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THE DISENGAGEMENT PARTY JACK NICKLAUS IS PREPARED TO END A REMARKABLE STREAK, BUT NOT HIS CAREER
We didn't like him. His boot-camp haircut, beefy body and stormy
brow gave him the look of a renegade military policeman. My
father, watching 22-year-old Jack Nicklaus win the 1962 U.S.
Open on our black-and-white television, shook his head in
dismay. It was as if Attila the Hun, granted a special exemption
by the USGA, had torched the fairways of Oakmont Country Club.
"This Nicklaus kid can belt it a mile," I remember my father
saying, "but he's not a golfer."
Thirty-four years later, it is clear that my father was right.
Nicklaus turned out to be not a golfer, but the golfer. Eighteen
major championships. Two U.S Amateurs. Sixty-six other PGA Tour
and international tournament victories. A globe-girdling empire
of golf-related companies. "Jack is playing ... a game I'm not
even familiar with," the great Bobby Jones said in 1965. But
Nicklaus made his game familiar, every aspect of it: the
powerful blasts off the tee, the long, high iron shots, that
infinitely patient putting posture--the right elbow jutting
out--that had my father muttering, "Hit it, dammit."
On Monday, in his annual "State of the Bear" press conference at
his office in North Palm Beach, Fla., Nicklaus came as close as
he has yet come to declaring the Nicklaus era ended. This
summer's U.S. Open at Oakland Hills will be his 40th in a row
and, he said, probably his last. He also said he might pass up
the British Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in July, ending his
string of 34 straight appearances in that event. If that
happens, Nicklaus's mind-boggling streak of consecutive major
championship appearances will expire at 138. The only player
with any chance of equaling that number is Tom Watson, and he's
a distant second, at 85. "Everything has to end sometime,"
Nicklaus said last weekend, "and while I still have the ability
to play a little bit, I thought this would be a good time to end
it."
The note of finality is misleading. Nicklaus made it clear that
he is not retiring. He will play in the PGA in August, at his
own Memorial Tournament indefinitely and at the Masters as long
as his legs support him. He plans to increase his Senior tour
commitments and doesn't rule out ceremonial appearances when the
U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach and the British to St. Andrews
(both in 2000). He isn't disappearing; he's merely disengaging.
Golf, of all sports, requires this of its heroes--the voluntary
no mas, the reluctant downward yank on the flag, stopping the
meter. In the 1990s, Nicklaus has only one top-10 finish in a
major, a sixth in the 1990 Masters. He has missed nine cuts in
his last 16 majors. And, at 56, his play is not likely to get
any better. Need we weep for Nicklaus? Hardly. He has won
everything. He has won everywhere. He qualified for his first
U.S. Open at age 17 and won the Masters at 46. If he slumped, he
rarely choked. Twelve times he led or shared the lead of a major
after three rounds. Eleven times, he won. And although he may
say he's tired of living on memories, it's less than a year
since his last Senior tour victory, the Tradition.
Nicklaus has always been able to stay relevant by redefining
himself. "Fat Jack," the rumpled and unsmiling Nicklaus of the
early '60s, gave way to the slimmer, personable, bangs-wearing
champion of the '70s. ("I had him wrong," said my father,
watching now on a color TV.) Only George Foreman, among modern
athletes, has a remade personality to rival Nicklaus's--and Jack
achieved his without blows to the head. More recently Nicklaus
has recast himself as the businessman who plays championship
golf in his spare time and senior golf only when it serves his
purpose. "I've tried to be a ceremonial golfer," he said when he
turned 50, "and I just can't do it." Now he says he not only
can, he will.
The task then, when Nicklaus tees it up at Oakland Hills, will
be to reign in the emotions, not let them fly. The storyline
should be the end of his streaks in the U.S. Open and the
majors, not the end of an era. Think Cal Ripken, not Lou Gehrig.
After all, the Bear hasn't had his last showdown with Lee
Trevino or Tom Weiskopf. It won't be the last time we hear some
fan yell, "Jack's back!" And knowing Augusta as intimately as he
does, it will be years before Nicklaus tees off for
photographers at dawn at the Masters.
Ceremonial status, to Nicklaus, may just be a blind from which
to ambush a few more milestones.
COLOR PHOTO: JOHN IACONO [Jack Nicklaus]
