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Jack "The Golden Bear" Nicklaus (18 Time Professional Major Champion)

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Nicklaus Earned Greater Percent of PGA Tour Purses Than Woods
By Vince Golle

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Jack Nicklaus won a greater percentage of the money available during his first 14 years in professional golf than Tiger Woods has in an era where purses are more than 100 times as big.

Prize money has soared since 1962 when Nicklaus turned pro and, through his battles with Arnold Palmer, helped nurture a game that?s grown in popularity and led to television deals and more sponsorship dollars. In 2009 through the PGA Championship, purses have totaled $217.5 million. When Nicklaus launched his career, they were $1.8 million, according to the PGA Tour.

Woods, who turned pro in 1996, is four major championships short of matching Nicklaus?s record 18. The 33-year-old Woods also lags behind in the percentage of total prize money won, even as his on-course earnings dwarf those of Nicklaus.

Playing an average of 21 tournaments a year from 1962 through 1975, Nicklaus pocketed 3.49 percent of the $73.4 million in PGA Tour prize money. Woods, No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking, has won 3.39 percent of the $2.7 billion in money awarded from 1996 through this year?s PGA Championship, where he finished second. He?s averaged almost 17 events a year.

During his first 14 years on tour, the most Nicklaus won as a percentage of total purses was 4.94 percent of $2.8 million in 1965. That year, he won the Masters Tournament for the second time, captured four other titles and pocketed $140,752.

In 1962, Nicklaus won less than $62,000, including $33.33 in his first pro start at the Los Angeles Open in January. Five months later, he earned his first pro victory, beating Palmer in an 18-hole playoff for the U.S. Open championship. The win was worth $15,000, according to Nicklaus?s Web site. In his career, Nicklaus won $5.73 million.
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Nicklaus Earned Greater Percent of PGA Tour Purses Than Woods - Bloomberg.com
 
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I'll share a small anecdote from my dad about Jack.


The first year of the AT&T in Atlanta, Jack and Lee Trevino stopped by a local driving range in Atlanta on the Wednesday before the tournament. At the time, both of them were playing for the same type of clothing (years before Jack started his Golden Bear line) and the sponsor brought them out to put on a small clinic for about 300 people - my old man was there to watch.

So Jack sends his caddy out into the range with a catchers mitt. He sends him out 150 yards and then hits 8 irons into the mitt without having his caddy move one foot in either direction. He then sends him 40 yards to the left and to the right and proceeds to move his feet ever so slighty. Fade into the mitt, draw into the mitt - perfect!

Then he does the exact same thing from 200 yards with his 6 iron. Dad said it was the most impressive athletic performance he's ever seen.
 
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Interview on CNN today with Yang about his PGA victory over Tiger Woods. He says that he learned to play golf by watching Jack Nicklaus videos.

There's a certain poetic justice in that.
 
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Steve19;1521640; said:
Interview on CNN today with Yang about his PGA victory over Tiger Woods. He says that he learned to play golf by watching Jack Nicklaus videos.

There's a certain poetic justice in that.
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That's a bit unsettling to me. The bad-ass Olympic Russian Hockey teams of the 70's and 80's learned the game from watching videos of Bobby Orr.

Asia is a sleepy giant of dominance in the golf industry. Let's hope Yang's victory was not the ringing alarm.
 
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Published: December 03, 2009
Why Nicklaus truly is the greatest
Bill Burt

xl


Today is a day to honor Jack Nicklaus, the greatest of them all.

We should remember Nicklaus as the Tiger Woods Public Relations Tour officially opened for business yesterday. Tiger's too-good-to-be-true lifestyle ? wealth, fame and a perfect family ? was exposed as being too good to be true.

Woods and Nicklaus are connected at the hip.

Nicklaus is the all-time greatest golfer, at least according to the record book.

But it's only a matter of time that the 33-year-old Woods, who is well ahead of Nicklaus' pace, surpasses Nicklaus' victory totals as a professional (114), on the PGA Tour (73) and in majors (18).

Woods apparently still has the newspaper graphic from 15 years ago, touting Nicklaus' records, particularly in golf's major championships. He has said ad infinitum that beating Nicklaus' records drives him.

Woods, though, will come up way short, even if he is able to overcome his recent adulterous woes, when it comes to catching Nicklaus ... the family man.

Among the several thousands stories I have done over the years, one of my favorites was on Nicklaus in 2001 when he came to Salem Country Club for the US Senior Open.

It was about Nicklaus' ability to balance being a superstar athlete/national icon and family man.

Nicklaus has been married to wife, Barbara, for 49 years. They have five children, all of whom are married and live within a few miles of their parents.

They met their first week as 18-year-old freshmen at Ohio State University and were married during their junior year.

They made a pact soon after having three children before they were 26. Other than one trip to South Africa, Nicklaus would not be away from the family for more than two weeks. Ever.

