"It's the chair off the Titanic"

Jack's really, really excited about the the groove rule change impacting distance gains from the ball really good stretching programs. Plugging the President's Cup with Gary Player, he was asked about adjustable equipment.

JACK NICKLAUS: I need one every day anyway, so that's all right. I need an adjustable driver. You never know what swing I'm going to bring along. I don't think either one of them mean very much, but it's -- I guess it's a start, I suppose. But it's the chair off the Titanic, I guess (laughter).

Q. Jack, this is another regulatory question. I enjoyed your comments in Golf Digest with Jaime Diaz on many subjects, but the suggestion about rolling back the ball 10 percent, which I know both of you had advocated. Jack, where would most of the opposition to doing this actually come from? And the other question is for the average player, would they -- what would be the benefit, potential benefit, of doing that?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, there's several things. We don't have time for all of it. But one, if you take the ball and roll it back, whatever the percentage might be, you really are bringing about 17,000 or 18,000 or 19,000 golf courses in the United States that are basically obsolete to the professional, you're bringing those back into play for a possible event or something where the professionals can go play.

If you have the average golfer, now has a golf ball that is so high tech and clubs that are so high tech that they may hit the ball on the face of the golf course maybe one out of ten shots, and when they hit one out of ten shots on the face, they say, wow, look how far that goes, and they love it. But the other nine shots, because it is so high tech when they miss it, it goes much shorter than it would have if they didn't have such a high tech piece of equipment or ball. So learning how to play golf -- part of this whole thing is to bring people in the game and keep them in the game. And if you have a golf ball that you don't know whether you're going to hit it on the face or not hit it on the face and there's 50 yards of difference between a good shot and a bad shot, it's hard to learn how to play golf.

This is fun...

Back when we were playing, granted, the ball didn't go as far, the clubs didn't hit it as far, but the difference between me and the club champion in most places was 15 or 20 yards at max. I could go to any course and play an exhibition, and I'll bet Gary can say the same, we'd go to play an exhibition and the club champ was playing, in the old conditions the club champ had a chance of beating us. Today, 7,400, 7,500 yards, 7,600, that the pros have to play it from to be competitive, the club champ has got no chance. I'd love to see the game be brought together for the average golfer and the pros together.

Ah...that makes a lot of sense Jack. We can't have that! Oh you weren't done...

Now, you say what's the advantage to the average golfer? Well, the average golfer, they have the ability to always move back on the golf course, the pros don't. Likewise, they have the ability to move up on a golf course, and so do the pros. If you're playing the average golfer at 6,500 yards and it's too long for them, they can move to 6,400 or 6,300 pretty easy. I just think making a game, playing it -- I sort of liken it to the small ball and the large ball 35 years ago, whatever it was, in Britain. They took the large ball and made a condition for competition and made it the same as a U.S. ball. And after about a year or so, they left the small ball and all the conditions that the small ball had for the average golfer.

Well, after about a year or so, they found that the college players, the junior golfers, the amateur golfers, anyone who wanted to play competition were playing the large ball, and the rest of the golfers were left out by playing a golf ball that was not the same. So they actually legislated -- I think the legislature came more from the average golfer than from the pros to bring the large ball for everybody. I would rather see the same thing here. If you decided -- if we only did it for the pros and made the conditions for competition, then all of a sudden I think that would be a step in one direction, and then all of a sudden the average golfer is always going to play to want what the pro plays.

It's going to be fun when one of the companies actually sells one of these balls at a Pine Valley or Merion and it just snowballs from there. I'd hate to be a shareholder in one of the companies that doesn't adjust!

Right now all they advertise on television is, "play what the pros play." Well, they can't play it. They just don't have the clubhead speed to play it. But if we brought everything back -- we could get everything back relatively the same. If you left the golf ball for the average golfer in conditions for competition, I think the average golfer in a year would ask for the other ball and the other condition. The whole point of that whole thing is to try to bring the average golfer or the good single-digit player and the pro closer so when they're watching it on television or they're watching the game that they feel like they're watching the same game that they might have a chance to play.

Q. Where does most of the opposition to doing that come from?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I wish I knew, really. I suppose there are probably -- I don't know. Could be ball manufacturers probably, but not -- I never really spoken to any ball manufacturer who has actually told me that they're against it. I've spoken to quite a few who are for it.

Hmmm...

