It is being asked frequently these days, and everytime I hear it I want to ask the person, how old are you?  Before we anoint Tiger Woods atop the Golf world, not just in the present, but for all time, lets take a trip down memory lane. Lets all go out and rent the video, one more time, or for the first time if you haven't already, of the 1986 Masters. It is always such a subjective thing to claim supreme reign over an entire sports landscape and it makes it even more difficult if you are not old enough to have perspective. Now those of you who are in the know will find this redundant but Jack Nicklaus won the Masters in 1986, long after even Nicklaus apologists, which by that time, was just about everybody who loved golf, had given his game, and days in the sun their mournful eulogies. Even at the ripe old (competitive) age of 46 years, with his astounding late charge on the back nine at Augusta, including a shocking eagle at 15, of which at the time he badly needed, to maintain momentum, Jack rendered the likes of Seve Ballesteros, Greg Norman, Tom Kite and others, to mere role players for one of his greatest triumphs and certainly put a magnificent finishing touch on one of the great careers, not only in golf, but in all of sports by shooting 29 on the back nine on route to that victorious final round 64.

Now for me one of one of the most significant and amazing ways in which Jack Nicklaus displayed his amazing resolve, talent, and competitive character was a major in which he didn't win. The year was 1977 and it was across the pond at Turnberry during the British Open, locked in a duel with Tom Watson, with these two golf gods, leaving the entire field in the dust. They were tied at the halfway mark with Jack finishing 65-66 on Saturday and Sunday.  The two were paired the final two days, and Jack saw Tom match him shot for shot minus one, going 65-65. But the real story was how the last hole was played by each but particularly Nicklaus. Watson ripped a drive right down the middle clinging to a 1 shot lead, and hit an 8 iron to about 3 feet. The golden one, who once distinguished rough conditions at some British Open courses as such that if you hit your ball offline in some places, then put your bag down to look for it, you might lose your bag, but worse yet were the places where if your caddy was short and came in to help look for your bag you might lose him too, had seemingly hit it into the latter.  Those of us who were lucky (and) old enough to witness this on T.V., will probably never forget the mighty swing Nicklaus took with a 5 iron, leaving mud, and grass about 2 feet in length clinging to his club positioned behind his back in his finishing pose. The result, was the Nicklaus will, which was to ignore physics as we mere mortals know it, and somehow get his ball to the front of the green some 30+ feet from the hole. I'll bet even those of you who don't know the outcome can guess what Nicklaus did from there. Yep, you guessed it, he canned the put and made Watson stand over his 3 footer to win. (Which at the time was automatic for Watson, whose yips came many, many, years later.)

One of the differences between Tiger and Nicklaus for me is that Tiger just demolishes the field and is rarely tested in the way Nicklaus was.  I think this is in part due to the fact that Jack's career crossed the paths of more great players. Lets try name dropping. David Duvall, Phil Mickelson, Jose Maria Olazabal, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia. Nice players to be sure but now it's Jack's turn. Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros, Johnny Miller. In my humble opinion, case closed on that issue.  Oh and Jack had his whipping boys too.  Poor Tom Weiskopf sure comes to mind.

One thing they do have in common is their ability to intimidate an entire field. Almost a tie but the nod goes to Jack because of who he was intimidating.  Go back and re-read the names in the prior paragraph.

Another big difference was their career paths. And in this case it is more advantage Tiger in the sense of how his career has been shaped and the scrutiny he has had to endure. I liken his career path more on an arc like Wayne Gretzky, in the sense that he has been a celebrity/prodigy since childhood. For example Gretzky posed with the man he would surpass as the all time scoring leader, Gordie Howe, in a picture at 10 years of age, and scored a truly unearthly sum of 378 goals in 68 games that same year. Similarly, Tiger was on the Mike Douglass show at 5 years of age hitting golf balls and I as I understand, marshmallows, into the mouth of Frank Sinatra. He was shattering records for his age at 10 years old. Tiger won 3 national junior amateur titles, and 3 U.S. amateur titles and like Wayne Gretzky, has impossibly, not only lived up to expectations thus far, and standards, set by only himself and a few greats of the past, but actually, to some degree, exceeded them. Jack Nicklaus on the other hand became a national figure after winning consecutive U.S. Amateur championships, although he immediately became a threat on the professional scene after almost winning the US open at Cherry Hills, as an amateur.  (Arnold Palmer's only U.S. Open title with his famous charge from 7 back, most of the ground being made up on the final nine.)  Nicklaus truly forged his legend as a professional, not to mention the staggering total of18 majors.

I guess it is unfortunate for me that I was never able to watch great players like Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan but to the testament of Bobby Jones himself, who said of Nicklaus.  "He plays a game of which I am unfamiliar."  But to counter with an argument for Tiger,  Jack himself has said that Tiger will probably break many or all of his records and could win 10 Masters alone. 

In the end I am just saying lets wait till the end...

There is the very large probability that in about 20 years if I am still here and observing the golf scene I will be writing this very same article all over again stating, " yeah, you think so and so is the greatest who ever played, well just hold on there, you young and non-initiated masses, let me tell you about my empirical experiences about a guy named Tiger Woods. You just never got a chance to watch him play in his prime. Oh and now that I have your attention, I am really reaching back now but let me regale a few stories about another guy you might have heard of... His name was Jack Nicklaus."

 

JP

* With each Major victory, Tiger appears to be on his way to making editorial opinions like this one a laughable afterthought i.e. his U.S. Open victory on June 16th.  But I don't think that it would be raining on his parade to say, that we should let Tiger write history rather than have the media pre-anoint the man and his career achievements before the fact...

JP