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Nicklaus began his professional career in 1962, and his record of eighteen wins in [[men's major golf championships|major]] tournaments (three [[The Open Championship|Open Championship]]s, four [[United States Open (golf)|U.S. Open]]s, five [[PGA Championship]]s, and six [[The Masters Tournament|Masters]]) is as yet unmatched. He is one of only five golfers to win all four current majors in a career (the "Career Grand Slam"), the first of only two (the other being [[Tiger Woods]]) to have won all four majors more than once, and the only golfer to win all four majors at least three times. In 1986, he became the oldest player to ever win The Masters. In all, Nicklaus racked up 46 top-3 finishes in majors (including 19 second-place finishes and nine third-places), 56 top-5 finishes, and 73 top-10 finishes.
Nicklaus began his professional career in 1962, and his record of eighteen wins in [[men's major golf championships|major]] tournaments (three [[The Open Championship|Open Championship]]s, four [[United States Open (golf)|U.S. Open]]s, five [[PGA Championship]]s, and six [[The Masters Tournament|Masters]]) is as yet unmatched. He is one of only five golfers to win all four current majors in a career (the "Career Grand Slam"), the first of only two (the other being [[Tiger Woods]]) to have won all four majors more than once, and the only golfer to win all four majors at least three times. In 1986, he became the oldest player to ever win The Masters. In all, Nicklaus racked up 46 top-3 finishes in majors (including 19 second-place finishes and nine third-places), 56 top-5 finishes, and 73 top-10 finishes.


Nicklaus's six wins at the Masters came in 1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975 and 1986. Not only is his win tally a record, but he also finished as runner-up a record four times. In the decade of the 1970s, Jack finished in the top ten at Augusta every year. Over his career, he appeared in the event 45 times and made the cut 37 times. In 1998, at the age of 58, he finished an impressive sixth.
Nicklaus's seventy wins at the Masters came in 1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975 and 1986. Not only is his win tally a record, but he also finished as runner-up a record four times. In the decade of the 1970s, Jack finished in the top ten at Augusta every year. Over his career, he appeared in the event 45 times and made the cut 37 times. In 1998, at the age of 58, he finished an impressive sixth.


Nicklaus won the U.S. Open in 1962, 1967, 1972 and 1980, and is tied with [[Ben Hogan]], [[Bobby Jones (golfer)|Bobby Jones]], and [[Willie Anderson (golfer)|Willie Anderson]] for most wins. He is the only player to win the title in three different decades, and also had four runner-up finishes in his 42 appearances. He made the cut 35 times.
Nicklaus won the U.S. Open in 1962, 1967, 1972 and 1980, and is tied with [[Ben Hogan]], [[Bobby Jones (golfer)|Bobby Jones]], and [[Willie Anderson (golfer)|Willie Anderson]] for most wins. He is the only player to win the title in three different decades, and also had four runner-up finishes in his 42 appearances. He made the cut 35 times.

Revision as of 18:45, 12 August 2006

File:Jacknicklaussmall.jpg
Nicklaus celebrates his victory in the 1980 U.S. Open

Jack William Nicklaus (born January 21, 1940), also known as "The Golden Bear", was a major force in professional golf, first on the PGA Tour from the 1960s to the mid-to-late 1980s, then on the Champions Tour from the late 1980s to the 1990s. Nicklaus is widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time.

Together with Arnold Palmer, he is credited with turning golf into the major spectator sport it has become. While Palmer brought golf into the television era, it was the developing Nicklaus-Palmer rivalry that drove subsequent interest.

Career highlights

Nicklaus was born in Columbus, Ohio. He was raised and attended public schools in the suburb of Upper Arlington. He took up golf at the age of ten, shooting 51 for his first nine holes. At 13, he broke 70. He won the first of six Ohio State Junior titles at the age of twelve. While attending Ohio State University, he won the U.S. Amateur title twice (1959, 1961), and an NCAA Championship (1961). At the 1960 U.S. Open, he shot a 282, finishing second by two strokes to Arnold Palmer, who won the tournament with a final round 65.

Nicklaus began his professional career in 1962, and his record of eighteen wins in major tournaments (three Open Championships, four U.S. Opens, five PGA Championships, and six Masters) is as yet unmatched. He is one of only five golfers to win all four current majors in a career (the "Career Grand Slam"), the first of only two (the other being Tiger Woods) to have won all four majors more than once, and the only golfer to win all four majors at least three times. In 1986, he became the oldest player to ever win The Masters. In all, Nicklaus racked up 46 top-3 finishes in majors (including 19 second-place finishes and nine third-places), 56 top-5 finishes, and 73 top-10 finishes.