Well, that's just a rally that needs to be killed...

Q. This question is for both you. With Tiger and Phil getting into the golf course design business, I wonder if you can tell me to what degree does being a great golfer help you become a great golf course designer?

The Nicklaus Golf Digest Article, Vol. 2

Has there ever been a more conscise summary of what the distance issue is all about?

We have about 16,000 courses in the United States. Almost all of them are obsolete for tournament play. For them to become relevant, we need to roll back the ball about 40 yards. That or rebuild all the fairway bunkers at 300 yards. Which is what we’re doing, and it costs a fortune. Instead of changing equipment, we’re changing golf courses. It’s great for my business. I’m making a living redoing my old courses. But the game should be able to go back to the classic courses just as they are. Why should we be changing all those golf courses? It’s ridiculous.

Trying to build great courses today is more complicated than ever. I’ve decided it’s best to basically design for the enjoyment of the average golfer. That’s what works best for the owners, who are selling memberships and selling their land. I was once accused of designing courses that were too severe. A lot of that was because I was designing a lot of tournament courses.

Creating a true challenge for the best professional players for one week of golf makes it too tough for the average player who is going to play it the rest of the year. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to make the game better for more golfers is to take the driver out of the hands of the elite player. So I tighten up the landing areas for them. It’s kind of a sad compromise, but I think it’s the only solution we’ve got. 

Actually, it's not a sad compromise if we could just make driver absolutely worthless on all championship courses. Then driver sales would plummet and just maybe some of the companies would say wait a second we need to roll back the...ah forget it, what was I thinking?

The Nicklaus Golf Digest Article, Vol. 1

With the Nissan Open and the Golf Industry Show, I'm finally getting around to Jack Nicklaus's essay in the March Golf Digest.

Written with the assistance of Jaime Diaz, the piece is monumental on a number of levels. First, it is by far the most space devoted in a major golf publication to the distance issue and its impact since Nicklaus and George Peper penned similar views in Golf Magazine (circa 1998 I believe).  

What I loved most here is Nicklaus's defense of the claims that his motives are not pure. Actually there's a lot to love here, and I know our Fairhaven readers will especially enjoy this week-long look at Jack's rant.

The best golfers should be better today than the best golfers of yesterday. At the moment, I’m not sure that’s the case. I realize I’m an old fuddy-duddy, and that previous generations always say that their game was better. I guess I’d plead guilty—in part. But here’s the difference. The game in terms of equipment barely changed for 60 years. Then with the equipment revolution that began with metal clubheads in the ’80s and accelerated with dramatic ball technology in the late ’90s, the game changed radically. The best players suddenly found themselves able to hit shots more easily and consistently, as well as pull off shots they never would have tried in the past. It made the game for elite players simpler and easier.

Simpler. Very nice. Attention Ponte Vedra: that means less interesting to watch.

As a result, I don’t care as much for today’s game as I did for the one played for most of my career. I like the old game of moving the ball both ways and using strategy with angles, and hitting all the clubs in the bag.

My greatest concern, because I believe it has the most effect on the most parts of the game, is the golf ball. I’d very much like to see the U.S. Golf Association and the R&A institute at least a 10-percent rollback in the distance the golf ball travels. I know the ruling bodies are looking at limits on equipment, including possibly reducing the size of driver clubheads and eliminating square grooves, but that’s treating an effect more than a cause. The desired results from such moves could be taken care of by a rollback in the ball. In fact, there would be much less need to limit equipment innovations that help amateurs play if the ball were rolled back.

Which once again raises the question, why do Callaway, Taylor Made and Nike oppose a ball rollback?

And just to put the tournament ball talk to rest...

I don’t think a rollback should restrict an elite player’s options in customizing the golf ball he or she would play. It’s OK with me for, say, a player with a low ball flight to get some help by using a model of ball with a dimple pattern that creates a higher launch, or a guy whose angle into the ball generates an excess of spin getting a ball that spins less. In other words, I wouldn’t want to see every player having to use the same exact “tournament ball” picked out of a jar on the first tee. As long as players could keep the ball characteristics that best suit their games, I honestly believe it would take them only a few rounds to completely adjust to a rolled-back ball that doesn’t fly quite as far.

"Nose to nose with an Ursus arctos horribilis?"