It meant a shorter schedule, less money (although he still made a reported $22 million last year) and some semblance of a family life.

Here is a snippet of a question-and-answer session with NBC's "Today" anchor, Matt Lauer, after he announced his retirement in 2005.

Lauer: "But graduations, birthday parties, were you there for most of those?"

Nicklaus: "I didn't miss any of 'em. I didn't miss football games. I didn't miss basketball games. I arranged my schedule around their schedule."
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Why Nicklaus truly is the greatest - EagleTribune.com, North Andover, MA
 
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On the bag: Nicklaus, turning 70, still enjoying the adventure
By Steve DiMeglio, USA TODAY

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Jack Nicklaus, who turns 70 on Thursday, doesn't play much golf anymore, but he stays close to the game with his golf course design business. "Golf course design kept me in the game," Nicklaus says. "I have my competition with the ground I am working with. To be able to produce a golf course to challenge the player has become my competition. To compete against other designers, in many ways, is my competition."
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY

With his eyes fixated on the future, as they always have been, Jack Nicklaus has little time during his golden years to reminisce about the past ? that is, unless you ask him to recount thousands of stories he can click off the top of his head, whether the subject matter is his golf career, the genius of Pebble Beach, fishing, tennis, his family or Ohio State football.

A rocking chair might be good for the Golden Bear's balky back, but he has no intentions of spending his days swaying back and forth as the sun sets. There's too much ground to break ? literally and figuratively ? for Nicklaus to even think about hibernation.

"Life is an adventure," Nicklaus said during a conference call from his corporate office in North Palm Beach, Fla., ahead of his 70th birthday on Thursday. "You never know where it's going to take you or what's going to happen. You do the best you can to plan, but you never know what's going to happen. I think it's kind of nice to not know what is around the corner.

"That's the adventure."

So Nicklaus, who won 18 major championships and 73 PGA Tour titles in a career that began in 1962, won't be overly reflective when he spends his 70th birthday on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. It's a paradise on the eastern-most edge of the International Date Line, where midnight on Jan. 21 occurs before most any other place on Earth. He'll be fly-fishing for bonefish and trevally with a few friends and his wife, Barbara (the two will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in July).

After a three-day vacation, Nicklaus will go back to work on his golf course design business. And spending as much time as he can watching his grandchildren play sports. And playing more tennis than golf ? "I'm not much of a golfer anymore," he said ? although he and Tom Watson just won $350,000 to capture the Champions Skins Game in what Nicklaus said would be his only competitive appearance in golf this year.

"How old do I feel? A lot of people tell me I am one of the youngest 70-year-olds they have ever seen," Nicklaus said. "I play golf when I want to. I do whatever I want to do. I go skiing when I want to. Outside of my arthritis, which is substantial in some places on my body, I feel great. I feel young.

"I get really excited when I make a trip to China, to Russia. I get excited about making the trip because of the fun of it, the excitement of working with the land and the people."
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On the bag: Nicklaus, turning 70, still enjoying the adventure - USATODAY.com
 
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Originally Published: January 18, 2010
Golden Bear hits golden years in stride
By Jason Sobel
ESPN.com

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Augusta National/Getty Images
Jack Nicklaus' triumph in the 1986 Masters at the age of 46 captivated the sports world. The victory put a record sixth green jacket in the Golden Bear's closet.

"Golf was never all that important to me."

The words leave Jack Nicklaus' lips and hang in the air like a carefully crafted wedge shot. For a split-second, it's as if Gandhi has declared that he never cared about world peace or Picasso claimed he wasn't much of an art person.

On the eve of Nicklaus' 70th birthday, during what is termed by his publicist as a "State of the Bear" interview with the media, the game's greatest major champion -- 18 titles, if you count only professional majors; 20 if, like Jack, you also include his two U.S. Amateur titles -- appears on the verge of a shocking admission ...

And then he explains himself.

"What I mean by that is ... I played a game because I loved it and I played it for the sake of the game," Nicklaus says, immediately thwarting any notion to the alternative. "I played it because when I played that game, the competition, the charge that I got from it, excited me to be really good at something. It excited me to be able to focus on something, something to work at, something that gave me goals, something that filled my life with excitement."
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Jason Sobel: Golden Bear Jack Nicklaus hitting golden years in stride - ESPN
 
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Awesome. At the '86 Masters I spent both days standing at the edge of No. 15 green. When Sevi plopped it in the water, it was the only time I'd ever cheered a player's bad shot while at a tournament, but it was a spontaneous response. When Jack sank that eagle putt, it was insanity.
 
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Never was old enough to appreciate the Golden Bear during his great years - but when he retired and sank his last putt at St. Andrews a few years back the audible cheer from my father told me all I needed to know about him.

Happy Birthday Jack :)
 
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