SPORT, July 1963
During the early rounds of the Masters Golf Tournament this spring, a Southern newspaperman approached Jack Nicklaus on the putting green at the Augusta National course and began peppering him with personal, impertinent questions.
“Are you aware of your public image?” the man asked.
Nicklaus stopped abruptly in the midst of his practice.
“Image—what do you mean, image?” Jack said.
“What people think of you,” the man said. “Did you know that most golf fans, especially those who have seen you on television, think you’re too conservative?”
Jack stood there, speechless, while the interviewer continued.
“Take the last hole in the Bing Crosby tournament at Pebble Beach,” the man said. “You used an iron for your second shot instead of going for the green with a wood, which you could have reached easily. So you wind up with a bogey and lose by a stroke to Bill Casper.”
Nicklaus angered. He may have been excused for completely ignoring the intruder or wrapping the putter around the man’s neck, but he demonstrated exceptional self-control.
“Have you ever played Pebble Beach?” Jack asked, with unconcealed irritation. “No. Well, neither have all those television fans.
“I have played Pebble Beach. I won the National Amateur there. And I'll tell you—if I had the same shot today, I’d make it the same way. It would be foolish to shoot for the green and risk going in the ocean.”
The inquisitive man pressed on. He reached over and tapped Nicklaus on his ample, barrel-like mid-section.
“Are you tough enough in here?” he asked.
By this time Nicklaus had become as intrigued as he was chagrined by this strange line of questioning, and his patience endured.
“What do you mean?” Jack said.
“Have you ever hit anybody?”
“Oh, I suppose so, when I was a kid.”
“Tell me, how many times? Have you hit one man? Have you hit two? Have you hit more? Have you ever been really sore?”
“I don’t know,” Jack, now flushed with anger, said. “If I haven’t, this might be a good time to start.”
The interviewer left.
“It burns me up,” Nicklaus said later, after putting on the green coat, symbolic of his first Masters championship. “Where do people get off saying I lack determination, that I need more competitive spirit or fire?
“How do they know? Competitive spirit is something inside a man. People have entirely different makeups. Just because I don’t jut out my jaw or jerk at my trousers, that doesn’t mean I don’t have any desire.
“I think I want to win as much as any man in golf—and my record should prove it.”
If there ever were any doubts of Nicklaus’ fighting qualities, they should have been dissipated by the unwavering determination he displayed in his magnificent Masters victory. A half-dozen rivals made a charge at him down the stretch at Augusta and at one stage on the final nine holes the formidable Sam Snead pushed two shots ahead, but Nicklaus never wavered. He went on to become the youngest man ever to win the title.
Today, at 23, he already has won the U.S. Open and the Masters—an achievement which many of the game’s great players fail to reach in an entire lifetime. Only Bob Jones could boast a parallel start at so tender an age.
Jack Nicklaus no longer is just the fat boy with the booming game, knocking at the door of Arnold Palmer’s throne room. No more can he be shrugged off as merely a threat or contender for No. 1 tournament honors. He definitely has arrived. He is here—to be reckoned with by any man aspiring to be the king of golf. No shadow is big enough—not even Palmer’s—to hide Nicklaus’ 205 pounds from the game’s blazing sun.
When the country’s top golfers tee off at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, June 20 for the 63rd U. S. Open Championship, the favorite for the first time in recent years will not be Palmer but, rather, young Nicklaus, seeking to become the sixth player in history and the first since Ben Hogan in 1950-51 to put Open championships back-to-back.
Just as the Augusta National course, site of the Masters, has become known as Palmer’s private “shooting preserve” because of his phenomenal success there, so the Open has developed into Jackie’s personal tee party.
Although the tournament is rotated around various courses, Nicklaus has the best scoring record of any of the Open competitors for the last three years. He has had consecutive finishes of second, fourth and first. For the 13 rounds of these three tournaments, including last year’s playoff victory over Palmer, he has averaged 70.7 strokes, a remarkable performance.
Ben Hogan holds the all-time Open scoring record with an average of 71.9 strokes for 70 rounds. Nicklaus’ overall average, dating back to 1957 when he played in his first Open at the age of 17, is 73.2, but since he reached golf maturity no one has been able to match his sizzling pace.