Nicklaus's seventy wins at the Masters came in 1963, 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975 and 1986. Not only is his win tally a record, but he also finished as runner-up a record four times. In the decade of the 1970s, Jack finished in the top ten at Augusta every year. Over his career, he appeared in the event 45 times and made the cut 37 times. In 1998, at the age of 58, he finished an impressive sixth.

Nicklaus won the U.S. Open in 1962, 1967, 1972 and 1980, and is tied with Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, and Willie Anderson for most wins. He is the only player to win the title in three different decades, and also had four runner-up finishes in his 42 appearances. He made the cut 35 times.

Nicklaus won the Open Championship (British Open) in 1966, 1970, 1978, and was runner-up seven times. He made the cut in 32 out of 38 appearances, and from 1966 to 1980 he never finished worse than sixth. So revered is Nicklaus in the United Kingdom for his British Open exploits that in July 2005, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that Nicklaus's image would be printed on a special issue of two million £5 notes. Apart from HM The Queen, he is the only living person to be featured on a Scottish banknote [1].

His five wins at the PGA Championship came in 1963, 1971, 1973, 1975 and 1980. He is tied with Walter Hagen for most wins. He made the cut 27 times in 37 finishes and was runner-up four times. His 1971 victory made him the first player to win the career Grand Slam twice, an achievement which was matched by Tiger Woods at the 2005 British Open.

Several of Nicklaus's epic defeats in major tournaments helped established the greatness of other players in the public's mind. Nicklaus suffered excruciating losses to, among others, Tom Watson and Lee Trevino that both raised the stature of those outstanding players and made Nicklaus a more sympathetic character (in contrast to Tiger Woods, who has won nearly every major in which he has ever led).

Nicklaus also won the prestigious PLAYERS Championship three times (though never at the TPC at Sawgrass, the current PLAYERS site and a course whose setup he harshly criticized, likening some of its approach shots to "stopping a 5-iron on the hood of a car"). He won various events around the globe as well, including six Australian Opens (1964, 1968, 1971, 1975, 1976 and 1978).

He is second to Sam Snead on the all-time list of players with most PGA Tour wins, having accumulated seventy-three titles. In seventeen consecutive seasons from 1962 to 1978 he always won at least one PGA Tour title and always finished in the top ten on the money list. He topped the PGA Tour money list eight times: 1964, 1965, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976.

In 1996, Nicklaus was the first person in the history of the PGA to win the same Senior PGA Tour (now the Champions Tour) event four times. He is the only person in the history of the PGA to win all of the major championships on both the PGA TOUR and Champions Tour. (Although he never won the Senior British Open, it was not recognized as a major in the United States until 2003, after he had stopped playing the Champions Tour.) He never played a full schedule on the Champions Tour, but he won ten Champions Tour events, including eight majors.

In 1978, he received Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" award. In 1980 he was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award.

Jack Nicklaus had an unusual playing style, combining being one of the greatest putters of all-time with being the longest hitter on the tour during his prime. He popularized the "power fade," which was his characteristic ball flight.

When Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters using the Response ZT putter, the manufacturer, MacGregor Golf, received 5,000 orders the next day; the company had planned to sell only 6,000 for the entire year.

Nicklaus always played a limited schedule, entering only enough minor tournaments (usually less than ten) to prepare himself for the major tournaments each year. As a result, he never played in enough tournaments in any given year to qualify for the Vardon Trophy awarded annually to the Tour player with the lowest stroke average, although his stroke average was consistently the lowest on Tour during his prime.

In what could be seen as a symbolic passing of the torch from one golf great to another, Tiger Woods won each major in the year that Nicklaus last appeared in it as a player. In 2000, Nicklaus played in the U.S. Open and PGA Championship for the last time, with Woods winning both; Woods also won The Open Championship in that year, which Nicklaus originally intended as his last appearance in that event. In 2005, Nicklaus made his last Masters appearance, and decided to play The Open one last time. Woods won both events as well.

Jack Nicklaus has been inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Current career

Nicklaus turned 65 in January 2005, which was the last year he entered a PGA tournament as an exempt player. He announced that he would retire from tournament golf in 2005 at The Open Championship at The Old Course at St Andrews. The very fact that the 2005 Open was scheduled at The Old Course can be seen as a tribute to Nicklaus. Several years earlier, the organizers of The Open, The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A), had scheduled the 2006 Open for The Old Course. However, aware that Nicklaus' exemption to play in The Open would run out after the 2005 Open, The R&A moved The Old Course up in the rotation one year to give Nicklaus an opportunity to play his last Open there.[citation needed]

