We sit down with the legendary Jack Nicklaus to get his thoughts on the current state of the game, Greg Norman’s career, the future of the Australian Open and how his influential friendship with Kerry Packer nearly cost him another title.
There's no name more synonymous with greatness in our sport. Put simply, Jack Nicklaus is Mr Golf.
Nicklaus the man, the incredible player, the passionate course designer, the loving husband and the much-adored father of five and grandfather of 22.
He is the one man whose record Tiger Woods is yet to conquer. He's the man the sport regularly turns to for inspiration, information and solutions to problems affecting the modern game.
So when the rare opportunity arises to actually sit down with the 18-time major winner, you pack the dictaphone and spare batteries. Then, you pack a second dictaphone. Because this is going to be more than an interview you can't afford to lose. It's going to be an education… an education on the game of golf from the most influential headmaster in its steep history.
There's been thousands of stories and opinions written about Nicklaus over the years and thousands more to come.
I didn't want this to be just another Nicklaus story written by a scribe sitting behind a computer. I wanted Jack to tell it himself. For he is the man who wields the golf wisdom like he did with a putter - gun-barrel straight.
So I threw away my grand plans and kept it simple. I asked him about his time Down Under as a six-time Australian Open winner. I quizzed him about his friendship with Kerry Packer; where he thought the Australian Open was headed and whether Tiger would ever beat his major record. I even asked him if our very own cult hero Greg Norman was an underachiever given his Nicklaus-like talents.
Before all that, of course, I pressed 'record'.
How do you fill your days, Jack?
I don't play golf, that's for sure. I play golf about once a month, if I have to. Most of my time is taken up by business, or when I'm home its taken up a lot with my grandkids and their events. A lot of days are taken up by days like today (visiting the Australian Golf Club) getting the golf course to where I think it should be and making sure that the guys that I have down here, which are all quite capable of doing a very good job on their own, but if I'm the guy hired to do the job (redesign the course) I want to do it the way I want it, not the way someone else wants it. So that's why I come and why I'm a part of it and why I spend the time I do on it.
You've had a great relationship with our country over the years. What is your fondest memory of Australia?
I have several fond memories. I won the Australian Open six times, so that would have to be at the head of the list. I have a lot of friends from here and I have designed a few golf courses (The Heritage, The Australian and Lakelands). The relationship I had with Kerry Packer was a great relationship and I enjoyed his company and the things he got me involved in down here.
What sort of a friend was Kerry Packer?
Well I met Kerry when he was sponsoring the Australian Open. We met at the pro-am dinner and became friends and played a couple of times together. Then he asked me to re-do the The Australian, so I re-did the golf course here. He was involved with the cricket and I got to meet a few of the guys that he worked with on the cricket stuff. When they changed from the Test matches to the one-day cricket our company (laid the turf) for the fields and stadiums for it, so we became really great friends. Kerry was a founding member of the Muirfield Village club and a founding member of the Bear's Club. You were either Kerry's friend or you weren't. And if he was your friend you had a friend for life. He was a rough guy in many ways but he was also one of the most loyal people I ever met.
Can you recount how you landed that massive marlin off the coast of Australia on the eve of the 1978 Australian Open?
I did get a little marlin that one time. That was the year they said we were Lost At Sea, which was absurd. I wasn't even there yet but they had a little storm come through and turn the boat over and so forth. But that was the year I got, and I believe is still, the largest black marlin by measurement that's ever been caught.
For the record, how big was it?
Well by measurement it was 15½-feet long and 7½-feet on the girth and 39 inches at the tail measurement, which is the main measurement that goes all the way up through the fish. It took 6 hours and 25 minutes to reel in. (Luckily) I didn't have to play the next day because I couldn't move. That was on a Saturday and Tuesday I finally played and topped it off the first tee. That was a long week - I did a lot of silly things that week. I shot 74 the first round and was really ticked off and came back to Kerry's house - I was staying at his house - and (Bruce) Lietske and (Ben) Crenshaw were playing tennis. So Kerry says, "Let's take them on." So we took them on and I hurt my shoulder and I had my shoulder in a sling that night with an ice pack on it and some medicine in me. The next morning I didn't know if I was going to play or not but thought I gotta go try. So I went out and tried and shot 67 to end up winning the tournament. But there were all kinds of things (I got up to). I had a lot of great experiences here.
Which victory do you personally rate as your best Down Under?
I've never had any favourite of anything. I think all victories are fantastic. I never found one that was any better than another. I won three at The Australian, one at the Lakes and I won one at Lake Karrinyup in Perth and another in Hobart down in Tasmania.
As a course designer, is there a characteristic you would like to see improved around the world?