The Open at tradition-steeped Brookline, where an obscure Boston caddy named Francis Ouimet beat the great British stars Harry Vardon and Ted Ray 50 years ago, has added significance this year for Nicklaus.
It is the second leg on the professional Grand Slam, which includes the Masters, U. S. and British Opens and the U. S. PGA and which has become an obsession with Palmer, who has made it his golfing goal.
Nicklaus was asked, after winning the Masters, if he also had fixed his sights on the Grand Slam.
Jack’s round, German face broke into a broad smile and he replied: “I guess I’m the only one left with a chance this year.”
Elaborating later and pulling the curtain slightly on some of his golfing philosophy, Jack said he wasn’t interested in the Grand Slam, as such. He was interested to the degree that the Slam represented four major tournaments.
“I’m not concentrating on one tournament or on four,” he explained. “I want to win them all. I want to become the winningest golfer who ever lived. I want to be the best.’
They say—with his youth, power and mature approach to the game—that he should win 30 major championships before he reaches the end of the line.
Still, Nicklaus, for all his early success and apparently unlimited future, has not yet captured the imagination of the golfing public as did Bob Jones and Walter Hagen back in the Golden Twenties, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead in the Forties and Fifties, and Palmer in the Sixties.
The galleries still swarm after Palmer and Snead, going into ecstasy over their good shots and groaning with the bad. Nicklaus, even when he’s front-running such as at the last Masters, attracts only a handful of faithful followers. He has not yet cultivated a worshiping fan club to compare with the stampeding, demonstrative Arnie’s Army, but it is certain to come with mushrooming victories.
Nicklaus’ game is pure thunder, without the lightning. He lacks the fluid, rhythmic grace of Snead. He hasn’t the swaggering, easy-going course personality of Palmer. Once he applies himself to the task of fashioning pars and birdies, he is cold, grim, mechanical.
After sinking a three-foot putt on the final hole to win the Masters, Jack jerked off his white baseball cap and flung it in the air.
“For Nicklaus, that was like setting off a 21-gun salute,” said one observer.
On or off the course, Nicklaus doesn’t present an impressive image. He looks like anything but an athlete with 205 pounds generously padded over a 5-foot, 11½-inch frame. He has sandy-colored hair, a broad, jowly face and pleasant blue eyes. He is extremely heavy around the hips and thighs.
While an amateur, his Walker Cup teammates christened him “Baby Dumpling.” At Ohio State, where he completed all but a semester in his bid for a degree in economics, fraternity mates labelled him “‘Blob-o.” The pros on the tour kiddingly refer to him as “Ohio Fats.”
If any of this ever bothers Jack, no one would know it, He has an excellent temperament, with a slow anger trigger. He has a good sense of humor. On the course he may be a frigid machine—phlegmatic and withdrawn. Off it, he is loose and relaxed, becoming a boy again. He talks in a high-pitched, squeaky voice—incongruous with his hulking size.
Most of the tournament pros can be the epitome of good grace, conviviality and even gregariousness when things are going well but let them blow a round and you can approach them only at your own risk. They’ll grab their shoes and leave the course in a huff.
With Nicklaus it’s impossible to tell whether he’s just shot a 65 or an 80. His disposition never changes, a characteristic that was quite apparent at Troon, Scotland, last year when Palmer won his second straight British Open championship.
Nicklaus, who a month before had whipped Palmer in a playoff for the U. S. Open title, played miserably at Troon. He finished 29 strokes back of Palmer. It was enough to make a man want to go over to the dunes and slice his throat. Not Nicklaus. After the presentation ceremonies, Jack and his wife, Barbara, were found sitting at a table in the clubhouse, sipping iced tea.
Jack was laughing and kidding with those around him.
Spotting a friend from America, he waved and said, “Old Arn had it going for him today, didn't he?”
Nicklaus looks more like a weekend 90 shooter than a young man who is close to being the best golfer in the world. Because of his small hands and stubby fingers, he uses the old-fashioned inter-locking grip—the same as Gene Sarazen—instead of the almost universal overlapping grip. When he assaults the ball, he doesn’t do it with the flawless grace of a Jones, Nelson or Snead. His arms come back stiffly. His head sometimes bobs. His right elbow flies out from his body and his right knee forces the left side out of the way on the downswing. But the clubhead meets the ball as crisply and as solidly as it can be hit.
