Sunday, June 06, 1999
Time cannot fade Jack's legend
BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
DUBLIN, Ohio — Jack Nicklaus is 59 years old, and as he scaled the steep slope between the ninth green and the 10th tee, he looked every one of them. “Nasty little hill, isn't it?” he said to Fuzzy Zoeller, his playing partner.
“At 59, I imagine it is,” shot back Zoeller, who is 47.
“You're not far away, pal,” Nicklaus said.
It isn't easy walking 18 hilly holes of golf on a ceramic left hip. Nicklaus would say later that everything on him hurt, except the hip. It showed, if only a little. But 59 is 59. Nicklaus' body is losing to gravity. His sun-carved face is splotched with red. It looks to have the texture of a catcher's mitt.
Nicklaus is starting to assume the same shoulder hunch we associate with Arnold Palmer. Maybe it comes with all that legend-bearing.
No, he's not the same ...
On the 11th hole Friday, a 539-yard par-5 — “an inviting hole to gamble on,” Nicklaus wrote in a handbook for Memorial galleries — Nicklaus hit a 2-iron off the tee.
You aren't gambling at No.11 with a 2-iron. You are playing it cozy and thinking two-putt par. “It's the right club for me if I'm not going to get it” to the green in two strokes, Nicklaus told his caddie. Ten years ago, maybe five, Nicklaus hits his driver there.
He has exercised every day for the last decade, even in the hours before his hip replacement surgery last Jan.27. Even the day after surgery, when doctors told him he'd be playing again by the end of July.
After the surgery, Nicklaus gave himself a 1-in-50 chance of competing in the Memorial, the tournament he created. He gave himself less of a chance to survive the cut. He builds golf courses now. He doesn't play them.
But here he is, still and again, the Eternal Jack playing today in the final round at Muirfield Village. His gallery will be enormous.
“I'm very encouraged with my golf swing,” he said after the 74 he shot Friday.
“You don't really expect to score well, do you?” asked someone who didn't know him very well.
“Sure,” Nicklaus said. “That's why I'm out here.”
... but he's still Jack
Some columns you write because you have to, some because you want to. Others you write just because. This is one of those.
I watch Nicklaus the way some people watch Casablanca,without regard to time or circumstance. I watched him win the U.S. Open in 1980, a year after his career seemed to ebb. I watched him win the Masters six years later, at age 46. It was the last time the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
In '97, I watched him make a Sunday charge at the Masters that was so improbable, it seemed scripted. Jack at 57, challenging in a major. Yours, eternally.
I watched him Friday. I'm thinking it felt like Yankees fans, watching DiMaggio.
“Par or better would be good for me,” Nicklaus said after shooting two-over for the second straight day. “I shouldn't have been any higher than that.”
Golf takes it easy on its stars. They slip seamlessly from the regular Tour to the Senior Tour. They endure like no other athletes. Imagine watching Michael Jordan play basketball for 40 years.
Nobody has dominated his sport the way Nicklaus dominated golf. He spent 30 years knowing he could win. That's not incredible. It's ridiculous.
By the time Nicklaus was 27, the same age David Duval is now, Nicklaus had won six majors; Duval has none. At 23, Tiger Woods has one major title; Nicklaus had three. Golf's endless search for superstars is nothing more than a futile hunt for the next Jack.
“I'm not tired,” Nicklaus said Friday. “I played 36 holes in two days. I could play another 18 right now.”
He bogeyed the last hole. From the fringe, Nicklaus hit a 20-foot pitch 15 feet past the hole. This is what 59 looks like.
He's playing today, though. Pros 30 years his junior are not. Jack Nicklaus, eternally yours.
Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
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