GolfDigest.com offers this caption for their Jack Nicklaus photo below: "The Golden Bear prepares to go nose to nose with an Ursus arctos horribilis in the foyer of his offices in North Palm Beach, Fla."

I bet you can do better...
 

"We're trying not to do perfect anymore"

Thanks to reader Nick for this Seth Soffian story in the News Press, where Jack Nicklaus is teetering on the edge of Phil status:

"I watch Tiger a lot, obviously," Nicklaus said. "His golf swing that week was right on the plane it should have been. He gets himself off of plane very easily, particularly when his swing gets longer. Then he can hit it anywhere.

"He's such a great iron player because he's so much under control," said Nicklaus, beginning the demonstration of various club positions on the backswing.

"His swing is not very long with his irons. He keeps it pretty much in here. Once he gets the driver back in here, that's when he gets off plane, and then he can bring it under this way or around this way."

And...

"He was on plane the whole time with the driver," said Nicklaus, throwing one last variable into the mix to consider for the year's final major championship.

"Obviously, (Hank) Haney is doing something with him that (Tiger) feels confidence with, because he's getting great confidence with his other clubs," Nicklaus said of Woods' swing coach.

"It could be he's got a bad driver, too. I don't know. If you're hitting everything else good and you're hitting your driver bad, it may be your driver, not him. I don't know."

He also had this to say about his design work, which Nick was possibly a reflection on his collaboration with Tom Doak:

Q: We heard you said the course was "too perfect."

A: Sometimes, yeah. We're trying not to do perfect anymore. We used to work really hard to get everything absolutely dead perfect. I don't think nature's too perfect. We try to bust up a few things to make them look a little irregular at times. Perfect is a description I drove my guys crazy with for about 20 years.

Jack: I Could Have Won 25

Paul Forsyth pulls all sorts of fun stuff out of Jack Nicklaus, who was in one of his chatty moods at the Open Championship. On his 18 majors:

“Once I got past that record, I didn’t have a big push to do much else,” he says. “I didn’t know I had Tiger Woods pushing me. I would have probably worked harder and maybe won more if I had. I can’t say I prepared for every major the way I should have. I can’t say that I didn’t give away opportunities. Records were never really that important to me until it was too late to go back and go for them.

“Never in my life did I add up how many I had won. Tiger has been adding from day one. He has grown up that way, and the more he does it, the more he is reminded of it. He doesn’t know anything else.”

And...

Nicklaus is proud of his majors, but there are more important things. “To me, my record is 18 professional majors, five kids, 46 years of marriage, 19 grandkids and a successful business. I have other friends, I have enjoyed what I have done, and I have been able to smell the flowers along the way. Those are the things that are important to me, not the 18 majors. The 18 majors are not my life, they are part of it.

“If I had been really serious about building a record that nobody was going to touch, I wouldn’t have been able to do a lot of the other things I have enjoyed. I have had a very balanced life.

“I spend time with my kids, I have grown up knowing them, and if golf had been the only thing I did, that wouldn’t have happened. I could have won 20 or 25 majors, but I think I would have been a miserable person.”

The implication is that Woods, whose late father compared him to Gandhi, is not on this earth to have a good time. Should the world No 1 successfully defend his title at Royal Liverpool this afternoon, the biggest prize will not be the Claret Jug, which he has won twice already, but the fact that it will take him to within seven majors of the holy grail. From the moment he pinned the Nicklaus record on his bedroom wall, his only dream has been to achieve immortality.

“Tiger is a pretty well- balanced kid, who likes to do other things, like diving and fishing, but he is living in a fishbowl. He can’t go anywhere without people reminding him who he is and what he is here for. I never used to worry about anything like that. I could go to any restaurant and nobody bothered me. He’s like a rock star. They’re on top of him all the time. I wouldn’t trade my life for his, not for any money you want to name.”

And this is fun, considering he'll be President's Cup captain again in 2007:

“In this year’s US Open, six of the top 10 were foreign players, and so were 14 of the top 20. We have some very good players, but if you look past Tiger, Phil (Mickelson) and Jim Furyk, it’s pretty thin.”

Neither is he especially impressed with the Europeans, save for a select two or three. Nicklaus, who is captain of the US Presidents Cup team, says the world’s best players are from neither continent.

“There are more good world players than there are US and European players combined. Maybe, in the Ryder Cup, it should be the US and Europe versus the rest of the world.”