I found Jack’s interview on Wednesday pretty interesting. It starts out with the basic tournament speak, but quickly shifts to a conversation about the state of Tiger Woods’ golf game.
Nicklaus is much too classy to throw Woods under the bus, even if deep down he does feel his record is safe. He’s always contended that Tiger would eventually break his record, and while he acknowledges that he is surprised to see him struggle as long as he has over the past year – he doesn’t backtrack from his long-held belief. That said…. a couple of his comments are left open for interpretation, almost signaling a “read into it what you will” type of curiousness. I have underlined what I feel are those notable “curiosities.”
On Tiger’s continuing struggles:
“Well, I’ve said all along, I’m surprised that he has not bounced back by now. I think he’s got a great work ethic, or at least he did. I assume he still does. I haven’t seen him practice for a long time. But he’s got such a great work ethic. He’s so determined to what he wants to do. I’m very surprised that he has not popped back. I still think he’ll break my record. But obviously — we have not played any majors yet this year. We’ll see. You probably can ask me that same question at the end of this year and we’ll see what the answer is, and it might — it will probably define a lot of what will be the answer. My answer is as good as yours, or my guess is as good as yours. Or certainly yours is as good as mine.”
I think it’s fair to assume that Nicklaus believes that 2011 is a crucial year for Tiger, at least as it pertains to him getting to 19 majors or beyond. He stops short of suggesting that all bets are off should Tiger endure another win-less season this year, but I think that’s essentially the direction his comment was heading.
On the need to make swing changes:
“My swing, did I make changes? I made changes constantly in my swing. That’s how you get better. If you don’t make changes, you don’t improve. I don’t care who you are, because your body continually changes. I mean, my body at age 46 was certainly a lot different than it was at age 25, and/or at 35. And as is Tiger’s body a lot different at age 30 — is he 35 now — than it was at age 25. So does the swing change? Not really. He’s got a beautiful golf swing. He’s always had a beautiful golf swing. But you always continually tweak things that you do within that golf swing to try to improve it. Sometimes you’re successful and sometimes you’re not.”
Jack states the obvious. And he suggests that Tiger’s swing changes over the years are just a natural part of trying to improve, no different than it was with him when he was playing. But the end of this quote almost hints that he thinks Tiger might not be heading in the right direction with his current technique. Otherwise – why say that? Then again, maybe I’m reading too much into it…. but I don’t think so.
On the swing coaches today trying to maximize exposure by talking about the swing changes their players are making, and how reliant the players have become on their coaches:
“I think you hear more about it because of the swing gurus that are out there. If it was the player himself, he ain’t going to talk much about it. But most of the guys out here on the practice tee, they want to talk about it because that’s how they make their living. Jack Grout, who worked with me from 1950 through 1989 till he passed away, never set foot one time on a practice tee, ever. He came to a lot of golf tournaments. You never saw him on the practice tee. He taught me to be able to make my own changes, make my own adjustments, work on the things that I needed to work on so I could concentrate and I could understand how to play the game. That was the important thing; that I knew how to play the game. Jack Grout didn’t care about that he knew how I had to play the game. He wanted me to know how to play the game. And I think that’s part of the problem that maybe that Larry was sort of alluding to a little bit earlier. A lot of times the guys run back to their swing coach too much. I mean, Bobby Jones sat with me when I was 19 years old in his cabin at Augusta and he said, “Jack, I had my seven lean years,” from the time he was 14 to 21 is what it was. He said, “I kept running back to Stewart Maiden.” And he says, “Until I learned and he taught me how to not run back to him, when I did that, then became a golfer.”
I don’t want to put words in the Great Jack Nicklaus’ mouth, but it almost sounds like he’s saying to Tiger, “Stop playing golf swing, start playing golf, and stop obsessing so much about a few bad swings during your tournament rounds.”
On whether or not comments from his peers about him made the media back in his playing days, and how different the media is today compared to back then:
“No, not really. I mean, today, no matter if somebody opens their mouth, it ends up in the newspaper the next day or on the news. And unless you’re in a cocoon, you’re going to hear it. But back when I played, we didn’t have anything. Every once in awhile somebody made some comment and you laughed it off. But today it’s like every day, oh, did you hear what Joe said about Sam, oh, my gosh, what do you think. And then we have a Mike and the Mike in the morning who talk about it for four days. (Laughter) And then we have ESPN which runs it over about 12 times every day. (Laughter) And then we have GOLF CHANNEL — you know what I’m saying? We didn’t have that. Honest to gosh. I’m not putting down what’s happening today, you guys have to talk about something. You get paid, don’t you? We didn’t have that. It just didn’t happen. I mean, really. I mean, how long did we talk about Jay Cutler? I ain’t even sure what he did. He got hurt. Every morning you turned it on. And then what was the latest one? Carmelo Anthony; that’s a month, a month’s scenario. The poor guy wanted to go play for the Knicks and he couldn’t get there. So the speculation went on for how long? Forever. You understand what I’m saying. I hate to make light of that. I think that’s basically where we are today.”
You almost get the sense that despite the enormous difference in prize money today compared to his playing days, Nicklaus doesn’t regret playing in the media-less era he played in. During that era there was more professional courtesy, players respected their peers to a much larger extent than they do today. And a big reason for that is because the sports writers and reporters didn’t make small squabbles the big headlines back then unlike it happens now. But even beyond that – I think it just represents a different generation…. a generation that unlike today respected other people’s right to privacy. And I think that even the sports writers and reporters back in that era honored that, even if they felt that not honoring it could land them a big story the next morning.
For the full transcript of Jack’s interview on Wednesday, read HERE.
When the first-round scoring average for a non-major event is just south of 74 strokes, you know something is up… and that something was the wind, which seemed to be a steady 20 mph most of the day, with gusts that at times felt well northward of 30. Conditions were extremely tough on Thursday, and things don’t look to be improving for Friday. In fact – they could be even tougher.
I guess selling those ads on that state-of-the-art golf bag monitor isn’t exactly working out like John Daly had hoped it would. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that he can’t guarantee weekend exposure, missing 3 cuts in 4 starts already this season. Nah, nothing much seems to be going Big John’s way anymore. But there’s always the Week of the Masters flea market expo, where John opens his RV awning and sets up camp somewhere near the front entrance to peddle his wares….. tee shirts, hats, coffee mugs, musical CD’s, and autographed pictures.
It’s always nice to open up the headlines every once in a while and read about good things happening, because it’s not all that common anymore. But 
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