Word: nicklaus
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...number, maybe even a majority, are doing things that basically come very easy to them. Once, in an extraordinary fit of conscience -- just for an instant -- the basketball star Elvin Hayes actually refused his paycheck out of a sense that he hadn't earned it. After nearly decapitating Jack Nicklaus during a pro-am tournament, a wretched amateur golfer wondered with a sigh if Nicklaus ever shanked one. Softly, almost apologetically, the game's ultimate champion replied, "Three times, when...
Which is not to say Hayes and Nicklaus never sweated. But if perspiration could be qualified, broken down and quantified, the Olympian probably distills the purest athletic effort by the drop. The most arcane sports, which include many of the Olympic events, are nearly always learned late and hard, in the U.S. after playing baseball and football for a while. Speed does come naturally to the beautiful racehorses of the running track, like Florence Griffith Joyner, though at the world-class level science kicks in and a specialized knowledge is required. Hobbled running backs reach uncertainly for their hamstrings...
...cried when he won the Houston, the Hartford or the Honda. "It means what every little boy dreams about," he said finally, "when he plays golf all by himself late in the afternoon, and he puts down three or four balls. One is Snead, one is Hogan, one is Nicklaus and maybe one is Strange." And he is entered in the British Open in two weeks...
...tongue and on the ball, metal wood is the dumbest-sounding oxymoron since jumbo shrimp. But, like television journalist, its usage has proliferated beyond the inventors' dreams. Once lovingly crafted of tempered wood, the heads of drivers are going steel. If even Nicklaus is bonging these days instead of bashing, the game has certainly changed. "I still hit the ((old)) persimmon club one or two yards longer," he estimates with charming precision, "but I hit the metal wood straighter. That's what convinced me. I feel very confident now that I'm going to drive the ball in the fairway...
...does no good to remind him that in the course of winning 20 major championships, he hit a few fairways previously. Nicklaus thinks he has found magic again. The last time was two years ago this week at the Masters in Augusta, Ga., where anyone with a wet eye could see that his mother in the gallery and his son at his side had more to do with a sixth victory surging out of him at 46 than did the oversize putter he waved jubilantly. "I wanted something with the largest possible moment of inertia and the smallest dispersion factor...