“One of the first things I learned when I became a pro is that style isn’t important,” Nicklaus says. “The idea is to get the ball out there and keep it moving. The difference in golf today and 15 years ago is that we don’t care so much how we look as how we score.
“As Byron Nelson said recently, everybody today is a home-run hitter. They’re not thinking so much about placing the ball as creaming it. You have to make birdies to win and you have to hit the ball to be in a position to get those birds.”
If Jack has a weakness, it probably is in putting. He is an excellent short putter but concedes something to some of his rivals, particularly fellows like Bill Casper and Art Wall, on the long, lag putts. Most of the modern pros are bold putters, always going strongly for the cup. Like Walter Hagen, Nicklaus is inclined to nurse his putts and let them die as they sneak up to the hole.
“I’ll admit Palmer is a better putter than I am,” Nicklaus once said. “He has had ten years longer to work at it.”
The records, however, do not fully bear this out. In the 1962 Open at Oakmont, Nicklaus three-putted only one of the 90 greens he played, including the 18-hole playoff. Palmer, on the other hand, three-putted ten. In the recent Masters, Nicklaus three-putted only once.
To some observers, there seems no way of keeping this beefy, powerful and imperturbable youngster from achieving heights in golf never reached before—not even by such men as Jones, Hogan and Palmer. Others see roadblocks which may trip up Jack’s climb to greatness.
The big factors in Nicklaus’ favor are: 1. Youth. 2. Power. 3. Mind. 4. Temperament. 5. Luck. Pushing against him are: 1. Weight problem. 2. Physical ailments. 3. Slow play. 4. Business diversions. 5. Easygoing attitude.
Like Jones, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, Nicklaus reached competitive maturity at an early age. He was playing in men’s tournaments and winning them at 15. He won the first of his two U.S. Amateur crowns at 19. He won the Open at 22 and the Masters at 23.
“Looking at Nicklaus makes me feel like an old man,” said Palmer, now 33. “Just think, he is only 23 and already has had about as much tournament experience as I have had. He has ten more years to go before he’s as old as I am today and he may be winning tournaments until he’s 50, like Snead.”
Palmer refers to Jack as “that big, strong, happy dude” and predicts Nicklaus’ future should be unlimited.
“He has everything going for him—youth, strength, wonderful poise,” Arnold added. “The only thing that could stop him would be lack of competitive desire. I don’t say this will happen in Jack’s case but it’s just one of the dangers of this business. You can get soft, satisfied and lazy—not hungry any more.”
In this age of brute strength in golf, they say players grab a course by the neck and beat it to death with a sledgehammer. No player beats it harder than Nicklaus. There’s not a golfer in the world, including Palmer and Snead, who can hit the ball farther or straighter off the tee. George Bayer can outdrive him on occasions, although not always, but Bayer, with his phenomenal length, suffers from wildness.
Not so, Nicklaus. He hits his drives an average of 280 yards, often reaching past 300 yards, and almost every tee shot is hung on a clothes line. He rarely misses a fairway.
Because of his high, soaring drives, Nicklaus was asked once if he could achieve the same effect in a severe wind storm—could he keep the ball low in the gusts?
“I don’t have to,” Jack replied casually. “The way I hit the ball, I can bore it into the wind.”
Frequently a man overloaded with power sacrifices something in finesse, but this is not true with Nicklaus. They call him the “Big Hogan” because of the mechanical, systematic manner in which he plays a course. Once he steps onto the first tee he seems to lock himself inside an invisible isolation booth. He goes into a trance of concentration. He shuts himself off completely from distracting outside influences.
This is in direct contrast to Palmer, who carries on a running conversation with the galleries no matter how intense the pressure. It is more in the tradition of Hogan who, tight-lipped and with his familiar white cap pulled low over his eyes, often played a full round without saying more than two words to his partner: “You're away.”
Nicklaus hasn't yet conformed to the trend toward dapper dressing styles. He wears loose-fitting shirts and slacks normally of conservative grey. A white baseball cap is pushed back over his reddish crew-cut. His face is a mask of deep thought. During the course of a round, he rarely says a word. He hardly ever smiles. His pressures may be measured by the depth of the furrows on his frowning brow.