It changes so much. Equipment has had such a great influence on what we do. It has made it very difficult to design because the golf ball goes so far and the difference between how far an average golfer can hit compared to a good player makes it hard to design a course. I used to build from the back tees and just go up a little bit for each level of golfer. Now we basically design from the members' tees and make sure we have got it proper from the members' tees. After all, 98.2 per cent of golfers play from in front of the back tees. You can't design in increments going up. Now you just put in back 60 yards where the gorillas go.
The Australian Golf Club membership is the most unusual membership I've ever worked with. It's the only membership in the world that doesn't get older. Every year these guys go from (age) 70 to 71 but their golf game goes to 69. What I mean by that is, every time we go to a golf course people say, "We need to make it easier." Here, they don't want to make it easier, they want to make it tougher. These days I put the members' tees at about 6,500 yards. But here at The Australian they want to play at about 7,000 yards and want it longer. I said, "Guys, you're 70 years old." Basically what I'm saying is a compliment to them as a golf club because they are true die-hard golfers and they want their golf course to be the best and that makes it nice for me to design. It just confuses me because I always go to places where I'm making sure I'm not making it too difficult for the average member so they can enjoy the game. These guys here don't want to do that, they want to punish themselves. It's a membership of massachists.
We've heard a whisper about another Jack Nicklaus-course being given the green light in the NSW Hunter Valley. Can you shed some light on this and what we can expect to see coming our way?
All I can tell you is I went there probably six or seven years ago and they were getting the permits and I think they (now) have the permits and they keep telling us they are going to start. But I haven't heard anything.
What do you remember about your first round with Greg Norman? I believe he topped his drive off the first tee?
He did, he topped it right off the first tee, now the 10th tee at The Australian. He was 18 years old I think.
Norman was a relatively late bloomer, only starting to play the game regularly in his mid-teens. He won two majors and is the only Australian male to hold the world's No.1 ranking. Is Norman an underachiever or an overachiever?
It's not my place to comment on whether he is an under or overachiever. I would say that Greg won an awful lot of golf tournaments and a couple of majors. He had a lot of opportunities that were wrestled away from him at the end of the tournament - somebody else did something different to what he did. Does that mean he is an underachiever because of that? Not necessarily. That means that somebody just played better and he was on the unlucky end of the stick. He won at St Georges and Turnberry so he played very well at most of those tournaments. He had the opportunity to win the PGA Championship but Bob Tway knocked one in on him. Larry Mize chipped in on him in the Masters. Nick Faldo finished strong against him - that doesn't necessarily mean Greg did something wrong, but somebody else did something better.
That no doubt happened to you a few times in your 19 runner-up finishes in majors?
It did happen to me a couple of times, too. I think if I had one fault of Greg it would be that he spent too much time in Europe early in his career. I think had he come to the States earlier he would have won more. But you have to be comfortable when you're doing something and it was certainly not my call. That was his call and he certainly had a great career as a golfer that you can't really fault. But I think he lost an opportunity to win more had he come to America earlier.
How much time does Tiger have to beat your record of 18 majors and does he have exactly the will to win of Jack Nicklaus?
He's got a lot of time…probably 10 years or so. I would expect him to (beat my record). The talent is there, but he still has to do it. He's got to win more majors now than anyone who is playing golf has won in their career. He's got a great will to win. He's a great competitor.
Does Tiger Woods' personal conflicts illustrate the need for a stable home life if a professional golfer is to be successful?
For most people it has but I'm certainly not criticising anybody. I was a very fortunate. I had a great wife and a great family and golf was not my total life. My life was my family. Golf was just a game and I loved it, but I love my family more.
On a different topic, you didn't drink much while you were playing. Has that changed?
I wasn't a teetotaller. I didn't 'not drink', I just didn't drink while I was playing. These days I drink one glass of wine a week. If somebody is having a drink when I'm around, I do. If they don't, I don't. It's purely social.
What is the most serious issue the game has to address?
If you look at any guy who is past their prime, the game they played is far better then the game the guys play today, I don't care what athletes you ask. I loved the time I played. I loved the rules and equipment we played with. But does that make today's equipment and rules bad? No. It's just different to what I played with. It's just a different game and that's OK. I've been a little bit on my soapbox for years about the golf ball and I think finally the R&A and USGA are looking at it right now and I think they will probably end up doing something because (if they don't) we will run out of real estate, we're going to run out of water, chemicals, we'll run out of everything because everything is so long and it just doesn't need to be there. I think something will ultimately be done, for the good of the game, not tournament golf. Outside of that, I think the game is very healthy from a tournament standpoint. I think the game has its problems from the average golfer's standpoint. All over the world clubs are having a hard time existing today because of the economy. In the United States we've lost 23 per cent of the women playing the game since 2006. We've lost 36 per cent of our kids since 2006. And another astonishing fact that came from the National Golf Foundation was that if you don't start golf by the age of nine, 89 per cent of the people leave the game, which is ridiculous. Life changes because when I grew up we didn't have the park systems with kids playing sports. Here in Australia I see all these kids out here playing soccer and cricket and golf has not been part of that program. In the United States our middle-aged parents are not playing golf because they're spending their weekends with their kids playing soccer, basketball, baseball, football or lacrosse - they're playing all these sports. These kids start playing sports at four, five, six years old and by the time they are nine they've picked two or three sports and if golf isn't one of them they don't play it. So we've now got a big program trying to figure out how we can take the game of golf and introduce it into the park systems. The First Tee program has been a big part of that back home. That's basically bringing a lot of things for underprivileged kids and getting them into golf - kids who would normally never see the game. Using the soccer fields when they're available to play golf on, playing golf on the baseball fields when they're not being used for baseball… starting to create these team sports. Some of that will have traction. You see, the game of golf takes too long. All those other sports are played in less than three hours, whereas golf takes longer than that. Golf is expensive. Access to courses is very difficult for kids. We've got problems within the game we need to solve and I'm involved right in the middle of all those things with the American PGA and the USGA. I've been a traditionalist all my life and if I'm thinking out of the box, they're saying, "If Jack's thinking out of the box, maybe we should listen to that."
