Yesterday, the U.S. Congress honored 75-year old Jack Nicklaus by presenting him with the highest civilian award Congress can give–a Congressional Gold Medal for recognition of Jack’s greatness as a professional golfer and a family man. Members of Congress who were present to conduct the ceremony included John Boehner, Ohio Republican Senator and speaker of the House of Representatives. Jack hails from Columbus, Ohio.
Jack Nicklaus has been without question the greatest golfer of all time to the present day. In professional golf, wins in the four “majors” are recognized as the defining measurement of a great pro golfer’s career. Those tournaments are the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship. Jack won eighteen of them. The nearest to him in major wins is current player Tiger Woods, who has fourteen major wins.
In Nicklaus’ acceptance speech, he gave much credit to his wife Barbara. They have five children and twenty-two grandchildren. During Jack’s career, she was much respected by PGA Tour players and especially their wives. Barbara is a very thoughtful person of others which is evidenced by some charity work. Jack called Barbara “the guiding light of everything we tried to accomplish. Were it not for Barbara, I would have been just another golfer.” That’s real nice Jack, and you can’t pay too much accolades to your wife Barbara. Nevertheless, I think all of your fellow competitors on Tour would differ with you on that one.
Jack also said, “People have asked me to quantify Barbara’s importance in my career. I’d have to say she’s responsible for at least 15 major championships. I’ll give myself credit for three.” Well then, those members of Congress honored the wrong person!
I played with Jack Nicklaus many times in tournaments on the regular PGA Tour and some on the Champions Tour. Jack was always a gentleman to play golf with, and I always enjoyed being paired with him. He was known for driving the golf ball prodigious distances. I’ll give you one example.
Dow Finsterwald and I were paired with Jack Nicklaus and his partner Arnold Palmer in the first two rounds of the first PGA Team Championship, held in 1965. On the second round, on the long par five seventeenth hole, just before Arnold hit his tee shot he turned to Jack and said, “Catch this one.” He meant that he was going to give it all he had and hit a long drive. So, he was challenging Jack to try to outdrive him. Palmer was known as a long hitter himself. Muscular Arnie just about came out of his shoes when he swung at the ball, and it was a long drive, right in the fairway. I had already hit my drive first, and Arnold had outdriven me twenty yards. Then Jack stepped up, addressed his ball, turned to Arnold to say “Okay,” and then hauled off and blasted that pellet so far that it looked like it was never going to come down out of the sky. It, too, was in the fairway. When we walked to our balls, we measured the difference. On a flat fairway with not that much roll, Jack had outdriven Arnold forty yards.
I saw Jack Nicklaus hit the greatest golf shot I have ever seen. We were paired together the last round in the 1995 FORD SENIOR PLAYERS Championship at the TPC in Dearborn, Michigan. It was “the house that Jack built.” What do I mean? He designed and built this golf course. But by that time, both the regular PGA Tour and the Champions Tour had been staging some of its tournaments on golf courses that Jack had designed with his Golden Bear golf course design business, if not also built.
So, on the seventeenth tee, with two holes to play in the tournament, Jack was three strokes behind the leader, J. C. Snead. That seventeenth hole is a par five that has a big lake that you must carry if you decide to go for the green on your second shot. It is such a difficult second shot to the green, that I never tried to do it in all the years I played in that tournament. The green is small, and there is no room to spare between the lake and the green. That day, the hole was placed at just about the most strategic position possible. Thus, there was only about ten feet of putting surface between the lake and the hole placement. Yet Jack decided to go for it because he was three shots behind the leader. It was extremely risky no matter what club he had to hit. Moreover, his yardage to the hole, which he told me afterwards, was 242 yards. He selected his trusty one iron.
Wow! The Golden Bear, as Jack was nicknamed throughout almost all of his career, was going to try to hit a one iron, clear the water and barely land on the green, and stop the ball without it going over the green. Now mind you, most pros who ever used a one iron didn’t get that much backspin on the ball when they hit it. There couldn’t have been more than fiften or twenty feet of green behind the hole.
Now, lemme tell ya somethin. Jack Nicklaus had to have been the greatest one iron player the game has ever seen. And by this time, he must have been 55 years old. Nobody uses a one iron when they are 55 years old! Come on! But Jack did. Nowdays, nobody on the PGA Tour even carries a one iron in the bag, and most current pros out there don’t even have a 2 iron. Even in our day, a lot of pros were scared-to-death of a one iron. Why? You have to be most precise in ball contact with an iron club that has that little of loft. The longer the shaft on a golf club, the lighter and therefore the smaller the clubhead must be. So, a one iron has a smaller hitting area. Plus, Jack never used any of those cavity-back, perimeter-weighted iron clubs that were first made popular by PING. They are more forgiving with mishits. But Jack was so good at swinging a golfclub with lots of force, yet making solid ball contact so often. That’s why he loved to hit his one iron.
But the other thing that made Jack Nicklaus so good at hitting a one iron was that he could hit the ball higher than a kite! Most golfers, if they tried to hit a one iron, would never get the ball off the ground. But not Jack. He “released the club” so much on his downswing that he could send the ball airborne where no man had ever gone before with his golf ball.
As Jack addressed that ball with his one iron that day, as I recall, the wind was blowing more than usual, going sideways about fifteen miles per hour. I thought that if his ball cleared the water and landed on the green, he would not be able to stop the ball from going over the green. Well, Jack hit such a great high shot, right at the pin. The ball landed barely on the green, clearing the water by a matter of a few feet, and stopped almost abruptly, right beside the hole. The ball was about three or four feet from the hole. Jack easily made the putt for an eagle.
Now the Golden Bear had to birdie the par-four eighteenth hole to tie J. C. Snead and go into a playoff with him. Jack hit his second shot unto the green about thirty feet from the hole. His putt was going right in the middle of the hole, but it stopped less than an inch short. So, Jack finished second, and J. C. won his first major championship on the Senior (now Champions) Tour.
Even though Jack didn’t win the tournament, his second shot on the seventy-first hole of the 1995 FORD SENIOR PLAYERS Championship was the greatest shot I have ever seen in golf.
Jack Nicklaus is a most deserving champion to receive the U.S. Congressional Golf Medal. Congratulations Jack, and you too Barbara.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In