In the greatest achievement of golf's supreme career, Jack Nicklaus borrowed the charge motif from Arnold Palmer and topped every reasonable and unreasonable expectation with his 1986 Masters victory.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- "What am I bid," said the auctioneer at a Masters Calcutta auction in 1986, "for Jack Nicklaus?"
Silence greeted him.
The Calcutta, a type of betting system originally used in horse racing, began during the British Raj in India when the nabobs got on the outside of some London gin and the inside of their neighbors' pockets.
At the Masters in Augusta, Ga., the Calcutta, which I, of course, watched solely for entertainment and reportorial purposes, began after the 36-hole cut on Friday evening. Participants bid on all the players who made the cut, with the entire pot to be divided according to agreed upon percentages for the first, second, and third place finishers. The names of the participants have been withheld to protect the guilty.
The auctioneer, bereft of a gavel, held a heavy cut-glass tumbler, occasionally filled with ardent spirits, which he would bang on a table, unsuccessfully seeking order among the rowdy crowd of fellow reporters.
Only six shots out of the lead at the halfway point, Nicklaus was 46 years old in 1986. He hadn't won a major in six years. He hadn't won anywhere in two years, and then it was at his own Memorial Tournament outside Columbus. Nicklaus created more betting interest than former members of golf's Big Three Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, but only because both missed the cut.
"This is Jack William Nicklaus, winner of five Masters and 17 major championships," said the auctioneer, his disbelief growing. "Let's start the bidding at $15."
"Get to a real player," someone catcalled.
"Going once, going twice, going three times ... sold to the auctioneer for $15!" he said, thumping down the heavy glass.
Everyone should have known better.
One year before, a reporter had bought the "field" of presumed non-contenders for $5. His bet was accompanied by a chorus of barking and howling because, in his colleagues' view, he had purchased enough "dogs" for his very own Iditarod. Germany's then little-known Bernhard Langer, the eventual winner, was included in the field.
"I can't remember if I bought Langer for $5 or $1. Make it $1," the Calcutta winner said years later. "It's more romantic."
After nine holes on Masters Sunday, the auctioneer was offered -- and declined -- $500 for half of the action on Nicklaus.
Some pretty heavy breathing was going on then, too.
The Charge and the cheers
The very concept of charging was foreign to golf before Nicklaus' great rival, Arnold Palmer. He invented it at the Augusta National Golf Club.
"Patrons," never "fans" at the Masters, do not run to get into good spectating positions. They walk, preferably with a regal air. That rule was sometimes honored more in the breach than the observance.
Broadcaster Jack Whitaker once observed on the air, "Here comes the mob up 18," and was excused from Masters duty afterward.
Also outmoded was the traditional decorum of the gallery once Palmer arrived with the look of eagles about him and a game that needed a bugler to summon the cavalry.
His gallery was called "Arnold's Army," and they bellowed and yahoo-ed as they marched behind him. It was as if Palmer, who was from western Pennsylvania but had gone to college at Wake Forest in North Carolina, were one of their own, out to prove Pickett's Charge could work.
Palmer was beloved. He was as much an adopted Georgian as Rhett Butler in "Gone With the Wind," and Rhett was from just up the road in Charleston, South Carolina.
In later years, Tiger Woods fist-pumped after amazing shots and drew astonished roars from fans. It was the same feeling of other-worldliness that Masters founder Bobby Jones experienced when he saw Nicklaus in his prime. Said Jones, "He plays a game with which I am not familiar."
Nicklaus was respected, an enviable but staid virtue, more so than ever after he slimmed down and with his blond hair became more golden than bear.
By 1986, though, he was the Olden Bear, wondering who had been sitting in his chair in the throne room.
From Nicklaus' victory in the PGA Championship at the end of the 1980 majors season through 1985, 15 players won the 20 majors with the only repeat winners being Tom Watson with four and Seve Ballesteros and Larry Nelson with two each.
But on April 13 1986, on Masters Sunday, when they say the tournament really begins, in the 50th Masters since its founding, Nicklaus was as golden as the anniversary.