It will take some time and adjustment to get people to stop thinking that there is only one way and one game to play. We've even used a 12-hole golf course, 8-inch cups - a whole variety of things to encourage people to have fun. The seniors love it, the young kids love it and the ladies love it because they can get instant success. Is that golf? No, it's not golf but it's a form of recreation that is basically like golf and will ultimately lead to people going back to the regular game of golf. So there are many different things. It's a game I dearly love and has given me everything I have in life. I want to make sure it succeeds and want to be a part of the solution.
Somebody once asked Don Bradman if he was ever nervous when he went out to bat. He replied, "Why would I be nervous at something I'm good at." Did you feel pressure? And what is the moment in your career when you were most nervous?
First of all, Don Bradman was the only cricketer I ever knew. He took me to a cricket match in Adelaide. I was introduced to him and he explained the game to me and we sat down all afternoon and talked. We had a wonderful afternoon.
You can always get nervous at something you are good at, but if you prepared for something you're good at your nervousness goes away. I was always nervous, absolutely. But if I prepared myself I got over it very quickly. If I wasn't prepared and I wasn't ready to play and got myself into something I shouldn't get into and wasn't ready for it then I was nervous and I didn't play well. But I tried to never put myself into those positions. My wife has a saying, "There's no excuse for not being prepared." And I think she's dead right. If you're going to play in something, you prepare yourself. It's like this interview. If you're not prepared and asking me questions that are really dumb and stupid and you're not prepared, then all of a sudden you're nervous, right? [laughs]
You once declared the Australian Open as the 'Fifth Major'. Where does our Open currently sit in the pecking order of world golf?
We'll I don't know. I think it has changed a bit, unfortunately. To me it's always been one of the tournaments I wanted to win. I came down here every year to play in it because I looked at it that way. But (now) I think there are some other tournaments in the world that have grown beyond some other tournaments. The Australian Open would still be among the 10 best tournaments in the world because I think it's a great title, a great country, a great golfing nation. But there are so many World Golf Championships that have been put together by the tours bringing world players together that you would expect (the players) would look at being more significant. You only have to look at our Memorial tournament. We're having trouble keeping it at the level I want it to stay at because there are so many new tournaments that have been added (to the tour calendar).
What's the best piece of advice you have ever been given that you can share with Australian Golf Digest readers?
Well I don't know, but it was probably about my wife [laughs], who doesn't play golf at all. She is a very common sense-person and I think the best advice probably came from her and it is Just Be Yourself. If you know who you are and what you can do and what your limitations are, then you're always going to be better than everything in life.
10 THINGS YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN ABOUT JACK NICKLAUS
1. He won 118 tournaments worldwide during his illustrious career (including 18 majors)
2. For all of his successes, he only banked $5,723,192 in career prizemoney on the PGA Tour. (That ranks him xxxx on the all-time list)
3. He has scored 20 holes-in-one
4. His business ventures include course design, equipment, apparel, art and memorabilia, teaching academies, travel, wine, pens and the turf industry.
5. He has been a tournament runner-up on a staggering 58 occasions (19 in majors)
6. He shot 51 for nine holes in his first ever round of golf as a 10-year-old
7. In 2005 he was honored by President Bush at the White House with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour given to any US civilian.
8. Is a loving grandfather to 22 grandchildren
9. The black marlin he famously hooked off the coast of Australia on the eve of the 1978 Australian Open was an Aussie record at 15-feet, 6 inches in length and weighing in at a whopping 616 kilograms.
10. Jack's 'Golden Bear' moniker was born right here in Australia. Melbourne Age sportswriter Don Lawrence coined the nickname in the early 1960s during one of Nicklaus' first visits to this country, Lawrence was asked what he thought of the young star. Lawrence responded by saying Nicklaus looked like a big "cuddly, golden bear."
golflink.com.au