PDA

View Full Version : Well written article gives JoPo a run for his money...


AirForceChief
04-09-2006, 05:14 AM
From today's Star:

A Golden moment
Nicklaus enthralled the nation by winning the Masters 20 years ago, but there’s even more to the story
By WRIGHT THOMPSON
The Kansas City Star
AUGUSTA, Ga. — When the course is empty, Jack Nicklaus walks to the spot and remembers. There are no galleries around. No cameras. Just him, a few friends and the ghosts. Sometimes, near the end of a leisurely round at Augusta National, he’ll find himself on the 17th green, at the place where he once made the world stop turning. He’ll stand 12 feet away and let the years vanish.

He’s even hit the putt, but it’s never the same. Some moments can’t be repeated. But 20 years ago, the putt ran true. Nicklaus, 46 and faded, turned bright as his yellow shirt, the one he wore to honor the memory of a friend. He held his putter in the air. Cameras clicked, preserving it forever. The country paused. The people who were at Augusta on April 13, 1986, won’t ever forget it.

As Jack charged around the back nine, the galleries swelled. His son Jackie, who caddied that day, can still hear the echoes. He remembers his dad’s tee shot high in the air on No. 16.

“Be the right club,” he begged.

His dad turned around and winked. An old man was young again.

“It is,” he said.

The ball landed 2 feet away. The earth literally shook.

“It was deafening,” Jackie says. “When we walked to the 17th tee, all ears were ringing. It was so loud. It was the most special time I’ve ever had with my dad on the golf course.

“The crowd was so accepting of my dad, not only for what he was doing that day but what he had done over the years.”

Now it’s April again in Georgia. Nicklaus isn’t playing this year, though his metabolism is quickening. Retirement doesn’t fit yet.

“It’s a very difficult week for him, not competing,” Jackie says. “It’s odd for him not to play. In the office, he’s been very active, very sharp, and he’s actually put together a few good deals the last four or five days.”

The Golden Bear still remembers. That’s all there is to do now. Remember and tell the stories again, some old ones and a few new ones, too.

Jack Nicklaus smiles.

“You guys keep asking about it,” he says. “I don’t mind answering questions at all.”

Look at the photo of Nicklaus. Do you remember that yellow shirt? It seemed perfect, a color of spring, of rejuvenation. For one Ohio family, it was like Jack Nicklaus was giving them a hug from a thousand miles away. Nicklaus did things like that sometimes, things fans usually never found out about.

In the late ’60s, Nicklaus became close to a special young man. His name was Craig Smith, and his parents were friends of Barbara Nicklaus’ family. Everyone who met Craig knew he was special. He always helped his classmates with their homework, like a little teacher. But what he really loved was golf. He could hit it straight and true, and his idol was Jack Nicklaus.

When Craig was 11, he developed a rare type of bone cancer. It was so painful.

“He died for 2½ years,” his mother Mary Lou says. “You can’t call it living.”

Jack would come to visit Craig in the hospital. He’d write letters and call. The young man’s pain deeply affected Nicklaus.

“Jack and Barbara were so sweet to Craig,” Mary Lou says. “It was very hard on Jack to see Craig.”

During one of those visits, Jack had an idea.

“What’s your favorite shirt color?” he asked.

“Yellow,” Craig said.

“I will wear yellow at every tournament,” Jack promised.

He did. For two and a half years, as a little boy courageously fought off death longer than even the doctors thought possible, Nicklaus wore yellow on Saturday or Sunday, when he was sure the cameras would be on.

“Craig followed every one of his matches,” Mary Lou says.

“This was his signal,” says his dad, the Rev. Dr. William Smith.

“He was saying hi to Craig,” Mary Lou says. “You have no idea what this meant to this young, dying man.”

Craig finally lost his fight in 1971. He was 13. Nicklaus no longer had anyone to wear yellow for. His career peaked and waned. The ’70s became the ’80s. Soon, it was 1986. Craig had been dead for 15 years.

Then, getting his clothes out for the final round of the 1986 Masters, Barbara and Jack had a flash. He’d wear Craig’s shirt on Sunday. And when the cameras turned on and the signal reached out across the country, William and Mary Lou Smith saw that yellow shirt and sobbed.

“It meant so much,” William Smith says.

Look at the photo again. See that giant putter? It’s called a Response ZT. Cost $89.95 back then. Someone out there has this actual putter. It’s the only club from a major victory that Nicklaus doesn’t have. Seems he left it in his garage and one of his kids gave it away.

The people who didn’t know the Nicklaus boys had to settle on getting it at the store. A ton of folks did. After the Masters, MacGregor sold more than 350,000 of them. It became an icon.

One of those who just had to have it was a kid named Loritz “Scooter” Clark. These days Clark runs golf courses. Back then, he earned money working at the University of Maryland golf course, where PGA tour vet Fred Funk ran the pro shop.

He talked his dad into buying him the Response putter.

One day, Clark went outside to hit a few putts with it. He lined it up and let loose.

“That’s when the lightning struck,” he says. “The next thing that I recall was waking up in the hospital bed and asking around. It took me a couple of days to get my bearings back. I don’t know if it was short-term amnesia. I couldn’t remember any phone numbers, any significant dates.”

