The Story Behind The Bear at 50

He was as fat and blond as Jack Nicklaus ever was; and couldn’t Phil Rodgers make a golf ball dance? But he had a thirst that Nicklaus didn’t have--not only for spirits but for spirit. Like golf balls, destinies turn on a very small axis.

They met at the Masters in 1958, when Nicklaus was a Walker Cup amateur of 18 and Rodgers had just turned 20. They bunked together in the crow’s-nest of Augusta National’s haunted clubhouse. They dreamed without sleep all night. Rodgers finished in the top 24 to earn a return invitation. Nicklaus missed the cut.

By a ridiculous nine shots, Rodgers won the first tournament Nicklaus ever entered as a pro. That was the 1962 Los Angeles Open. Nicklaus took the last-place money: $33.33. Rodgers spent most of his top prize, $7,500, on the celebration. Six weeks later, he won again at Tucson. That party lasted until the U.S. Open.

With seven holes to play at the grand Oakmont course in the Arnold Palmer section of Pennsylvania, Rodgers led the field by two strokes. But as bogey came upon bogey, both King Palmer and Boy Nicklaus shot past him. After Nicklaus won a playoff the next day, the order of golf was settled for 20 years, and the superfluous blond with the glass in his hand was shuffled further and further back in the pack.

Over the bumper summers that followed, while people gushed to Nicklaus that they’d never seen his equal, he sometimes replied that there was a fellow he knew once who could really play -- on and off the course.

Nicklaus was not the first person to discover that “nobody loves a fat man,” but he made characteristic use of the information. He restyled himself into a model for clothes and athletes.

Starting with wonderful parents, Nicklaus enjoyed terrific advantages. Male or female, golfers are “father” types. If cameras bored in on golfers the way they do on defensive tackles, most players would say: “Hi, dad.” Charlie Nicklaus, a pharmacist, provided his son access to a great golf course, loads of practice-tee tuition and large helpings of manners and perspective.

“I remember the first time I broke 70,” Nicklaus said. “I was 13, working in the drugstore with my father. We slipped away to play nine holes before dinner and I had 35 on the front. I begged him to go on. No, he said, mom had dinner cooking. But if we ate fast, and were careful of her feelings, we could be back in 35 minutes. Later, needing an eagle on the last hole for 69, I hit a driver and a two- or three-iron, and made a long rainbow putt. I think that’s when my father decided I had a better future as a golfer than as a stockboy.”

Charlie died of cancer at 56. To his son, the word “fifties” has seemed slightly terrifying ever since.

On the edge of 40, the powerful bear Nicklaus abruptly found himself in need of a short game, and a poignant thing happened. Phil Rodgers reappeared like a ghost from a haunted clubhouse to teach him. This was 1980.

With little pendulum chips and touches of spinning magic, Nicklaus added another U.S. Open and PGA Championship that summer. Later in the decade, he ignored an increasingly creaky back and gathered an extra Masters. When, about a year ago, three doctors in a row advised disk surgery, he was ready to quit.

“Phil Rodgers called me. He said he refused to hang up until I promised to see a San Diego kinesiologist named Pete Egoscue. I’m glad he did. Now I do two hours of stretching exercises a day. For the first time in five years, my back pain is gone.”

A couple of days ago, at age 50, a freshly minted grandfather, Nicklaus finally debuted on the senior tour (weeks late) to answer the good-natured challenges of Lee Trevino along with the cold glares of Dave and Mike Hill and a few others. In his first round at the Tradition, Nicklaus shot a one-under-par 71.

Gary Player said, “Golf is a game of the moment,” but the poetry of the moment was that Rodgers shot 69 and had a piece of the lead. The man who had won the first tournament Nicklaus entered as a pro was leading the first one he elected as a senior. “I have middle-body leverage,” said Rodgers, who kept his old paunch. “That helps when the wind is blowing.”

Storms chopped the tournament at Desert Mountain from 72 holes to 54. But Nicklaus sounded grateful for Thursday’s rain delay. “I haven’t sat in a locker room and talked to a bunch of guys like that for 20 years,” he said. “Old times, old places we played. It was kind of nice. I enjoyed it.”

Palmer, who is 60, said, “All of us go through that period where it’s hard to realize you’re 50. For a while, when people refer to you as a senior, it’s a little aggravating. But if you reach for the unexpected, it can work in your favor. It’s not all bad.”

If nothing else, Nicklaus seemed to have learned that already. “I can’t say I looked forward to being 50 with enthusiasm,” he said. “I don’t think anybody does. But once you’re there, you realize you’re still competing against the course and yourself.”

In every game, isn’t that so?