49 Fun Facts About Jack Nicklaus

How many major championships did Jack Nicklaus win?

18 major championships is still the record nobody has matched. Remarkably, he finished runner-up in majors even more often: 19 times.

What is Jack Nicklaus's famous nickname?

The Golden Bear was coined by an Australian sportswriter as the burly blond turned professional. By coincidence, his high school's teams were already called the Golden Bears.

In which city was Jack Nicklaus born?

Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up in the suburb of Upper Arlington as an all-round athlete. He was good enough at basketball for college recruiters to come calling.

Whom did Nicklaus beat in a playoff to win the 1962 U.S. Open, his first professional victory?

Arnold Palmer lost the playoff 71 to 74, and Nicklaus's first professional win came in front of galleries pulling hard for the local favourite.

Which golfer joined Nicklaus and one great rival in the 1960s trio marketed as 'The Big Three'?

Gary Player completed the trio; agent Mark McCormack managed all three and staged the televised Big Three Golf matches of the 1960s.

Which Masters first did Nicklaus achieve in 1966?

Back-to-back wins had eluded every Masters champion for three decades, and Nicklaus needed a Monday playoff against Tommy Jacobs and Gay Brewer to get his.

Ten-year-old Nicklaus took up golf alongside his father, who was recovering from an injury suffered playing which sport?

Volleyball: Charlie Nicklaus went back to golf to help the injury heal and took his son along. The boy shot 51 for his first nine holes.

Which illness did Nicklaus overcome as a 13-year-old?

A mild case of polio struck Nicklaus at 13, yet that same year he broke 70 for the first time with a 69 at Scioto Country Club.

Who was Nicklaus's lifelong golf instructor, the Scioto club pro who coached him from age 10?

Jack Grout, the Scioto Country Club professional, taught Nicklaus from boyhood and rebuilt his swing in early 1980 after the winless 1979 season.

Which title did Nicklaus win twice before turning professional, in 1959 and 1961?

He was 19 when he birdied the last hole of the final to take his first U.S. Amateur from the defending champion, and he won the 1961 final 8 and 6.

Who, playing alongside amateur Nicklaus, said he should have won the 1960 U.S. Open by ten?

Ben Hogan was paired with the 20-year-old amateur for the final 36 holes. Nicklaus led during the last round, then three-putted twice coming home and finished second, two shots back.

Which university did Nicklaus attend, later the site of the Jack Nicklaus Museum?

Ohio State's football coach, Woody Hayes, had watched the teenager play both sports. Asked which one the boy should pursue, he told his father: keep him away from my game.

Nicklaus's father played semi-pro football under an assumed name for which team, later the Detroit Lions?

Charlie Nicklaus turned out for the Portsmouth Spartans on Sundays while still a college student. Playing under a false name was a common trick of the era for keeping amateur standing intact.

Nicklaus captained the United States four times between 1998 and 2007 in which team event?

The Presidents Cup gave him one of golf's strangest finishes in 2003: with the teams level and darkness falling on a sudden-death playoff, the two captains agreed to share the trophy.

Nicklaus won his first major, the 1962 U.S. Open, at which course famed for its Church Pews bunker?

Oakmont was won on the greens: across 90 holes, playoff included, the 22-year-old three-putted only once.

Whose 270 broke Nicklaus's 1965 Masters record of 271?

Tiger Woods began that week with a 40 on his first nine holes. He was 21, and he still won by a record 12 strokes.

Which event, golf's so-called 'fifth major', did Nicklaus win in its first year, 1974?

The Players Championship roamed in its early years, so his three wins in five years came on three different courses, in Georgia and Florida.

At which Scottish course did Nicklaus win the 1966 Open, using his driver just 17 times?

He later named his own Ohio club Muirfield Village in its honour.

Nicklaus closed out his 1967 U.S. Open win with a famous 238-yard shot using which club?

1-iron: from 238 yards on Baltusrol's par-five 18th he found the green and holed a 22-foot putt for birdie, a closing 65 and a then-record 275.

Who was Nicklaus's caddie for most of his professional career?

Angelo Argea first carried for him at Palm Springs in 1963. Nicklaus won that week and kept him on the bag for the next two decades.

To which British golfer did Nicklaus concede a putt on the final green of the 1969 Ryder Cup, forcing a tie?

Tony Jacklin had just holed a long eagle putt on the 17th to square their match. The gesture is now celebrated as great sportsmanship, but it infuriated Nicklaus's own captain, Sam Snead.

Whom did Nicklaus beat in a playoff to win the 1970 Open Championship?

Doug Sanders had missed a three-foot putt for the title the day before. When Nicklaus holed the winner he flung his putter so high in joy that Sanders had to duck as it came down.

Nicklaus's 1971 PGA Championship win made him the first golfer to achieve what?

Winning all four majors twice took an odd calendar: the 1971 PGA was played in Florida in February, making it the year's first major instead of its last.

What did Nicklaus's famous tee shot do at Pebble Beach's 17th in 1972?

Hit the flagstick and stopped inches away: leading the U.S. Open by three and needing only a safe par on a feared short hole, he fired straight through a stiff ocean wind and tapped in for birdie.

Whose record of 13 major championships did Nicklaus break at the 1973 PGA Championship?

Bobby Jones's 13 counted amateur championships, as did Nicklaus's new total of 14. Jones saw it coming: after the 1965 Masters he said Nicklaus played a game with which he was not familiar.

What name is given to Nicklaus's 1977 Open battle with Tom Watson at Turnberry?

The Duel in the Sun: paired for the last two rounds, Watson shot 65 and 65 to Nicklaus's 65 and 66 and won by a stroke. Third place finished eleven shots behind the winner.