Now it is the 30th anniversary of the thunder of the 50th Masters. No one who was there will forget what it was like.
The sound was an amalgam of all the cheers. It was the love for Palmer that Jack had now won, the respect that turned into something close to reverence through Nicklaus' long career, and the grrrreater than Tiger roar at seeing a calendar reversal on the order of the movies' Benjamin Button, who aged younger.
Writing nearly 20 years later, at Nicklaus' final Masters as a competitor in 2005, Dave Hackenberg of the Toledo Blade got to the heart of that thunder:
"Imagine the calmest of days when the wind suddenly freshens, slicing leaves off trees like a scalpel and bending their boughs sideways. The ground trembles as if a low-flying jet hits you with a sonic boom. It's the crash of surf into ancient boulders, the thunder that rolls over the plains after the bright shock of lightning. It is the sound of Nicklaus."
In 1986, it was that kind of day.
Nicklaus carded seven birdies and an eagle to drown two bogeys in a sea of red numbers on the leaderboard. He birdied 2, bogeyed 4, birdied 9, 10, and 11 as he stormed into contention, bogeyed 12, then birdied 13, eagled 15, and birdied 16 and 17. He shot 7-under-par 65, 6-under 30 on the back nine.
The beginning
How do you describe a miracle? Is it a return for an afternoon to your youth when the world was open to you?
Is it a day of belief in a time of doubt? Nicklaus himself was motivated by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's late golf writer, Tom McCollister, who had proclaimed him done, finished, and so far over the hill that Uber would've been summoned on an iPhone app to bring him back today.
Jackie Nicklaus, Jack's son and his caddie for the week, saw the story and taped it to the refrigerator in the house where the family was staying. The elder Nicklaus had to read it every day, strengthening his resolve to disprove it. That week was like a sci-fi movie as Nicklaus took the golf world back to the future. His time machine was a DeLorean that ran on the cheap gas of disrespect, albeit with miracle additives.
Bill Millsaps of the Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, like Hackenberg a sports columnist and splendid golf writer, wrote it this way:
"Jack Nicklaus rolled back the years in his personal time machine at the Masters on Sunday, landing precisely on glory."
"I can't explain it. I caught lightning in a bottle that day," Nicklaus said at an appearance in Elyria last year.
The first charge
Every hole at "The National," an oddly inclusive nickname for a club historically known for discrimination, is named for a flower or a blossoming tree. The course was laid out by Jones and Alexander Mackenzie on the grounds of the old Fruitland Nursery.
The delicate beauty of azaleas and dogwoods, the towering pines, their needles carpeting the ground and their tops leaning in the wind -- everything we think of as the delicate and beautiful Southern spring is on florid display at the National.
The back nine is also where water influences club selection on five of the nine holes, and risk vies with reward for those whose approach shots brave the possibility of (can't you just hear the plummy tones of the BBC's Henry Longhurst?) "a wat'ry grave."
All hole descriptions are as each played 30 years ago.
Hole No. 9, 425-yard, par 4, Carolina Cherry: With 10 holes to play, Nicklaus trailed Seve Ballesteros, the leader, by six shots. On No. 9, his charge began.
The ninth green is one of the highest elevations and most wind-swept areas on the course. Even by the Masters' standard of fast greens, it is like sowed and mowed lightning.
Nicklaus birdied the hole with a 10-foot putt after hitting driver and pitching wedge.
No. 10, 485-yard par 4, Camellia: The hole leads to the most famous part of the course, Amen Corner, which is both the geographic hinge of and floral hymn to the back nine.
Nicklaus drove right into the gallery following him. For top players, galleries are like backboards in basketball. They are good for rebounds and to keep balls out of more trouble. With a decent lie, Nicklaus hit a 4-iron to 25 feet and poured a 25-footer into the cup for another birdie.