He is one of the coolest and most calculating competitors the sport has known. If he is conscious of mounting tensions or the antics of the people in the gallery, he never shows it. If he has a panic button, he has never pushed it.
“This boy has an iron pipe running through his head from one ear to the other,” says Gene Sarazen. “‘Everything that’s said goes in one ear and out the other.”
In the U. S. Open playoff last year against Palmer, after each had finished the regulation 72 holes tied at 283, Nicklaus had to contend with the stamping, tugging, yelling antics of the Palmer followers: “Arnie’s Army.” They were out in particularly heavy force in the 1962 Open because Oakmont is only about 30 miles from Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. The men wore hand-made signs on their hats: “Go get ‘em, Arnie.” The girls had “Arnie Baby” crocheted on their sweaters. They screamed wildly every time Palmer made a good shot and they groaned when he missed one. After Palmer hit, they never waited for Nicklaus. They stormed on to the next green.
The Army’s antics became so flagrant and so reprehensible that Palmer himself was embarrassed and frequently admonished his followers to be quiet while Nicklaus was making his shot. Jack never once gave a hint that he was aware of the stampeding herd. Looking neither to the left nor right, he shot a 71 in the playoff and beat Palmer by three strokes.
Once, while playing in the World Amateur Championship matches at Merion, Pennsylvania, Jack bent low over a four-foot putt on the final green of the final round. Just as he prepared to bring back his club, his cap toppled and fell at his feet. He never paused. He stroked the ball—and sank it.
In the tension-packed final round of the Masters this spring, Nicklaus was walking to the 13th green when he heard a great roar go up ahead of him. It had been brought by Snead’s nailing his second straight birdie to go two strokes ahead. Nicklaus had just bogeyed the short 12th to fall behind. The crowd was definitely pulling for the 50-year-old, very popular Snead. It was enough to shake a lesser man.
“I was really worried at this stage,” said Charlie Nicklaus, Jack’s father. “I thought this might jar Jack up. But as Jack walked toward the 13th tee, he gave me a little high sign with his hand and winked as if to tell me ‘Don’t worry, Pop, everything will be all right.’ It was, too. Jack got his bird at No. 13, ran in a long putt at No. 16, and that was it.”
Papa Nicklaus said he believes his famous son thrives on pressure.
“I think close tournaments like this are tougher on Dad than on Jack,” Charlie said. “Jack doesn’t seem to have a nerve in his body.
“Did you know on the day of the Open playoff, we had to wake him up at a quarter-to-eleven to get him out to the course? I would have thought he would be so edgy that he couldn't sleep. But he was perfectly relaxed, dead to the world, when we awakened him.”
It is quite possible that what some may interpret as lack of fire and spirit in young Nicklaus’ competitive makeup may actually be tremendous calm and composure. He is an exasperatingly slow player. Many of his opponents, including Palmer, are constantly criticizing him for his indolent pace. Like Hogan, Nicklaus walks off every course in practice rounds before the tournament and makes a chart of every hole. This, he contends, is intended to take the guess work out of the game. Whereas Hogan memorized distances, Nicklaus ots down landmarks and various yardages on scorecards which he carries in his hip pocket. After hitting a shot, he’ll pull out the cards, refer to his notes and tell himself he has a shot of, say, exactly 176 yards to the green.
“Hogan was smarter than I am—that’s why I have to write down the distances,” Nicklaus says. “I probably could memorize them if I wished but I don’t see any point in it. This way, I can concentrate on other parts of my game,”
The constant chart-cheek adds to Nicklaus’ slowness of play. He thinks out every shot before executing it. He refuses to be pushed or hurried. On the putting green, Nicklaus hunches over the ball like a frozen grizzly bear. He keeps his head low and his knees together, knock-kneed fashion. He strokes the ball well forward. He has an unusually gentle touch for a man of his size. This is his style and he is quick to defend it.
“It’s ridiculous for anybody to tell someone else how long they should take to make a living,” he says. “I’m not the only slow player in golf and I’m not the first. Ben Hogan was very slow. So was Cary Middlecoff. There have been others.”