Nicklaus's 1977 Ryder Cup proposal led to what change from 1979?

Continental Europeans joined the GB&I team: Nicklaus urged Lord Derby, the British PGA president, to widen selection, and Seve Ballesteros and Antonio Garrido played at The Greenbrier in 1979.

Which rival tossed a rubber snake at Nicklaus before beating him in a playoff for the 1971 U.S. Open?

Lee Trevino found the toy in his bag on the first tee, and Nicklaus asked him to toss it over and laughed along with the gallery. The joker then won the playoff by three shots, 68 to 71.

Which playing partner did Nicklaus beat by two at the 1980 U.S. Open?

Isao Aoki matched him almost shot for shot over four days together, and both men birdied the last two holes. As the winning putt dropped, the crowd chanted 'Jack is back'.

Nicklaus's fifth PGA Championship, in 1980, tied the record held by which star of the 1920s?

Walter Hagen won all five of his when the PGA was decided by match play. He also managed to lose the trophy: by his own account he handed it to a taxi driver, and it vanished.

Which CBS announcer called Nicklaus's 17th-hole birdie at the 1986 Masters with 'Yes, sir!'?

Verne Lundquist stayed quiet as the ball rolled, offered a hopeful 'Maybe', then shouted as Nicklaus strode after it with his putter in the air, certain it would drop.

Which two players had chances to tie Nicklaus on the 72nd hole of the 1986 Masters?

Tom Kite and Greg Norman both reached the last with Nicklaus already finished. Kite missed a birdie putt to tie, then Norman, fresh from four straight birdies, pushed his approach into the gallery and made bogey.

Which senior major did Nicklaus win on his first Senior PGA Tour start in 1990?

The Tradition was a home game of sorts: it was played at Desert Mountain in Arizona on the Cochise course, which Nicklaus had designed himself. He won it on his senior debut.

Nicklaus and Annika Sörenstam were named global ambassadors in 2008 for golf's bid to be added to which event?

The Olympic Games had gone without golf since 1904, when the winner was a 46-year-old who had taken up the game only eight years earlier. The bid succeeded, and golf returned in 2016.

Where did Nicklaus make his final major championship appearance, in 2005?

The Open at St Andrews gave him a farewell wave from the Swilcan Bridge and one last flourish: he missed the cut, but holed a birdie putt on the final green to a long ovation.

Which bank put Jack Nicklaus on a commemorative five-pound note?

Royal Bank of Scotland made the American golfer only the third living person to appear on its notes. The other two were the Queen and the Queen Mother.

Which PGA Tour event did Nicklaus found in 1976 at the Ohio club he built?

The Memorial Tournament takes its name from its central custom: each year it honours someone who shaped golf. Nicklaus modelled the event on the Masters and won it himself in 1977 and 1984.

Which Scottish resort's Nicklaus-designed PGA Centenary Course hosted the 2014 Ryder Cup?

Gleneagles, in the Perthshire hills, was a commission he relished. Nicklaus called the site the finest parcel of land in the world he had ever been given to work with.

Nicklaus's first course design, Harbour Town Golf Links, was co-credited with which architect?

Pete Dye had first tapped Nicklaus's eye in the mid-1960s, asking for his blunt opinion of a course he was building in Ohio. A few years later the pair teamed up at Harbour Town in South Carolina.

Nicklaus's first solo design, Glen Abbey, is in which country?

Canada: Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ontario, was built as a permanent home for the Canadian Open. That is the one big national championship its designer never won, despite finishing second again and again.

Nicklaus's Old Works course in Montana, bunkered with black slag, covers a former what?

A copper smelter had left the ground at Anaconda so contaminated that it became a federal Superfund site. The course was part of the cleanup, and the leftover black slag went into the bunkers instead of sand.

Nicklaus's classic instruction book, first printed in 1974, is called what?

Golf My Way, written with Ken Bowden, taught a habit he called going to the movies: he never hit a shot, even in practice, without first watching it play out in his head.

Which honour did George W. Bush present to Nicklaus at the White House in 2005?

The Presidential Medal of Freedom came with a joke. Bush said he had once asked Nicklaus for advice on his golf game and been told: 'Sure, quit.'

What happened for the first time when Nicklaus captained the 1987 Ryder Cup team?

A US home defeat had never happened in the cup's sixty years, across thirteen matches on American soil. The visitors won 15-13 on the very course Nicklaus had designed.

Which habit did Nicklaus copy from fellow amateur Deane Beman in 1961 and spread among the pros?

Pacing off yardages was Beman's habit while Nicklaus and nearly everyone else still judged distance by eye. Beman, later the PGA Tour's commissioner, suggested he try it during a practice round.

Before the 1986 Masters, a friend taped a newspaper article calling Nicklaus washed up to what in their rented house?

The refrigerator carried the clipping all week, where he could not miss it. After winning with a final-round 65, he scanned the press room and asked where the writer was.

Which former rival doubted a huge uphill putt at the 2010 opening of Harbor Shores, only for Nicklaus to hole it?

Johnny Miller wondered aloud how anyone could handle the putt. Nicklaus walked across the green, offered to show him how, and holed it from about 100 feet.

What did Nicklaus first major in at university, planning to follow his father's trade?

Pre-pharmacy was his first course of study, following his father Charlie, who ran pharmacies in the city; he later switched to insurance, planning to stay amateur and sell policies.

A children's hospital in which city was renamed for Nicklaus in 2015 after a pledge from his family foundation?

Miami Children's Hospital took his name after the pledge. The cause dates to 1966, when doctors saved his baby daughter Nan from a crayon caught near her lung, and he and Barbara vowed to help children.