Saturday, June 22,
2002
These guys would
have loved to take on Tiger in their prime
By Joe Posnanski
Knight Ridder Newspapers
KANSAS CITY -- People
came to Blue Hills Country Club to see Mount Rushmore. To see
living history. And there they were. Nicklaus. Palmer. Player.
Trevino. Watson. No need for first names. They were here for the
Children's Mercy Golf Classic. They have won 48 major golf championships.
They are what you would call first-ballot hall of famers -- the
only five who are still alive.
And who knows? It
might be the last time all five are together.
So people came to
regard them, to admire them, to cherish them, pretty much the
way people cherish the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Like they were
museum pieces. Only, they're not. They're flesh and blood and
fire. Still.
"Do you wish
you were 30 years younger so you could take on this Tiger Woods
kid?" Tom Watson asked Arnold Palmer.
"You bet your
(bottom) I do," Palmer replied.
They just can't tolerate
the way players today bow to Tiger Woods. Hey, all five appreciate
and admire Tiger. They think he's fabulous. He is, after all,
a combination of these five men. He works out like Gary Player.
He endlessly beats balls on the practice range like Lee Trevino.
The cameras love him, the way cameras loved Arnold Palmer. He
can do magic around the greens as only a young Watson could.
And, of course, he
has so much of Jack Nicklaus in him. He has the same steely determination.
The same thirst for pressure. Tiger Woods overpowers golf courses
the way Nicklaus did when he was young. And, like Nicklaus, Woods
has the rarest ability in sports, the power to eliminate every
single thought except one: Win.
"Who cares what
the golf course is like?" Nicklaus responds when asked whether
Muirfield -- site of the British Open -- suits Tiger Woods' game.
"I never understood that. You play the golf course. You make
it suit your game."
Read that again.
That quote says everything about Jack Nicklaus.
That's exactly how
Tiger Woods feels, too.
Of course, not everybody
feels like that in today's multimillion-dollar world of golf.
And it really ticks off these proud men. Palmer, for instance,
is incensed that Rocco Mediate is planning to skip the British
Open because the course "does not fit his game."
"Boo hoo,"
Palmer says. "I'm all choked up."
Then, Gary Player
goes off on an unidentified player, obviously Phil Mickelson,
who, after finishing third at the Masters and second at the U.S.
Open, sounded positively giddy when being interviewed.
"If I lost,
I would be so (ticked off) I wouldn't talk to anybody for two
weeks," Player says. "Can you imagine being happy about
finishing second? The only person who remembers if you finish
second is your wife and your dog. And that's only if you have
a good wife and a good dog."
Trevino says, "I
don't know if the players really feel that way, like second place
is good enough. But it's the wrong message to send."
Then Nicklaus wraps
it up simply.
"They already
gave up," he says, and he shakes his head.
And you can see how
much each of these five men wishes he could go back in time and
take on Tiger Woods. Trevino talks about how he would hit balls
until 11 at night. Nicklaus pounds the table. Palmer smiles and
nods. They all know in their hearts that their games have blown
away with the years. They can't (A) Putt. (B) Hit the ball where
they're aiming. (C) Swing a club without feeling shooting pain
all over their bodies. (D) All of the above.
But, when they talk
about Tiger, their competitive juices flow again. Their hearts
beat faster again.
"If I was about
150 years younger," Paul Newman says in one movie, "you'd
be in trouble, young lady."
"I would love,"
Tom Watson says, "to try and beat that kid when I was a kid."
Gary Player tells
the story about when he taught Elvis Presley to play golf. He
told the king of rock `n' roll that it was all in the hips. "Hips?"
Elvis asked. "Aw, baby, I'm your man."
Oh, yes, they tell
stories, half of them lies, the other half just made up. They
joke. They kibitz. Palmer prepares to drive the ball and asks
Nicklaus whether the ball is too close to him. Nicklaus says no.
Then Palmer hits the ball. "Now," Nicklaus says after
it lands, "the ball is too close to you."
They talk about money.
Gary Player still has the first check he ever made. He had finished
25th at a tournament. The check is for $26.
"My first check,"
Nicklaus says, "was for $33.33. That's inflation."
Player mocks Trevino
for his three wives, or, more specifically, his three mothers-in-law.
Watson teaches the importance of the spine angle when swinging
a golf club. Trevino and Nicklaus reminisce about old wars. The
five laugh like old men. They bicker like children.
"I think you
pull the club back with your left hand," Watson says.
"I totally disagree,"
Nicklaus says.
And then, for a moment,
they all pause when Jordan Webster is introduced. She rushes out
and hugs Watson. Jordan's mother, Jaymie, was in a car accident
a few weeks before her due date. Jordan was born prematurely.
She was 3 pounds, 13 ounces. She has needed a liver and small-intestine
transplant. She is here, 5 years old, smiling like it's Christmas.
Tuesday's event, after everything, could raise almost a million
dollars for Children's Mercy.
"That's why
we're here," Watson says, only he doesn't say it at all because
he's crying. Everybody is.
They all think Tiger
Woods will win the Grand Slam this year. Well, they wouldn't quite
bet on it yet, though Palmer did make some money betting on Tiger
Woods against the field in the U.S. Open. "I was never worried
for one second," he says.
No, they're not sure
Tiger Woods will win the Grand Slam -- that is, all four of golf's
major championships. He needs only the last two now, the British
Open in five weeks and the PGA Championship in August. They're
not sure.
But they definitely
think he will.
"He's just so
much better than everyone else," Nicklaus says.
"Who is going
to beat him?" Palmer asks.
"He needs just
a little bit of luck," Player says. "But only a little."
And they all wish
they could be there to stop him. Watson will play the British
Open, and at 52, he still has this dream about beating Tiger Woods
at Muirfield. It's a fading dream, perhaps. But it's there. For
the four others, though, the dream is simply gone, left, like
all dreams, to the young.
"Tiger has them
all buffaloed," Nicklaus says of today's players, and again
he shakes his head. Nicklaus is still the greatest golfer of all
time. Nobody would argue that yet. Nicklaus won 18 major championships,
still 10 more than Woods. But more, Nicklaus won them in a golden
era, against great golfers who wouldn't back down to him.
"Could somebody
come along and beat Tiger?" he asks. "Sure. Somebody
could. But do they want to work as hard as Tiger? Do they want
to prepare themselves as much as Tiger? I don't know. I just don't
know."
He pauses. Around
him are Palmer, Player, Trevino and Watson, the four men who took
so many major championships away from him.
"I never played
in a tournament with these four guys and thought `I don't have
a chance,' " Nicklaus says. "And the same is true for
all of them. That's the difference. If you don't believe you can
win, you won't win. We believed."
Nearby, Tom Watson
nods.
"In our hearts,"
Watson says, "we still believe."
------
© 2002, The
Kansas City Star.
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