Nicklaus scoffs at suggestions that his promising career may be jeopardized by his tendency toward slow, meticulous play; his easy-going attitude, his weight problem or his growing business interests.
“I think my nerves should last longer than most players simply because of the temperament I have,” he says. “I don’t tense up much and I am able to relax easily. As for my weight, it’s true I have gone up to 230 pounds but by strict discipline and diet I can keep close to 200. That doesn’t worry me.
“Now about my business interests, I have a long way to go before I become so financially secure that I don’t feel compelled to win any more. Money means a great deal to me naturally, because I have a family to support, but I am more interested in winning tournaments. I think if I can win enough tournaments, the money will follow as a natural course.”
In his first year as a professional last year, Nicklaus made more money than any freshman pro in history. He may have set a first-year record that will never be surpassed. His official PGA money winnings amounted to $61,868.95, placing him third behind Arnold Palmer’s $81,488.33 and Gene Littler’s $66,200.83, but his unofficial golf earnings reached $112,933.59, topping everybody. This included the $50,000 first prize he won for beating Palmer and Gary Player of South Africa in the rich World Series of Golf television match at Akron, Ohio.
Jack’s income last year probably totaled $250,000, counting his money from endorsements, exhibitions, television, appearances, instructional articles, club affiliations, ete. His business affairs are handled by the young Cleveland attorney, Mark McCormack, who also looks after the myriad enterprises of Palmer and Player.
Asked recently if he thought winning golf tournaments might cease to be a thrill and an incentive for him by the time he reaches 30, Nicklaus managed a grin and replied:
“I hope I have the opportunity of getting bored from winning so many tournaments. T’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
If Nicklaus’ brilliant career is to be cut short, the axing blow may come from physical ailments, which only providence can control. Jack is troubled by a chronic hip ailment, a form of bursitis on the left side which results in cramps and tension of muscles. He also has foot troubles stemming from unusually high arches.
The hip ailment knocked him off the tour shortly before the Masters this year and sent him home where he spent two weeks taking hydro-cortisone injections and hot baths. He was in pain and limping when he reported to the Augusta National club, and concerned lest the layoff should have dulled the sharpness of his game.
“For about two weeks the doctor told me not to swing a club,” he says. “Then, at the Masters, he told me to go ahead and give it a try. Strangely, the hip didn’t bother me when I swung a club but it hurt when I walked.
“Mainly, I was worried because I had never made a real good showing in the Masters. The first three times I played, I was an amateur, coming to Augusta right out of school. I wasn’t ready to play against the pros, who were hot off the tour. Then, last year was my first year as a pro. I was pressing and trying too hard. Maybe my bum hip was a help. It kept my mind off my golf.”
When not on tour, Jack lives the life of a normal suburbanite in a modest, green-shuttered Cape Cod house in Upper Arlington, Ohio, on the outskirts of Columbus. He was married in 1960 to pretty, blonde Barbara Bash, his college sweetheart at Ohio State. They have two children—the youngest born a few days after Jack's Masters victory this spring.
At home Nicklaus is not much different than any other young father. He putters around the house. He plays handball four times a week to keep his weight down. He plays bridge—his favorite form of relaxation—with neighbors. He drives over to the Scioto Club for practice and a few tips from the only pro from whom he has ever taken a lesson, Jack Grout.
Jack was born January 21, 1940, in Columbus. It was only natural that he and his sister, Marilyn, born three years later—should take part in sports. L. Charles Nicklaus, their father, had played football, baseball and basketball at Ohio State and had taken a brief fling with the pro-football Portsmouth Spartans. He also had won the Columbus city tennis championship and had set two course records on municipal golf layouts.
Jack, like his dad, was a natural athlete. He played football, baseball and basketball on the playgrounds and in school. He was the star quarterback on the gradeschool team—a fine passer and a good runner. He also ran the 100- and 220-yard dashes on the track team.
Jack was only ten, a slender, tow-headed youngster, when the elder Nicklaus took him to Scioto and put a set of golf clubs in his hands. They played nine holes, and Jack shot a 51, “By the time he was 12, he was beating me regularly,” the father recalls.