Later, after he’d fully recovered, Clark found out how lucky he’d been.

“Fortunately there was a doctor,” Funk says. “We did CPR; I only knew a little bit, got him into the clubhouse. Long story short, he lost his heart rate three times, and he ended up surviving.”

Clark went back to playing golf. Using that Response putter, the next year he won the Maryland state high school championship. That’s the last time Clark used it. He gave it to his dad, a reminder of how life triumphed over death.

When his father died in 2001, Clark thought about burying the putter with him. It meant that much to him. Instead, he kept it. Someday, if he has grandkids, he can show it to them and tell about a man named Jack Nicklaus and a tournament called the Masters.

There are other things, things that you can’t see in any famous photo. Like Helen Nicklaus, old and graying, leaning in to watch. She was in her 70s, and, after a heart bypass, had decided she’d better attend another Masters. She hadn’t been since 1959, when her son Jack was an amateur.

The entire family was spread out over two houses. Jack and Barbara. His mom. His sister. Nephews and nieces. Uncle Frank and Aunt Rachel. Heck, everyone. No one really considered that he might win. Certainly not him.

Even after nine holes on Sunday, as Jack stood far behind the leaders, it seemed hopeless.

Frank and Rachel cut out early.

“Oh, yeah,” says Jack’s sister Marilyn Hutchinson, laughing, “they felt bad forever. Can you imagine?”

Helen stayed, walking stride for stride with her son. Just yesterday he had been a pudgy 10-year-old who wanted to be a golfer. Now her baby had grown up to be the greatest golfer ever, and she had front-row seats for his final coronation.

“She was just thrilled,” Hutchinson says. “Overwhelmed, excited. When somebody is her age and something like that happens, you forget every ache and pain you ever had. She was moving pretty good. She wasn’t thinking about it. You’re flying like a kite.”

Nicklaus put on a show for his mom. He birdied 9, 10, 11, 13, 16 and 17. He eagled 15. The entire back nine, as everyone at the course and at home went bonkers, the Nicklaus family joined in.

“To have something like that happen, it was like, man, we’re alive again,” Hutchinson says. “You can imagine if you were going crazy what we must have felt. What a thrilling moment. To have his mom there was such a special thing for Jack.”

The most memorable moment was probably at the par-3 16th green, when Nicklaus hit it to 2 feet. His family felt like the golf course was gonna take flight.

“I can remember standing there with her,” Hutchinson says. “I can’t describe it to anybody. I don’t know what to say. Imagine being in the Ohio State basketball stadium with a Big Ten championship. It was so loud. I’ve never heard anything like that.”

In the din, an old lady beamed.

“She heard people talking about him in front of her,” Hutchinson remembers, “and she tapped them and she said, ‘That’s my boy.’ ”

There’s a final thing, another piece of 1986 that hasn’t faded. Up I-20 in Atlanta, a woman named Cathy McCollister opens her morning newspaper. Sometimes she still catches herself searching bylines. Her Tom was a sportswriter, a man who made his living in press rooms and airports. Reading the paper can be hard for her. So is the beginning of March, the anniversary of his death.

“It’s certainly a time to remember,” she says. “His kids and I get together and go out to dinner and have a nice bottle of wine and raise a glass to Tom.”

That’s not when most people remember Tom, though. Most people think about him in April, during the Masters. In the lead up to the 1986 tournament, McCollister wrote this sentence in the Atlanta Journal: “Nicklaus is gone, done.”

Nothing outrageous. Even Jack himself thought he was washed up. Except one of Jack’s friends, a man named John Montgomery who was sharing a house with him, clipped the article out and taped it to the fridge in Augusta.

Jack read it. He re-read it. He wanted to prove McCollister wrong. Prove them all wrong. Prove himself wrong. Something was awakening inside an aging champion.

All week, Nicklaus left that article taped to his fridge. It fueled him. When the tournament ended, and the sixth green jacket secured, Nicklaus walked into the press room. The first thing out of his mouth was, “Where’s Tom McCollister?”

It became part of the 1986 legend.

“Some of the writers said, ‘Tom, this is gonna be around a good long while,’” Cathy McCollister says. “I think on the 5-year anniversary, people were calling him. He enjoyed it.”

The calls kept coming. Then, seven years ago, Tom was killed in a car wreck, dying at the age of 61. So many friends showed up at the funeral. People loved Tom. The ones who couldn’t make it sent flowers. Cathy went through all the notes that came with the arrangements. One in particular stopped her, surprised her, made her proud, made her remember.

It was from Jack Nicklaus.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To reach Wright Thompson, sports reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4856 or send e-mail to wthompson@kcstar.com

JimNasium
04-09-2006, 05:39 AM
Nice article. I still consider Jack to be the greatest champion in the history of the game.

Skip Towne
04-09-2006, 05:54 AM
Good read.

mikey23545
04-09-2006, 06:37 AM
Any sport should be proud to have had a champion with such class and quiet dignity.

Great read.

Reaper16
04-09-2006, 09:44 AM
That's because Wright Thompson is a journalism bad-a**.