Jack Nicklaus and Jack Jr.--the Mantle Has Been Passed Along

Few great men know when to quit. Few fathers know how to defer to a son.

Has anybody ever done both at once? Well, somebody’s trying. Jack Nicklaus is history. Long live Jack Nicklaus II.

In case you missed it, and most have, Jack Nicklaus’ career is done. He has retired. His days as a serious competitor are over.

From now on, he’s just in it for fun. Golf as avocation, not vocation--middle-aged hobby, not self-defining obsession.

That’s what the man says, anyway.

He’ll still play. But he will not really try, not the way Nicklaus tries. And he refuses to pretend he is trying.

Practice? Preparation? Hassle? Worry? Forget it. All are behind him at 47. Oh, he’ll play the four majors as long as he enjoys hitching up the wagon. “Being part of the scene,” he calls it. And, probably, he’ll play one or two tuneup events before each biggie, just so he doesn’t embarrass himself.

If, covered with rust and age, he happens to fall into some blessed state of golfing grace, he obviously will try to win. Could he pull off such a victory? “I don’t know why I couldn’t.”

But don’t judge him on the future, he says. He’s drawn the line: 100 majors as a pro (1962 to 1986) with 18 wins, 18 runner-up finishes, 45 in the top three and 66 trips to the top 10. That’s what all the young limber-backs get to shoot at.

“Winning the Masters left me in a position to leave the tour on a high note. I don’t consider myself a regular tour player anymore,” Nicklaus said at a Miami news conference last month. “It’s not something I really want to do, but it’s something that makes a lot of sense at this age.

“To be a part-time golfer with a deteriorating game over a period of time--which is inevitable--and erode all the great memories I’ve had, and that people have had watching me play, doesn’t make sense . . . I have semi-left playing. If I play well, I play well. If I don’t, I don’t. I’m not going to get myself irritated.”

In case you missed it, and most have, Jack Nicklaus Jr.’s career has begun. He’s picked up the fallen flag. Turned pro. Decided to get serious. Dedicated himself. At 25, he’s decided that the fun is behind him and it’s time for some serious Nicklaus-style labor.

Two years ago, he rarely broke 80 and had “the worst short game on earth.” An all-sport athlete with little time for golf, he’d never even won his hometown Palm Beach Amateur. The name “Jack Nicklaus” weighed on him throughout his teen years. Any sport but golf was his favorite.

Then, a week after graduating from college, he won the 1985 North-South--a top nationwide amateur event.

Last April, he caddied for his father in the Masters. And his dad showed him, at arm’s length, why the winning is worth all the work. Behind the 18th green, they embraced in a picture American sports will not forget.

By August, Jack Jr. had decided to turn pro, and Jack Sr. had decided it was time to retire with his myth intact. The Masters was the fulcrum around which both decisions were made.

Such psychological symmetry only occurs in reality. As usual, history, not fiction, gets the best plots.

“I’m more interested in his game now than I am in mine,” says Jack Sr. “Mine’s not very interesting now.”

These are hard days for both father and son. One, coming down from 80, the other, going up from 70, seem to have met at 75--a level of play that is pure purgatory for a pro golfer.

Three weeks ago in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., one scene capsulized this period in their lives.

Jack Nicklaus was on the final green. Jack Nicklaus was on the final tee. Simultaneously. You could see them both, the father studying his last putt, the son loading up his last drive. The old man wanted to make the cut; the kid just wanted to prove he could cut it.

Around the 18th green Nicklaus Sr. trudged, bundled against the raw March wind, trying to read one last putt so he could keep playing in the Honda tournament.

The week before, both he and Jackie had played in the same pro event for the first time at Doral. Both missed the cut. Maybe if one survived this time, the other would, too. Maybe the rookie could earn his first PGA Tour dollar in his own home neighborhood.

Arms clamped around himself for heat, crouched on his haunches like a small panda, the father glared down the line of his final putt as he’d done thousands of times. This kind of will power 8-footer, when you grind your jaw, focus every mental muscle, then roll that miserably stubborn ball in the heart, had long been his forte.