One day when the two were playing together, Papa Nicklaus hit one of his best drives. The ball sailed and came to rest about 250 yards from the tee. “Beat that one and I'll buy you a Cadillac,” the father said to his young son. Jack beat it. By 20 yards.
“I never bet him or outdrove him again,” Jack’s father says. Jack didn’t hold his dad to his wager but collected the price over and over again from him in the succeeding years. Jack's father, a prosperous Columbus pharmacist, is said to have spent more than $35,000 for Jack’s lessons, equipment and tournament expenses.
Jack was enrolled in pro Jack Grout’s junior classes at Scioto and soon became the star pupil for the rugged Texas instructor, whose formula was “hit the ball with all you’ve got and learn style later.”
Jack shot in the middle 90s during his first year of golf, got down to 81 his second year and by the time he was 13 was breaking 80 regularly.
Nicklaus was only 15 when he qualified for his first National Amateur Championship, and this was a decision that made a major change in his life. “Jack was out for football and he liked it very much,” his father says. “If he qualified for the National Amateur and played in the tournament, he would have to pass up football. The dates conflicted. After a great deal of debate. Jack decided he’d rather take a fling at golf.”
The 1955 National Amateur was played over the James River course of the Country Club of Virginia, and it’s a tournament young Nicklaus probably never will forget. Bob Jones, who also had qualified for the Amateur at 15 and who went on to become one of the fabulous figures of golf, visited Richmond for the event and made a special point to look at the sensational prodigy from Ohio, Jack had a bad day.
“I was playing Bob Gardner in the first round,” Jack recalled later, ‘‘and I was one-up after the first ten holes. As I was getting ready to drive on No. 11, I noticed Mr. Jones in the gallery coming up the hill.
“I proceeded to bang my drive into the woods. On the 12th, I sculled my approach over the green and really goofed up the 13th. I had messed up three straight holes and hadn’t had a single par. I really felt miserable. Then I saw Mr. Jones, who apparently had seen enough, take off for the club house.”
Jack had no reason to be embarrassed, although Jones had not waited around to watch him ultimately tie up the mateh and then lose it on the final hole.
“Although I didn’t see the boy at his best, I was greatly impressed,” Jones said later. “It was obvious to me that he had considerable talent and composure. I was impressed with his beautiful swing.”
Jones, who wrote a letter to Nicklaus in 1961 urging him to remain amateur, said he felt Jack was destined to be one of the all-time great champions in the game’s history.
“He is a fine youngster with everything going for him,” Jones said, “He has power, control, a good short game, I don’t see how he can miss. I don’t take any stock in the talk that he may lack the competitive urge. We all have different personalities which project themselves in different ways. Certainly, you can’t question the fighting qualities of one with such an outstanding record as Nicklaus.”
Nicklaus won the Ohio Open, beating some outstanding pros, at the age of 16 and then proceeded on a brilliant amateur career. He played in seven National Amateur Championships, qualifying for every one easily. He won two of them.
But despite his meteoric start as a teenager, Nicklaus must have wondered if he, like Jones, was destined to persevere through “seven years of want” before reaching his “seven years of plenty.” He did little of consequence in 1957 and 1958, but, as people knew they soon had to, things started popping for young Nicklaus in 1959—when he was 19. Selected as a member of the U.S. Walker Cup team, he helped spearhead a 9-3 victory over the British at Muirfield, Scotland, winning both his assignments. He compiled an outstanding record, losing only one of his 30 matches.
In 1960 Nicklaus finished second in the U.S. Open at Denver’s Cherry Hills Club, his 282 putting him only two shots back of the victorious Palmer. It was the highest finish for an amateur in the Open since 1933.
Nicklaus made another strong run at the Open in 1961 at Oakland Hills in Birmingham, Michigan, shooting 75-69-70-70 for 284 and fourth place, three shots behind the winning Gene Littler. He also won the National Amateur at Pebble Beach and helped the United States capture the America’s Cup against Canada and Mexico at Monterrey, Mexico.
It was while he was playing at Monterrey that word leaked out prematurely that Jack had been approached by persons seeking to get him interested in a professional career. A month or so later, he became a pro.
“I was criticized for playing in Mexico,” Nicklaus said later. ‘‘There were reports that I had already decided to become a pro and that I was playing in the America’s Cup just to give me more prestige.
