It doesn’t get much better than Jack Nicklaus winning the 1986 Masters at age 46. Unless that is if you get to listen to Nicklaus relive the moment in almost forensic detail.
This week, former PGA Tour pro Charlie Rymer did just that via video with Nicklaus and posted the nearly 20-minute chat as the latest episode of the Charlie Rymer Show sponsored by PlayGolfMyrtleBeach.com.
Nicklaus wasn’t even on the first page of the leaderboard when the CBS broadcast began that fateful day, but birdies at Nos. 9-11 had him lurking behind the likes of leader Seve Ballesteros, Tom Kite and Greg Norman. Not even a bogey at 12 after his par putt hit a ball mark could deflate Nicklaus. In fact, he suggested it did just the opposite.
“It turned out it was the best thing that happened to me because it brought me back down to earth,” Nicklaus explained.
He continued his charge with a birdie at 13. After a perfect drive at the par-5 15th, Nicklaus said to son, Jackie Jr., who was on the bag, “How far do you think a 3 would go, and I don’t mean a 3-iron?”
He was referring, of course, to an eagle 3 and he did just that with Jackie leaping for joy as his dear old dad drained the 12-footer.
Nicklaus knew his tee shot at the par-3 16th was magic. In flight, Jackie said, “Be good,” to which Nicklaus reached down to fetch his tee and without even looking up responded, “It is.”
“Pretty cocky statement to be making,” Nicklaus tells Rymer.
Still, the Golden Bear needed help from his closest competitors and Ballesteros did his part, snap-hooking a 4-iron into the water on 15.
Nicklaus provides some telling insight on the great Seve’s fatal mistake: “I remember talking to Seve early in the week and I said, ‘How are you doing, Seve?’ He said, ‘I haven’t played a lot of golf this spring. My game hasn’t been too good. I don’t know how I will hold up under pressure.’ I remembered that when he said that to me. He was halfway between a 4- and a 5-iron to the green. When you haven’t played, you don’t play into the 15th green a soft 4-iron. If you remember the swing, he quit on it horribly and it went about halfway across the water. It was a 5-iron for him and hit it.”
Nicklaus tapped in for birdie at 16 and wedged 12 feet left of the hole at 17. He and Jackie Jr., surveyed the birdie putt, which broke left to right and Nicklaus determined it would break back left at the end toward Rae’s Creek. It did just that and for the first time all week Nicklaus held sole possession of the lead.
“Incidentally, Charlie, I have hit that putt a thousand times and it’s never broken left again,” Nicklaus said.
He parred 18, hugged Jackie and signed for 65. Then the waiting game began as Kite, who barely missed a 10-foot birdie putt at 18, and Norman still had legitimate chances to force a playoff.
Nicklaus sat on a couch in Butler’s Cabin and watched Norman go on a birdie streak. So Nicklaus rose from the couch.
“Not that I’m superstitious or anything,” Nicklaus said.
Norman’s bogey at the last clinched the record sixth green jacket and 18th major title for Nicklaus and first since 1980. In fact, an article by Tom McCallister in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution before the tournament called Nicklaus washed up and labeled him “the Olden Bear.” A Nicklaus friend tacked it to the refrigerator to make sure he’d see it.
“I think the article was very justified,” Nicklaus said to Rymer. “I was getting old and I was playing not very well.”
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