Jack Nicklaus turned 60 last Friday and is almost exactly a year over hip-replacement surgery. But there's no hint that he may be ready to slow down. In fact, the Bear returned to action in the Seniors Mastercard championship in Hawaii last weekend when he finished tied 34th behind the winner George Archer and six strokes adrift of Christy O'Connor Jnr, who was tied 19th.
His next assignment, at Mauna Lani Resort in Hawaii on Saturday, is the first Senior Skins Game of the new millennium, which, appropriately, will be rather special. It brings together for the last time, Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player who, while renewing friendly rivalry, will be competing for prize money of $600,000.
They happen to be the quartet who actually launched the skins game format in 1983 when, with Palmer leading on $100,000 playing the 17th, Player sank a four-footer worth $150,000 to capture the title and $170,000.
With combined career earnings of more than $27 million, the four have amassed more than 300 career victories, including 45 major championships. But with Palmer heading for his 71st birthday in September, this is to be their swansong.
Looking at the broader picture, however, Nicklaus, for his part, is actually stepping up the pace. "I plan to play all the regular tour majors and all the senior majors this year, and probably a fair number of tournaments on each tour," he said. It means that next week he will be on the Monterey Peninsula for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in which he will have his 36-year-old son Steven as an amateur partner. Even more interesting is that the field will also include the Bear's professional son Gary, who has earned exempt status. Nicklaus's return to the "majors" are obviously to be welcomed, especially as the British Open is back at St Andrews, where he captured the title in 1970 and again in 1978 and which holds such precious memories for him. Gently overlooking personal wealth, estimated at about $250 million , he made the interesting admission: "I certainly haven't made a living playing golf in many years, so I will have to cut back on my golf course work."
Why not double his design fees (he charged $1.25 million dollars for designing Mount Juliet) and do only half the work? "Well, I did that," he replied. "I raised my fee 50 per cent about three years ago and I'm thinking I'll probably raise it again."
While his design-work thrives, however, Nicklaus has had headaches in other aspects of his business empire. For instance, it was reported last month that he had sold his majority interest in a golf show productions company to Gaylord Entertainment. Jack Nicklaus Productions, based in Los Angeles, had an annual output of more than 50 hours of programming for the major US networks in recent years.
Then there were the Muirfield Village greens which, by the Bear's own admission, have caused problems from the outset, in 1975. Indeed officials at The K Club, where greens have given ongoing headaches, may be interested to hear the great man say: "Finally, we decided to bite the bullet and change out the greens mix. And when you change out the greens mix, you have the chance to make a change in the golf course." So it was that he made significant changes to the long fifth and 15th, two of the easiest holes on the course. He dropped the green a little at the 15th, placed another bunker on the left and built large mounding all around it, while at the fifth, the difficulty of the approach shot was heightened by extending the stream fronting the green.
Looking at the current state of US golf, Nicklaus has serious reservations about the way the WGC events are encouraging the game's elite players to concentrate on a limited number of events. "There are a lot of tournaments that will get murdered, just like Doral got murdered (by running in the wake of the Andersen Consulting World Matchplay last March)", he said.
He went on: "Those guys who are making three, four or five million dollars a year, will do that for a very short period of time and they will get bored, as would anybody else. If they can make three or four million dollars in 10 weeks, they'll do it rather than make it in 20 weeks.
Against that background, will Tiger Woods be able to maintain his appetite for the game? "Oh, I think he'll keep it up," replied Nicklaus. "I think he's a very talented young man and he's going to have continual competition, we hope. I went through Arnold (Palmer), then Gary (Player), then (Tom) Weiskopf, (Johnny) Miller, (Lee) Trevino and (Tom) Watson.
"He's going to go through the same situations. At the moment, he's going through David Duval and Duval isn't going to disappear for a while. And he's got a bunch of other ones right there, like (Sergio) Garcia. I think it's very difficult to separate yourself today. Equipment is a great factor in that.
"If the guys today were playing the equipment we had 15 to 20 years ago, I think you'd see a greater separation. As the equipment continues to get better, it creates more parity. The only way they have to separate them is more difficult courses, stronger tournaments and all the same guys in the same field."
As for himself, Nicklaus seems content with his lot, now that he is active once more. "There are times when I wish I was doing other things, but then I get home and I get bored," he admitted. "And I find myself saying I've got to get on the road again. It's not that I get bored from being home, it's just that I enjoy being in the middle of things."
Without admitting as much, he was simply reminding us that great performers always crave an audience.