“That isn’t true at all. I will admit that the suggestion had been made to me, but I had not made up my mind. I am telling the absolute truth when I say that I did not fully make up my mind until five days before the announcement was made.”
Nicklaus said he had asked Mark McCormack, the lawyer and business manager for Palmer’s affairs, to present him some figures showing what he might be expected to make as a pro in the next few years.
“I really debated,’ Jack said. “But I was in a real stew. I was trying to do three jobs at once. I was trying to go to school. I was trying to keep up my insurance business. And I was trying to play golf. I wasn’t doing justice to any of them.
“So I decided I would concentrate on golf, I know there was some disappointment from people who wanted me to remain amateur. But I figured this was the best for me and my family.”
Jack hit the winter tour in January, 1962, making his first pro start in the Los Angeles Open, Co-favored with Palmer and Player, he finished in a tie for 50th place and collected $33.33. Tournament after tournament, he failed to live up to expectations.
Nicklaus gradually began edging up closer to the front at the cashier windows and in the rich Thunderbird Classic at Upper Montclair, New Jersey, the week before the Open, he finished second to Gene Littler. This provided him an impetus for the Open at Oakmont.
Palmer, who had won his third Masters title two months before, was heavily favored. Littler stepped off to the first-round lead. Then a fight developed, with Palmer and Nicklaus finishing in a tie at 283.
The bulk of the huge gallery of 10,000 was openly for Palmer when the playoff began, “Go get him, Arnie!” ‘We're with you, Arnie baby!” they yelled as they tugged and tore over the massive course. Nicklaus never once showed a sign of pique or nervousness.
He took the lead at the first hole after Palmer bogeyed and, playing steady, almost flawless golf, increased his advantage to four strokes through the eighth. Palmer suddenly rallied with a blast-hot putter and sliced Nicklaus’ lead to a single stroke with six holes to play.
“Let's go—we’ve got him,” Arnie’s Army hooted in mad glee, and Oakmont became suddenly charged with electric excitement.
It’s the sort of situation which can shake even the strongest men, but Nicklaus refused to be budged. He won the playoff by three strokes—71 to 74.
“I didn’t get scared,” Nicklaus recalled later. “I just told myself not to be an idiot. When Palmer starts moving, most people get flustered and start making bogeys. I told myself just to keep playing my own game—and I did.”
In the Masters, Jack was faced with almost the same situation when Snead started making his surge on the final holes, moving two shots ahead of Nicklaus, who had led at the three-quarter point. Jack stood off pressure from Snead, Tony Lema, Julius Boros, Dow Finsterwald and Ed Furgol to win by a stroke.
Reminded later that he had played almost two complete rounds without a birdie and had run up a streak of 18 straight pars over the latter part of the third round into the early part of the last round, Jack was asked if he had purposely played conservative golf.
“I never play conservatively,” Nicklaus replied. “It’s suicide if you do it in this business. If you get too cautious, some guy behind you will knock in two birdies and you'll find yourself in trouble.
“No, sir, I’m always going for birdies. If I don’t get them, it’s because my putts are not dropping—not because I’m not going for them.”
Nicklaus said he’d be going for birdies also in the Open at Brookline. “Arnie will, and so will Gary Player and the others. It’s the kind of game we play nowadays —to heck with style, get that score.”
This will not be Jack's first meeting with the famed course of the Country Club in big-time competition. He played there in the U. S. Amateur in 1957—at the age of 17—and won three matches before losing to Dick Yost of Edgewater, Oregon, 3 and 2.
“I played very well,” Jack said. “I lost although I had a medal score of 69. It’s a good golf course. Not as tough as Oakmont or Oakland Hills, but a real hard test.
“Of course, they have toughened the course considerably since the Amateur and changed it around a bit. They’ve eliminated the first and second holes and put a hole between No. 4 and No. 5 somewhere. Some of the par-four holes you can almost drive. I played it again not so long ago just to see how it had been changed.”
Nicklaus was asked if an Open victory meant more to him than the Masters. “No, not at all,” he replied. “The Tournament that means the most to me is the one I am playing in at the time. When I'm playing in the Open, it’s the Open. When I’m playing in the Masters, it’s the Masters.
“My ambition is to win them all.”