appreciation of his three British Open championships and 18 top-10 finishes in the event, a 5-pound bank note with his image engraved on it is being issued.
Lately, though, Nicklaus has made a number of jokes about the state of his game. In describing how many family members will be making the trip to watch this week, he said, “I just hope they get to watch four days of golf. I hope they don’t blink, you know, and it’s over on Friday.”
But for many, the least important aspect of this Open is how Nicklaus scores or how many days he gets to tee it up. They just want to see him, perhaps getting the chance to share a few words and a final goodbye.
“I certainly want to be there on 18 when he finishes, if I have the opportunity,” Nick Price said. “Hopefully I’ll play three or four groups in front of him, and I’ll be able to sign my scorecard and go and shake his hand on No. 18 because I don’t think I’d be where I am today if it wasn’t for Jack Nicklaus.”
Lasting influence
In 1972, Nicklaus won the opening two legs of the Grand Slam, taking the Masters and the U.S. Open. The next year, he finished in the top four in each of the four majors, including a victory in the PGA Championship.
That was also the year the Calcavecchia family relocated from Nebraska to Florida; included in the brood was a 13-year-old named Mark.
“We moved two miles from where they lived,” Calcavecchia, an 11-time winner on tour and a British Open champion himself, recalled recently. “Obviously when you’re a kid growing up in Nebraska, you don’t get to meet anybody. Then, boom, a year later I’m down in Florida and Jack Nicklaus is watching me play golf.”
A contemporary of Nicklaus’ son Jackie, Calcavecchia said Nicklaus was a fixture at many of his matches throughout high school. Although that would seem to be a recipe for certain failure, playing against Jack Nicklaus’ son with the great man himself watching, Calcavecchia said the formula seemed to have the opposite effect.
“When you look at the best players, they seem to be able to buckle down,” he said. “It was the same thing then for me. When Jack was around, I always beat his son. But he would always have something very nice to say to me after the match.”
And, of course, whenever he got the chance, Calcavecchia would return the favor, becoming part of the galleries that swelled whenever Nicklaus played.
“I’d always go down to Doral to watch him,” Calcavecchia said. “I’d watch every shot he played, all 18 holes. There was nobody else I really cared about.”
The best ever
When Tiger Woods was dominating the game at the start of this decade, the media tried desperately, and the public seemed equally intent, on finding another golfer to challenge him. They both wanted a rivalry that could approach the one Nicklaus had with Arnold Palmer.
Perhaps it is the nature of sport that excellence can be appreciated only for so long.
Initially, however, Nicklaus was seen as an interloper to the empire Palmer created. Ten years older, Arnie was the dashing figure who single-handedly brought golf to the masses; Nicklaus, then a pudgy amateur out of Ohio State, was “Fat Jack.”
In time, that changed.
For some appearance-obsessed souls, it might have had something to do with Nicklaus’ physical transformation. For others, it could have been a result of his clear devotion to family – a father of five, now a grandfather to 17, Nicklaus always tried to emphasize the importance of the loved ones in his life.
“My kids all know me, which is far more important than any golf game as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
But one could argue what swayed the pendulum from Palmer to Nicklaus was performance itself, that Nicklaus was simply the better player.
“He was my idol for sure, and he was for probably 75 percent of the guys out here (on tour),” Calcavecchia said. “He was the man.”
Palmer won seven majors; Nicklaus, of course, won 18 (20 if you count his two U.S. amateurs), completing the career Grand Slam three times.
“He is the best player that has ever lived,” Bernhard Langer said. “Maybe Tiger can overtake him at some stage. He was a great role model for all of us.”
Emphasizing preparation, Nicklaus’ attention to detail ranged from wide – he was one of the first players credited with pacing off yardages on a golf course – to minute.
“He always said he was never going to hit a putt until he thought he was going to make it,” Langer said.
Love affair
Of his majors, Nicklaus won three at the British, a tournament he said fit him better than most majors in the United States.
“For some reason, I went to the British Open and every year I felt like I was going to win, or if I didn’t win I was going to be right there and I was,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel like that here.
“I suppose it’s the type of golf. I sort of like creative golf. You have to create what you want to do to create the shot, and improvise and do all of those kinds of things. I just thought that was just great; I just loved it.”
Those feelings never went away, especially when it came to playing at St. Andrews.
“I was there on the back of the 18th green when he won in 1978 as a 21-year-old,” Price said. “I stayed behind. I finished maybe two hours earlier, and I stayed around and I wanted to be on those steps on the 18th green when he came up.
“Simon Owen, who was a friend of mine who was playing really well at the time, we were there, and when (Nicklaus) walked off the 18th green there was a tear in his eye. I said, ‘This guy has won so many majors, why is he so emotional?’
“You know, I understand very well now why he was so emotional about it. Only after a period of say 15 years of playing in the Open Championship do you realize how special it is to play at St. Andrews.”
At first glance, it might seem Nicklaus’ recent nomadic itinerary was an attempt to stave off the inevitability of giving it all up – the triumphs and the adoring fans. But so often, the enduring pleasures of golf can be found in complete solitude with nothing at all on the line.
Even for Jack Nicklaus. Especially at a hallowed place such as St. Andrews.
“It just sort of gets me every time I go there,” he said. “I mean, when I was over there in May, I just walked out on the 18th, looked around over there and I was sitting there, I got welled up even then, and nobody’s there, just because it is what it is and what it meant to the game of golf, and what it’s meant to me.”
BRITISH OPEN
Event: 134th British Open
Dates: Thursday-July 17
Site: The Old Course at St. Andrews
Length: 7,279 yards
Par: 72
Format: 72 holes, stroke play
Playoff (if necessary): Four holes, stroke play
Purse: $7.3 million
Winner’s share: $1.3 million
Defending champion: Todd Hamilton
Last year: Hamilton went toe-to-toe with Ernie Els over the final 40 holes at Royal Troon, the last four in a playoff when the American made all pars to win by one shot. The final par was the toughest. Hamilton was 40 yards short of the green and used a utility club to chip to within 2 feet. Els missed a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th for the outright victory and a 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th that would have extended the playoff. Hamilton closed with a 2-under 69 to finish at 274. Phil Mickelson had the lead on the back nine but finished one shot out of the playoff.
Last time at St. Andrews: Tiger Woods played 72 holes without hitting into a bunker, overwhelming the Old Course and the field for an eight-shot victory in 2000. At 24, he became the youngest player to win the career Grand Slam. His score of 19-under 269 was the lowest in relation to par at a major.
Open champions at St. Andrews: Tom Kidd (1873), Bob Martin (1876, 1885), Jamie Anderson (1879), Robert Ferguson (1882), Jack Burns (1888), Hugh Kirkaldy (1891), J.H. Taylor (1895, 1900), James Braid (1905, 1910), Jock Hutchison (1921), Bobby Jones (1927), Denny Shute (1933), Dick Burton (1939), Sam Snead (1946), Peter Thomson (1955), Bobby Locke (1957), Kel Nagle (1960), Tony Lema (1964), Jack Nicklaus (1970, 1978), Nick Faldo (1990), John Daly (1995), Tiger Woods (2000)
Television (all times MDT): Thursday-Friday, 5 a.m. to 5 p.m., TNT. Saturday, 5-7 a.m., TNT; 5 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., ABC. Sunday, 4-6 a.m., TNT; 6-11:30 a.m., ABC
Staff writer Tom Kensler contributed to this report.
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
