
DUBLIN, OHIO | Jack Nicklaus is 84 years old now, has five children, 24 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
The last time he played golf was two weeks after the Masters when he logged three rounds at Augusta National with family and friends, shot 88, 90 and 91 and said he enjoyed it.
Nicklaus moves a little slower these days, but his mind – perhaps the single ingredient that separated him from every other golfer – remains sharp as he demonstrated by recalling the details of a loss to Hugh Royer in the 1954 U.S. Junior at Los Angeles Country Club and the scores he shot in the final two matches of his 1959 North and South Amateur victory at Pinehurst No. 2 (he didn’t break 80 in any of the final four match-play rounds yet still won).
If the numbers aren’t exactly right, they’re close enough.
“If I throw out a number, you say, ‘Man, what a memory.’ Whether it’s truth or not, who knows?” Nicklaus said Tuesday with a smile.
When Nicklaus sits down for an hour, first to honor a handful of college golfers named national players of the year in their respective divisions and, later, to talk about whatever gets asked, it’s still precious time.
The college players fired questions at him.
Career advice?
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Nicklaus said.
Anything he would change in his playing career?
The chip-ins that Lee Trevino (1972 Open Championship at Muirfield) and Tom Watson (1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach) used to beat him by a stroke in two major championships.
Most important week in his career?
“Probably winning the U.S. Amateur when I was 19 years old,” he said of his 1959 victory before he would repeat two years later.
Muirfield Village is to him what Pinehurst No. 2 was to Donald Ross, a design that is never fully finished.
Wearing his gray Muirfield Village sport coat, Nicklaus may feel as much at home at his most personal golf course design as he does at his south Florida home. He was born and raised not far from the club, and his ties to the Columbus area, Ohio State University and the club are unshakable.
Muirfield Village is to him what Pinehurst No. 2 was to Donald Ross, a design that is never fully finished. This year, the green on Muirfield Village’s treacherous par-3 16th has been softened and a bunker removed because, Nicklaus said, fewer than 40 percent of the field could hit the green in regulation on the weekend.
“Maybe it’s not shame on them; maybe it’s shame on me,” Nicklaus said.
He has strong convictions regarding course design and setup, but there is still an element of student to one of the game’s ultimate teachers.
Nicklaus says he doesn’t pay much attention to the PGA Tour on a daily basis, but his voice, his presence and his devotion to the Memorial Tournament remain immense.

He fought against moving the Memorial Tournament to this week, immediately preceding the U.S. Open, primarily because he never liked to play the week before a major championship. He also likes having Memorial Day Monday as part of the event’s schedule, but Nicklaus agreed to the shift this year to help the tour accommodate player wishes to bunch signature events and majors together.
“I’m asked to put on – be part of putting on – a golf tournament in a week that I would never play. That, to me, is the essential part, from my standpoint,” Nicklaus said.
Next year, Nicklaus suggested, could look different.
“That discussion is in process,” Nicklaus said.
That raises the question of what the PGA Tour might look like next year and beyond. The anniversary of the framework agreement between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is Thursday, and exactly where the two groups stand in their negotiations remains murky.
Nicklaus said he has tried to stay out of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf debate but acknowledged he was curious enough about what’s happening that he called tour commissioner Jay Monahan.
“A couple months ago, I called Jay about it. I said, ‘Jay, I’m worried a little bit about what’s going on,’” Nicklaus said.
When the question was asked about how much the game needs to get the best players together more often, Nicklaus sees it through the lens of his own career.
“I said, ‘Are you doing all right, or are you not?’ And he said, ‘We’re doing fine.’ I said, ‘That’s all I need to know.’”
When the question was asked about how much the game needs to get the best players together more often, Nicklaus sees it through the lens of his own career. He usually played 15-18 events annually, usually at the same spots.
Some of those overlapped with the tournaments Arnold Palmer and Gary Player played. Some did not. They weren’t in the same events every week which, naturally, led to a Nicklaus story.
“Hartford has always put on a nice tournament. They have a different golf course now, but they used to play at Wethersfield [Country Club], and everybody kept saying to me, ‘Jack, why don’t you play at Wethersfield?’ And I said, ‘Well, the scores are too low, and I’m just not a guy that shoots a lot of low scores,’” Nicklaus said.

“And [they say], ‘Well, you haven’t played it.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll come next year and play.’ So, I went to Wethersfield and played and I shot 68 the first round, and I think I was in 17th place. And I shot 67 the second round, and I was in 25th place. And I shot 67 the third round, and I was in 35th place. And I shot 67 the last round, and I finished 42nd.
“Now you know why I didn’t play Wethersfield. And there were a lot of tournaments like that I never really liked to have to shoot low scores. I liked courses where you had to grind out … a score.”
Which leads to the U.S. Open and its intentional difficulty and, in a roundabout way, another Nicklaus story. The question was about whether seeing two players (Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele) shoot 62 in the U.S. Open last year bothered him, Nicklaus said he didn’t remember watching it, but he did remember playing there 70 years ago where Royer beat him, 4 and 3, in a second-round match.
“I used to like the course setups the way the USGA did, where you had 25-yard fairways or whatever you had, and you had 3, 4 inches of rough, and then you had high rough. But, by gosh, there was no mistake: You either hit it in the fairway or you hit it – or you struggled.” – Jack Nicklaus
The other thing he remembered was seeing Byron Nelson conducting a clinic there.
“They had just replaced the irrigation system and the caddie that was shagging the balls for Byron would start walking backwards and he never took a step off the irrigation system all the way back. That’s what I remember about L.A. Country Club.”
Then Nicklaus brought it back to U.S. Opens where the setup, generally severe and unforgiving, was something he embraced.
“I used to like the course setups the way the USGA did, where you had 25-yard fairways or whatever you had, and you had 3, 4 inches of rough, and then you had high rough. But, by gosh, there was no mistake: You either hit it in the fairway or you hit it – or you struggled,” Nicklaus said.
“I liked that. I like greens just like this [hitting a tabletop with his knuckles] where you’ve got to send the ball up in the air and bring it down like, as they say, a butterfly with sore feet. You’ve got to be able to play that way. That’s what I enjoyed.
“But you know why I enjoyed it? Because I could do it.”
It was another Tuesday afternoon at Jack’s Place, and he made it feel like home.
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