It Has a Major Field and a Major Course, so What’s Up, Jack?

In golf, a “major” is a tournament nobody can win. The field is overmatched by the real estate, the pressure is five fathoms deep, the stakes are high and the nerves frayed.

Guys who shoot 62s in the weekly tournaments shoot in the low 80s at a major. It’s a sentinel of golf. It keeps the ribbon clerks out. Protects the honor of the great game. Hogans win majors. Nicklauses. Palmers. Henry Cottons. Sarazens. Walter Hagens. The tour spear carriers miss the cut in the majors.

The British Open is a major. After all, it’s the cradle of the game. The U.S. Open makes it. The PGA is the pros’ own tournament.

The U.S. Amateur used to be. Till we ran out of amateurs.

Then, a funny little tournament down in Tobacco Road, a kind of glorified member-guest the late great Bobby Jones had put together for a select group of his pals, began to get notoriety. It was on the path northward for the sporting press returning from baseball’s spring training.

First thing you knew, they were calling it a major. The Masters made the lineup.

But should it? The field was laden with cronies, business associates, in-laws, stockbrokers, insurance agents, bridge players and the last amateurs in America. The entire Walker Cup team got in, for example--two handicappers, weekend players. Hogan didn’t even know they were playing.

Still, it was the best we had. The golf course was magnificent, the forsythia and dogwood were in bloom, and the poets of the press box went to work on it.

Hogan didn’t start his own tournament. Neither did Palmer, although he sort of did.

But Jack Nicklaus did and Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial tournament, which will be played here this week, was born to be a major. Nicklaus clearly had it in mind before he put the land in escrow or cut the first sand bunker.

It’s a gorgeous hunk of real estate. If you don’t have to par it, that is. It’s Jack’s pride and joy. It’s his monument, his Taj Mahal. Like the man himself, it has character. It doesn’t need shaved greens, blind drives or railroad ties to make it memorable; you just need to be straight. Nothing tricky about it. It’s like a fighter who keeps coming. You have to jab with it and slug with it. And clinch when it puts you in a corner.

Jack is not trying to supplant the Masters, he’s trying to join it.

Are five majors too many? Well, there were six when the Masters came along. The British Amateur and U.S. Amateur have all but dropped out.

Jack’s has all the ingredients: a towering figure of the game (Nicklaus won 20 majors, was second in 19 others and he won 70 PGA Tour tournaments.)

He doesn’t have Tobacco Road, but he has the state where most U.S. Presidents came from.

He has already had his glamour winners. Jack himself won it twice. So did Hale Irwin. Greg Norman was a winner. Ray Floyd. Tom Watson.

It has had its martyrs. In 1993, standing with an eight-foot putt that would have won him the Memorial, Payne Stewart watched helplessly as Paul Azinger holed out a trap shot most people thought was on its way to the moon when it came out. Undeserved misfortune fits a golf course. It’s the name of the game.

But what Jack’s Memorial really needs is some hype, some identity of its holes as public enemies, menaces to society, terrorists, if you will.

For instance:

1. The Masters has its “Amen Corner,” a group of misanthropes, holes No. 11 through 13. Well, Jack should have a collection of holes--I would recommend 12 through 14--designated as “Nearer My God to Thee” corner. Call Hole No. 2 “Purgatory.”

2. Following a historic motif, you might name the first three holes “Little Big Horn” or even dub one “the Hindenburg.”

3. No. 18 is the enforcer, the Frank Nitti of the gang, the executioner. You might want to put a sign on the tee “You Can’t Get There From Here” or “Road Out Choose Alternate Route” or simply “Go Back! Per Order Humane Society.”

4. The Masters names its holes. Flowering Peach, Flowering Crab Apple, Carolina Cherry, Chinese Fir. Jack might want to name his Weed Killer, Poison Ivy, Man-Eating Rubber Plant, Dogleg to Nowhere, Toxic Waste and the Flowering Cyanide Bush.

5. Perhaps we could just name stretches of real estate after historical figures and moments of our past--Dillinger, Benedict Arnold, Lizzie Borden, Capone, John Wilkes Booth, Witch Hunt, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Believe me, Jack’s Track has all the ingredients of a major. I love it--72 holes of guys saying with a moan, “Oh, no! Not over there !” or “Fore on the right!” or “I could have sworn that broke right!” All the well-loved sights and sounds of a major including, “Anybody see it!?” as a ball disappears into Daniel Boone country on the left.

It should be a major. The Golden Bear’s track is a grizzly. A hungry grizzly, a serial killer. Major enough for me, the world’s biggest fan of double bogeys.