Naturally, he made it.

“That’ll do it,” he said, grimly, exasperated by five hours of mental, and at this stage of his career, physical effort. “Seven over par. The cut’ll be seven, maybe eight.”

“The stat man just projected the cut as six over,” Nicklaus was told.

“He isn’t out here. He hasn’t felt this wind,” says Nicklaus. “Seven makes it easy. No sense even discussing it.”

Nobody discussed it. Nicklaus guesses cut scores, winning scores, you name it, better than anybody. The correct number comes into his head, then he shoots it. Just like he told his family on Sunday at the 1986 Masters: “65 wins it.” He shot it. He won it.

Inside the scorer’s tent, the father paced, peeking casually around the back flap to watch his son conclude his final hole. Yet Nicklaus never stepped out where the boy could see him watching. “What’s Jackie?” he asked.

“Eight over with three to play the last we heard,” he was told.

“He’s got a chance. It would be great for him to make the cut here. A tremendous boost,” said Nicklaus. “He’s improving, but he’s a while away. He’s come a long way from the kid who couldn’t break 80. . . . He’s gonna do all right, gonna do fine. There’s nothing I can tell him. I can’t play in ‘em (for him). . . . I give him a lot of credit for wanting to try it.”

Would he enjoy watching his boy cash his first check?

“He’s won money. In Australia. In Europe,” snapped the father.

Sorry about that, Jack. Well, then, how are you playing?

“I wouldn’t have any idea,” said Nicklaus. “I haven’t played enough to know. Not very well.

“Is that Jackie’s ball in the middle?” he said. “That’s really bad. Of all the holes where you want to release it and really let it fly.”

A friend of the family came to the tent, gave the father the word. His son was 10 over. Forget it.

Nicklaus looked off toward the tall, lean young man in the red sweater and yellow hat, the son who looked and acted more like his sweet, easy-going mother than his laser-eyed father.

The look that passed over the face of the man who may be the greatest and richest world athlete of his time was hard to decipher. You could watch him for a dozen years on tour and never see it. Pity, maybe, for the burdens his name has put on his child? Or just love. Certainly that.

Nicklaus walked to the gallery ropes and began signing autographs. He told his caddie to go in out of the cold. “I’m going to wait for Jackie.”

Nicklaus almost seems to relish the dilapidated state of his game and the diminished heat of his internal fires. Is he coming as close as possible to duplicating his son’s state of mind? Does he subconsciously feel that a less fiercely determined and less polished dad can do a better job of empathizing with a less gifted and less driven son?

“I don’t want to play practice rounds anymore. I was glad it rained Wednesday,” said Nicklaus Sr. “I suppose it’s a fact of life that you’re not going to be as interested as you get older. And that’s a terrible thing for me to say because I’ve always been very interested in playing golf. (He laughs.) But I’ll be plenty interested when I get to Augusta.

“I certainly have played enough golf to know how to cope with the situation if I should find myself in contention. Last year, when I got something going, how to play came back very quickly. I just have to play enough so that if I do get going well I can be able to sustain it.

“I must still be pretty interested or I wouldn’t be so aggravated now. I wanted to give myself a good swift kick out there.”

When father and son finally met in the scorer’s tent, both knew the day’s outcome. Jack had made the cut. Jackie missed. No commiseration was necessary, none was offered. The father, who says his fires are banked, seemed more prickly and annoyed than the son, who says his fires are stoked.

Joe DiMaggio once said, with only slight exaggeration, “No boy from a rich family ever made the big leagues.”

As the sun went down, the wind grew even colder. A young pro in a mood for humor walked past the Eagle Trace clubhouse carrying an umbrella with all the cloth torn away and the spokes twisted in every direction.

Barbara Nicklaus, mother of five, keeper of The Bear, and, by acclamation on tour, The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Jack, laughed at the umbrella joke as she shivered.

No, she didn’t want to go inside. It wasn’t that cold. She’d just hug her sweater closer and chat with everybody who passed. She was waiting for her pair of Jacks to finish a network interview.

