When Father Time taps you on the shoulder there’s no escaping the call.
He doesn’t delay the inevitable for anyone who reaches a certain stage of their life. The trick is to embrace him and get the best out of what is left.
Which doesn’t make it easy for us to watch. Then again, who said life is a spectator sport?
Jack Nicklaus is considered by many to be the greatest golfer who has ever lived. A personal opinion is that the mythical title belongs to Tiger Woods, but it’s not an argument I’d fight deep into the night. Nicklaus won 18 Majors and Tiger won 15. Unquestionably, it’s them, and then there are the rest.
Nicklaus is now 83 years old. He has already outlived his father, Charlie, by 27 years. Jack was a member of golf’s original ‘Big Three’, the other being Arnold Palmer, who died at 87, and our own Gary Player, who is also now 87 and who still shoots his own age on the golf course at least five times a week.
Player and Nicklaus were again Honorary Starters at this year’s Masters with Tom Watson, a veritable spring chicken at 73. All three got off the tee down the middle, but for Jack it was as if the ball had been propelled out of a pea-shooter and he genuinely seemed pleased to have just made clean contact.
Behind-the-scenes footage of him preparing to get The Masters underway was shown after the event and it reminded us just how unsentimental Father Time is. Nicklaus, with his wife of 63 years Barbara a constant at his side, attempted to ham it up for those watching the legend.
His backswing extends to somewhere between his hip and shoulder level and he suffers from inflammation that is arthritic in nature. Last year he confessed to playing only two full rounds of golf.
‘I love golf, but I can’t play it any more. Maybe if I played more I’d still be able to play. But my body is such that it doesn’t like me any more and so I just accept it. When you’ve got inflammation everywhere, you just can’t move.’
The footage showed the American attempting a few stretches and warm-ups, just to get loose enough to swing the club and make contact with that golf ball. While hitting a few practice chips – ‘each one is going a little further than the previous one’ – he said, ‘Hey look, I made a divot… the only trouble is that I’m really worried about making a divot on the tee box.’
And then, when he got to the tee box and accepted the loving applause from the spectators, he said quietly to his wife, ‘Pass me a ball please. I hope I only need one.’ Nicklaus won The Masters six times, the first in 1963 and the final one, and last of his 18 Majors, in 1986 at the age of 46. He inspired a generation and remains one of sport’s most revered legends.
There is no harm in growing old but for those who were in the generation who watched him in all his glory, it would have been a little bit like chopping onions to see him on the tee box at this year’s Masters. We just don’t expect our heroes to grow old. Here’s hoping, though, that we see Nicklaus, Player and Watson at Augusta for many more years to come.
– This column first appeared in the June 2023 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
