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Ninety Golfer. Whatever the price, Jack Nicklaus has the game to make it worthwhile. Hulking (5 ft.11½ in., 202 Ibs.) and heavy-legged, he does not have the easy, fluid drive of a Sam Snead or a Gene Littler; Nicklaus' swing is pure thunder. His wide, stubby-fingered hands choke the club in an old-fashioned interlocking grip, and when he swings he looks as if he might shoot in the 90s: his arms move back stiffly, his head sometimes bobs, his right knee brutally forces his left side out of the way on the downswing, and his right elbow flies away from his body. But at the moment of impact, when all that power pours into the club head, Nicklaus hits the ball as squarely and as solidly as a golf ball can be hit. In his prime, Bobby Jones drove 240 yds.; today's big hitters have advanced the art to the point where 260-yd. drives are common. For Nicklaus, who is the longest of the accurate drivers, a booming 285 yds. is the standard. Fortnight ago, in New Jersey's Thunderbird Invitational, Nicklaus had no trouble reaching the par-five 600-yd. 18th hole at Upper Montclair Country Club with a driver and a No. 3 wood. At the Open, he hit one drive that was later paced off at 328 yds.
The only weakness he concedes is his putting, sometimes erratic on slow greens. "Arnie Palmer is a better putter than I am," says Nicklaus, "mainly because he's had ten years longer to work on it." Yet during the entire U.S. Open, Nicklaus three-putted only one green out of 90 (v. Palmer's ten), missed only one putt under 5 ft. Meticulous as an IBM computer, he spends his practice rounds pacing off and charting each course he plays, jotting down the distances on cards that he carries in his back pocket so that he will always know exactly how far he is from the pin-and what club to use. When a reporter at the Open asked him how far he had hit a certain drive, Jack consulted his charts and drawled: "Well, the hole is 462 yds. long, and I was 165 yds. from the pin. So the drive must have been exactly 297 yds."
Once he walks off the 18th green, Nicklaus is so relaxed that he could probably fall asleep at a New Year's Eve party. On the course he is a study in utter concentration-cold, phlegmatic, withdrawn. Unlike such old pros as Tommy Bolt and Sam Snead, Nicklaus has never been known to lose his temper. Unlike Arnold Palmer, who is the jovial, wisecracking Yogi Berra of golf, he often goes through an entire round without speaking a word. At Merion in 1960, Nicklaus was attempting a 20-ft. birdie putt in the rain and wind. As he addressed the ball, a gust blew his cap off. He never paused, calmly stroked the ball into the hole.
Down the Pike. In the Open last week, Nicklaus needed all the strength and single-mindedness he could muster. At its most generous, the Oakmont Country Club, with its ice-slick greens and 208 sand traps (including one that covers almost a quarter of an acre), is an unkind golf course. Tommy Armour called it "Hades" Bobby Jones once picked up in disgust at the twelfth hole. A few years ago, Gary Middlecoff plucked his ball from a trap, laid it gently on the grass—and smashed it down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which splits the course.