“When Jackie was born, Jack was only 22,” she said, trying to remember a time when her husband was three years younger than her son is now. “He made a silent pact that when his son went to college, he didn’t want the boy to say, ‘I wish I’d known my dad.’ He vowed he’d never be apart from us more than two weeks and, in 25 years, he never has.

“Between them, there’s no problem. His dad’s a good friend, because he’s always made the time to be there with him. If the relationship is right, then the rest usually turns out all right.”

For Barbara Nicklaus, life is only as complicated as you decide to make it. She has a knack for finding the smooth handle. “You don’t worry about things like: ‘How will he cope with being Jack Nicklaus Jr?’. It never crosses your mind,” she said. “When he was little, somebody asked him, ‘How does it feel to be who you are?’ Jackie said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been anybody else.’

“Jackie had a few tough years. But the pluses of being Jack Jr. certainly outweigh the minuses and he knows it.”

To counterbalance the weight of the family name, the Nicklauses gave their children extra time to reach decisions and extra elbow room to make choices.

“We never cared if he picked up a golf club,” the mother said. “But it is kind of a vicious circle. You don’t care what he does as long as he enjoys it and tries his best. But you’re thrilled if it’s golf.”

The Nicklaus children tend to be rambunctious, prone to the mild scrape; the parents, for their part, seem extremely confident of their children’s judgment. Barbara in particular couldn’t care less about maintaining any public family image.

“Jackie really enjoyed college. I don’t think he knew the day he graduated what he’d do next,” she said, apparently quite charmed about that indecision. “But he won the North-South the next week. . . . Now, he’s learning. He’ll get it. And he’s growing up. He had a great month in Australia. Then he played in Europe, including Paris. That’s the first time he’s traveled to a foreign country by himself.”

If the Nicklauses care that Jackie did not get on the PGA Tour through the Qualifying School last year, you can’t tell. This year he’ll play five tour events on sponsors’ exemption, then see a lot of events like the Madrid Open. “He just needs competition and time,” said the father. Finally, the Nicklauses escape their interviews and son sidles up behind mom.

“Do you have any money?” he asks.

“Like a lot?” she says.

“Uh huh.”

“No, but your dad does.”

You could call this ironic. But it seems more like homey. It’s hard to be first-generation millionaires yet manage to be old-money unpretentious, but the Nicklauses don’t do too badly. Their apparent comfort level with their fame is one of the tour’s frequently noted marvels. Jackie says it wasn’t always as easy as he’s made it seem in recent years.

Being Jack Nicklaus Jr. “was toughest from about 13 through 17. I think I was most bothered by it then,” he said. “When I got away to college, that’s when I adjusted. I’m proud to be his son, but I want to be recognized for what I accomplish, not what he’s done.

“Being Jack Nicklaus’ son doesn’t hit one shot for me. That’s the good part. What I do is mine. But I have to remember that you have to crawl before you walk. I can’t be in a hurry to make my own name. It’s no use me comparing myself to the superstars in the sport.

“If I accept that improving is a slow process, I’ll be all right. I can see the improvement. Two years ago, it was only 50-50 that I’d hit the green from 20 yards out. Honest. That part of my game has improved 110%.”

It is far too soon to offer even the most preliminary guess on the golf future of Jack Nicklaus Jr. He’s an athlete, a Nicklaus and he hits it a mile. But he’s not really a golfer yet.

He waited a long time to get started. Of course, Ray Floyd never became properly serious until he was past 30 and got married. He was inclined to have a great deal of fun first. Now he’s 44 and the reigning U.S. Open champion.

“Tell Jackie that,” says Barbara Nicklaus. “He’d like it.”

She and Jack have to get home to Lauderhill, Fla., about 50 miles away. They’ll hop in the family helicopter and give their neighbor Greg Norman a lift in the bargain.

There’s room in the chopper for Jack Nicklaus Jr., just as there was on the trip down in the morning. But again he says thanks, dad, but no thanks.

For now, he’d rather drive back. Maybe someday. When he’s earned his own helicopter.