Golden Bear given signal honour

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This article was published 14/06/2012 (5180 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAN FRANCISCO — Jack Nicklaus has received pretty much every kind of honour there is in golf, but the Golden Bear looked more than usually touched by the USGA’s decision, announced here Wednesday, to present all future U.S. Open champions with the Jack Nicklaus Medal.

“It’s really pretty,” the four-time U.S. Open, two-time U.S. Amateur champion said Wednesday, admiring the medal. “We had a little fun with it. The first time it came back, it looked like I needed a haircut, so we got one.

“It was always something thrilling to me to be able to have the opportunity to win a couple of Amateurs, win a couple of Seniors and win four of the U.S. Opens. And to have the medal today being named after me is pretty special.”

The organization also will build a Jack Nicklaus wing onto its Golf House museum in Far Hills, N.J., and is co-producing a one-hour feature film on Nicklaus’ career.

“His career is a highlight film of the U.S. Open,” said USGA president Glen Nager. “And for us, there was no greater honour we could think to give him and recognize the contributions that he’s made to the game and to history than to name the medal that we give the winner every year, because the winner gets to take the medal and keep it.”

Nicklaus held court for nearly an hour in the media centre with his usual mixture of amazing recall and great storytelling.

His first USGA event, he said, “I had the 7 (a.m.) starting time in the Junior Championship at Southern Hills in 1953. I was 13 years old. I was the youngest player in the championship.

“I’ll never forget walking up on the first tee, about 30 seconds before my starting time, and on the tee was (longtime USGA executive director) Joe Dey and Colonel Lee S. Reed in his white suit with his little goatee — he looked like the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy — but anyway… I walked on the tee about 30 seconds before I teed off and Joe Dey said, ‘Young man, you’ll be starting the second tee, 1-down.’ That was my introduction to USGA golf. I promise you, I was never late for another starting time.”

Asked how he would compare his first major, the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont, with his last, at Augusta in 1986, he said they were “a couple of years apart.

“One, I was a young kid and the other I was 46, an old man,” he said. He was 22 years old when he won at Oakmont.

“I had no idea that Arnold Palmer lived anywhere near there or anything else about Arnold. Arnold was a friend and we’d played a lot of golf together, but a 22-year-old doesn’t have much of a brain anyway, sort of goes along and whatever happens, happens.

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“In ’86 when I won the Masters, you know, I was basically beyond my career and nobody thought I could win the golf tournament, including me. And getting myself in contention, I remembered how to play, and that was unbelievably exciting, to be able, at 46, to control your emotions, control your golf club and your golf ball enough to enable you to compete against the best in the world, which you hadn’t competed well against for a couple of years.

“So they are two totally different things. One is you’ve got this young kid growing up and trying to figure out how to become a player. And the other one is you’ve got this older guy who has forgotten how to be a player and trying to remember again.”

— Postmedia News