Nicklaus devotes much of his time to golf course design and operates one of the largest golf design practices in the world. His first design was opened for play in 1970. For the first few years all of his projects were co-designs with either Pete Dye or Desmond Muirhead, who were two of the leading golf course architects of that era. His first sole design opened for play in 1976. He is now in partnership with his four sons and his son-in-law through Nicklaus Design. The company had 299 courses open for play at the end of 2005, which was nearly 1% of all the courses in the world (In 2005 Golf Digest calculated that there were nearly 32,000 golf courses in the world, approximately half of them in the United States. [2]). There are Nicklaus Design courses in more than thirty U.S. states and more than twenty five countries around the world. Jack Nicklaus is personally responsible for over 200 golf course designs. These include Muirfield Village, Shoal Creek, Castle Pines and the PGA Centenary Course at the Gleneagles Hotel.

Nicklaus also continues to manage the Memorial Golf Tournament he created in his home state of Ohio, which is played on a course he designed and is one of the more prestigious events on the PGA TOUR. His other interests are varied and many, and include a golf equipment company and golf academies. There is a Jack Nicklaus Museum on the campus of The Ohio State University in his home town of Columbus, Ohio. [3]

Final tournament

Nicklaus played without much preparation in April 2005 at The Masters, a month after the drowning death of his 17-month-old grandson Jake (child of his son, Steve) on March 1 2005. He and Steve played golf as therapy for their grief following the death. After days of playing, it was Steve who suggested his dad return to The Masters. He made that his last appearance in the tournament. The last competitive tournament in which Nicklaus played in the United States was the "Bayer Advantage Classic" in Overland Park, Kansas on June 13, 2005.

However, Nicklaus finished his professional career at The Open Championship at St. Andrews on July 15, 2005. He played with Luke Donald and Tom Watson in his final round. On the 18th hole, Nicklaus hit the final tee-shot of his career, and strolled to the Swilcan bridge and waved to the appreciative crowd (who gave him a ten-minute standing ovation). He then began posing for commemorative photographs with his son and caddy, Steve, as well as Donald and Watson. Afterwards, Nicklaus ended his illustrious career in style, making a fifteen-foot birdie putt and extending his putter and left arm in the air as he had done so many times to celebrate crucial putts. Jack wound up missing the 36-hole cut with a score of +3 (147).

PGA Tour wins

Major championships are shown in bold.

Senior PGA Tour wins

Senior majors are shown in bold.

Other wins

Results in major championships

Tournament 1957 1958 1959
The Masters DNP DNP CUT
U.S. Open CUT T41 CUT
The Open Championship DNP DNP DNP
PGA Championship DNP DNP DNP
Tournament 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
The Masters T13 LA T7 T15 1 2 1 1 CUT T5 T24
U.S. Open 2 LA T4 LA 1 CUT T23 T31 3 1 2 T25
The Open Championship DNP DNP T32 3 2 T12 1 2 T2 T6
PGA Championship DNP DNP T3 1 T2 T2 T22 T3 CUT T11
Tournament 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979
The Masters 8 T2 1 T3 T4 1 T3 2 7 4
U.S. Open T49 2 1 T4 T10 T7 T11 T10 T6 T9
The Open Championship 1 T5 2 4 3 T3 T2 2 1 T2
PGA Championship T6 1 T13 1 2 1 T4 3 CUT T65
Tournament 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989
The Masters T33 T2 T15 WD T18 T6 1 T7 T21 18
U.S. Open 1 T6 2 T43 T21 CUT T8 T46 CUT T43
The Open Championship T4 T23 T10 T29 T31 CUT T46 T72 T25 T30
PGA Championship 1 T4 T16 2 T25 T32 T16 T24 CUT T27
Tournament 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
The Masters 5 T35 T42 T27 CUT T35 T41 T39 T6 DNP
U.S. Open T33 T46 CUT T72 T28 CUT T27 T52 T43 CUT
The Open Championship T63 T44 CUT CUT CUT T79 T45 60 DNP DNP
PGA Championship CUT T23 CUT CUT CUT T67 CUT CUT DNP DNP
Tournament 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
The Masters T54 DNP DNP CUT CUT CUT
U.S. Open CUT DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP
The Open Championship CUT DNP DNP DNP DNP CUT
PGA Championship CUT DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP

LA = Low Amateur
DNP = did not play
WD = withdrew due to injury
CUT = missed the half way cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place.
Green background for wins. Yellow background for top-10.

Summary of major championship performances :

  • Starts - 163
  • Wins - 18
  • 2nd place finishes - 19
  • Top 3 finishes - 46
  • Top 5 finishes - 57
  • Top 10 finishes - 73
  • Longest streak of top-10s in majors - 13

See also

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