No. 11, 455-yard par 4, White Dogwood: Rae's Creek runs behind the green on one of the toughest holes on the course. Sam Snead deep-sixed, or, actually, deep-eighted, two chances for the Masters green jacket in 1940 and 1951 with quadruple-bogeys there. Ben Hogan double-bogeyed there in 1954.
Larry Mize chipped in there in sudden death in 1987, which, after Bob Tway's up-and-down from the 18th green's bunker in the 1986 PGA, became the second straight thunderclap victory stroke that turned Greg Norman into Joe Btfsplk.
Nicklaus bulls-eyed a 20-foot birdie putt.
A brief pause in the barrage
Nicklaus bogeyed the par-3 12th when he could not get up and down from behind the green; made a six-foot birdie putt on the par-5 13th; and parred the par-4 14th.
It was the lone hole in a stretch of nine, after No. 8 and through No. 17, on which he made par.
Second charge
No. 15, 500-yard, par 5, Firethorn: Downhill for the last 250 yards, when one of Hackenberg's freshening winds is behind it, this is one of the most accessible par-5s in the golf majors. The drama is in the second shot.
Mounds are on the right of the green and pines on the left. A sentinel moat stands watch in front of the green and beyond it lurks a pond on 16. With the right second shot, magic is in the air. With the wrong one, tragic splashdowns are in the water.
It is here that Gene Sarazen double-eagled in the second Masters ever played in 1935, holing a 230-yard 4-wood that remains one of the most famous shots in golf history.
It was here in 1986 that Ballesteros, playing behind Nicklaus after starting the day tied for second, snap-hooked his approach into the water for bogey.
It was here that Nicklaus said to Jackie, "Wonder what a 3 (an eagle) would do here?"
Make time fly backward, make you believe in $15 miracles, make the sound of Nicklaus engulf him in a seismic roar after his drive, 4-iron, and 12-foot putt -- a 3 did all of that.
No. 16, 170-yard, par 3, Redbud: A back right bunker that looks as if part of the Arabian peninsula turned up there and a front left pond make the first shot to the green test the nerve of anyone.
But Nicklaus had birdied it to win his first Masters in 1963, had used it as a personal birdie ATM in '65 and '72, and had made a 40-foot that summited the slope as dramatically as he was about to climb atop the leaderboard in 1975.
In 1986, he almost aced it with a 5-iron to three feet for another birdie.
No. 17, 425-yard, par 4, Nandina: Tied for the lead, he stared at a 10-foot birdie putt after he fluttered a downy wedge to the green.
"Left edge," said Jackie Nicklaus, who read a bend in the grass.
"No, I've had that putt here before. It never breaks right like you think it will," said his father.
A quarter-century of local knowledge on the course resulted in a beeline putt that took a center cut out of the tin cup. Nicklaus saluted it by holding his putter high in the air as the ball fell.
He was in the lead.
The finish
No. 18, 465-yard, par 4, Holly: The fairway turns right and runs uphill like a topographical heartbreak. It is a birdie-resistant finishing hole. Nicklaus made a two-putt par from 40 feet after hitting 3-wood, 5-iron.
Ballesteros was done after three-putting 17, but Tom Kite had a 12-footer to tie on 18. He missed by a whisper before an anxious, silent crowd.
Norman birdied 14, 15, 16, and 17 to tie for the lead, then missed the green from the middle of the fairway on 18 and bogeyed.
He would own or share the lead in every major that year, but would win only the British Open. His flirtation with greatness was called the "Saturday Slam."
Norman would become known more for what he did not do in golf than for what he did.
Nicklaus would become known for what he did on April 13, 1986, above all else.
The last words
"Babe Ruth had hit another home run."
The St. Petersburg Times' Hubert Mizell wrote that.
On CBS television, Jim Nantz, now the broadcaster most associated with the Masters, had finished his duties on the 16th and hitched a ride on a golf cart to the production center with Ken Venturi, the top analyst for the network's coverage, who was leaving the broadcast booth on the 18th hole.
"Is this your first Masters?" asked Venturi.
"Yes," said Nantz.
"You could come here for another 50 years and never see a better one," said Venturi.
