The Tiger and the young Golden Bear
By DAVID DAVIES / The Guardian
Arnold Palmer is in a unique position in the sport. He is the
only man still playing tournament golf who has witnessed, at first
hand, the emergence of Jack Nicklaus and now Tiger Woods.
If comparisons are to be made between the two, Palmer is the
man to make them, though he is necessarily guarded about the Woods
future.
"He's only been out here five minutes," he says.
Palmer was speaking recently as he waited to play in the tournament
he owns, the Bay Hill Invitational. Woods was already taking advantage
of a course softened by torrential rain to birdie four of the
first six holes.
When Palmer heard, he shook his head, grinned in his quizzical
fashion and said: "He is just immensely long. I think Tiger
is the longest of them all, of those that can actually play the
game."
He said this despite first-hand experience of the young, brick-built
Nicklaus, who hit the ball so far that Bobby Jones confessed:
"Mr. Nicklaus plays a game with which I am not familiar."
In 1962 Palmer met Nicklaus in a play-off for the US Open.
But it was not the Nicklaus long game which brought about Palmer's
downfall.
"I three-putted those Oakmont greens 17 times in the five
rounds. Jack had only one. He really could putt, you know."
In fact, when it comes to driving length, Palmer is almost
dismissive of Nicklaus.
"In '62 I was about as long. There was not much in it.
Jack, though, could move it out a little bit more than most when
he had to. But what matters is the margin he had over his contemporaries,
and there Tiger wins. He is much longer than his nearest peer
on Tour. He creates the fastest clubhead speed I've seen. It works
for him now but, if that swing ever jumps the track, he could
have terrible trouble putting it back."
Where Nicklaus scores over Woods in the matter of hitting the
ball is in the long irons.
"Jack could hit it long but, more importantly, high and
soft. That gave him a huge advantage when it came to majors because
he could hold greens that we could not. When it comes to irons,
Nicklaus was the best I've seen.
"Tiger is very similar in the way he hits those irons
but you always knew that Jack's ball would be on the green: so
far you can't be sure with Tiger. That's why it's possible Woods
will have problems with U.S. Open and PGA-style courses. You simply
cannot afford to go in the rough."
Palmer also favors Nicklaus on the mental approach.
"I have never known anyone with the focus Jack could bring
to a round of golf. He simply shut everything out. Of course it's
difficult to make that particular comparison because Tiger is
only 22. He shows signs of being pretty concentrated himself but
there are a lot of ifs and buts around his name at present."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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