9601200061
DETROIT FREE PRESS
960614
Friday, June 14, 1996
METRO FINAL
1S
Photo GABRIEL B. TAIT/Detroit Free Press
:
Hale Irwin bows in mock worship of Jack Nicklaus after he saved
par on the 18th hole. "I kept hitting it close all day,"
Nicklaus said, "but I didn't get it in."
MITCH ALBOM
U.S. OPEN; SPECIAL SECTION
Copyright (c) 1996, Detroit Free Press
NICKLAUS' TIME HAS PASSED,
BUT FANS STILL ADORE HIM
Of all the scenes I can picture in my mind -- and with an imagination like
mine, that's a pretty nasty collection -- I cannot envision anyone throwing a
rat at Jack Nicklaus.
But it happened. Not a real rat. A toy rat. The kind they throw at
Florida Panthers hockey games. In fact, this was at a Florida Panthers hockey
game, last week, in the Stanley Cup finals. (We pause here for all the Red
Wings fans who had finally forgotten about the Stanley Cup, and who now,
thanks to my lousy reminder, have gone into a frothy-mouthed rage about Claude
Lemieux that will subside in a moment, when they begin weeping.)
Anyhow, here was Nicklaus, at a Panthers game, with rats raining down as
the sold-out crowd celebrated a goal. And given what you know about Nicklaus,
the proud, blond, windswept golfing legend, you might think him upset. At his
age, 56, he is above such childish behavior, right?
Wrong. He loved it. He laughed at all the rats, and his wife, Barbara,
scooped some up for their grandchildren, and Jack picked up a few himself and
threw them onto the ice and yelled, "Yeeeah!"
The Golden Rat?
"I thought it was great," he said. "Heck, we painted our faces and
everything. Didn't you see us?"
OK, the face-painting part was a joke. But even if it weren't, you'd have
trouble with the whole image -- Jack and the Rats -- because Nicklaus has
become such an American snapshot, you simply can't see him doing certain
things. You can't picture Jack anchoring a 100-meter relay, for example. You
can't picture Jack dancing to Pearl Jam.
Yet we have no problem seeing him out there Thursday at the U.S. Open,
playing shot-for-shot with golfers 30 years younger. Such is the cruel
benevolence of golf; it lets you age on stage. You drag your show on, week
after week, and try to pull that rabbit from the hat. Golf does not send you
packing, too slow and too broken down, the way basketball, football and hockey
often do.
And so Rat Man was out there Thursday, with the kids, and for all the
noise about Tiger Woods' round, and Greg Norman's putting, and Payne Stewart's
lead, there was not a soul Thursday who, at some point during the day, didn't
ask, "What'd Nicklaus shoot?" or "Is Jack in the running?"
The Bear still gets his kicks
He stood now beneath a large oak tree off the 18th hole, a short toss from
the players' locker rooms. Other stars had shimmied past, aiming for those
lockers like cruise missiles. The young Scottish sensation, Colin Montgomerie,
pushed away reporters despite a nice par score. "No thanks, no thanks," he
kept saying. Nick Faldo, the dashing Masters champion, marched through,
waving but never stopping, like a presidential candidate.
Nicklaus, who has won everything there is to win in golf, relaxed against
the tree -- perhaps because compared to that tree, he was a kid -- and
answered questions in his scratchy tenor voice. He spoke, as he often does,
about how much longer he would do this, about hoping to at least stay
competitive, about how things had changed since the days when his skill
prompted the great Bobby Jones to say, "Jack's playing a game I'm not even
familiar with."
None of this is new material. But in the middle of a thought he said
something that jolted me, and I don't believe I've ever heard it from an
active athlete.
"My time has probably come and gone," he said.
When the crowd had thinned, I asked him about that sentence. How hard was
that for a competitor to say? My time has come and gone?
"It's hard," he admitted. "It's taken me a few years to finally be able to
say it. But I probably should have said it two or three years ago.
Realistically, it's the truth.
"We all have our time. And we all pass on. That doesn't mean I'm not gonna
go down kicking."
He laughed. "I have been going down kicking for a while now, haven't I?"
Jack Nicklaus, sports fan
He looked down at his white shoes. He had shot a very respectable 72,
parring 16 of the 18 holes. Somehow, despite the muddy course, the shoes were
still clean. Does that surprise you?
He spoke about watching other sports now -- he has had season tickets to
the Dolphins, the Heat, the Marlins and the Panthers, and has almost never
gone -- and he said he enjoys guys like Patrick Roy and Michael Jordan, skill
players, at the top of their form. Wednesday, on the eve of his 40th U.S.
Open, Nicklaus watched the Bulls-Sonics game.
"What other sport would you have chosen if you could have the same talent
level as you have in golf?" I asked him.
"Tennis," he said. "I guess I like the individual sports. Golf, tennis,
you don't need anyone to throw you the ball, don't need anyone to guard you to
learn how to play. I liked baseball as a kid, but I got tired of standing
around a dusty field waiting for the other kids to show up."
Baseball? Tennis? Call me crazy, but I can't imagine Nicklaus playing any
of these things. Then again, I couldn't imagine him tossing toys during a
hockey game (although, just once, I'd like to see him yell "YEEAH!" only to
have the goalie turn around and say "Shhhh!" -- but that's just my sick
imagination).
I guess the point is, no matter what the year, no matter what the season,
you see Jack Nicklaus the way you saw him Thursday, walking up the fairway,
lips pursed, a small wave to the endless river of fans. This might be his last
U.S. Open, and he is no longer the story, but he is still the picture. All
the rats in the world won't change that.
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
GOLF