|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Nicklaus expects more from himself
DEARBORN, Mich. -- It was 1949, Jack Nicklaus thinks, when he first attended a major league baseball game. It left an indelible imprint. "I was seven or eight years old and it was at Yankee Stadium," Nicklaus said. " Joe DiMaggio was playing. Early Wynn pitched. I think Satchel Paige came in to pitch in relief. Gene Woodling played. Yogi Berra. The next day, we went to Ebbets Field and I watched Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella play against Stan Musial and the Cardinals. I still remember that. And I remember those guys out their playing their best whether they were 20 years old or 40." The class of DiMaggio and Paige and Musial is part of why Nicklaus, at 60, was annoyed with his play during last week's Ford Senior Players Championship at the TPC at Michigan, a course Nicklaus himself designed. He doesn't expect to play up to the standards he set 20 years ago, but he does expect to play up a standard higher than this -- an opening round of 75 and an eventual tie for 34th. While his ballstriking was solid, his putting was not. That has been the case all year, and as he prepared to head to St. Andrews in probably his last British Open appearance, Nicklaus was tired of the frustration. "I turned a 63 today into a 71," he grumbled after the third round Saturday. "I missed about 10 putts. It's happened every day this year. The Masters was ridiculous with my putting. The U.S. Open was ridiculous with my putting. Every other tournament I've played has been ridiculous with my putting. I've been a good putter all my life and I've just putted horribly this year. I don't have a lot of confidence. When you get over a putt and don't know if you're going to miss it right or left, you miss it left or right. I've had probably three or four good putting days this year. If I was hitting good putts, that would be fine. When you're hitting not-good putts, you know you're not going to make putts. And I'm not hitting good putts. "The three or four days I putted reasonably well, I followed it up the next day with atrocious putting. I had a pretty good day the first day at the Senior Open and was terrible the next day. I had a pretty good day the first round at New Orleans, then came back the next day and was horrible. And then I was horrible at Augusta. I played so well at Augusta, if I'd had some kind of putter the first two days, I'd have been in pretty good shape. "I'll get out of that because I know I'm a good putter. If I thought I was a bad putter, I would accept putting badly. But I'm a good putter. I've always been a good putter. I've had a few bad spells but nothing this long. I had a couple of good tournaments at the end of last year. I putted very well the first day of the Diners Club Matches with Tom Watson last December, birdied the first hole the next day and haven't made a putt since." Nicklaus got a putting lesson from Dave Stockton before the final round and holed lengthy birdie putts on the last two holes to shoot 70, his low round of the week. "I want to perform for the people who come out here and bought tickets to watch me play," Nicklaus said. "I want to shoot 65. I expect it of myself. It disappoints me greatly, for myself and for them, to shoot 71 or 75 or whatever I shoot. I don't like to do that. It's no fun for me and no fun for them. I work hard to be able to do that. Pretty soon I'm going to stop working hard. I've earned the right to be hard on myself. When I quit playing golf, I want to feel I've earned the right not to play. But while I'm playing, I want to give these people 110 percent of what I have. That's all I can ask of myself." The three amigosThe three marquee Senior rookies haven't exactly lit up the tour in 2000. Tom Watson has finished second four times but hasn't won an event. Tom Kite won twice and appears close to regaining his old form. Lanny Wadkins won in his debut in Naples, Fla., but hasn't been a factor since because of problems with his right elbow. He took a month off, skipping the U.S. Senior Open, to let his elbow recover from severe tendinitis. He didn't hit a golf ball for three weeks, and the break appeared to have helped until the third round of the Senior Players Championship. "You think it's swollen?" Wadkins asked after his round, holding out both arms for comparison. "I was doing good until today. I hit everything to the right because I can't even straighten my arm." Wadkins, who finished 24th, has had problems with the elbow off and on over the last three years. He most recently aggravated it in Nashville. He had surgery on his left wrist a few years ago and doesn't have any trouble with it but, he joked, "I'm just falling apart from the elbows down. I've probably hit too many balls in my career." He said he has already had two cortisone injections in the elbow, so he doesn't know what his next step is. "Major" momentMaybe because it came two weeks after the U.S. Senior Open, which is perhaps the Senior tour's only true major, the Players resembled a run-of-the-mill Senior event more than a supposed major. The tournament drew embarrassingly sparse galleries until Sunday (and even that was only an OK-sized crowd, not a great one). "The majors are a little weird on this tour," said Gary McCord. "I didn't know what the majors were out here last year. I had no idea. After the third round here last year somebody said, 'Hey, you're playing pretty good in the last major.' I said, 'Really?' I didn't know the Tradition was a major when I played it and I didn't know this was until somebody told me. From the locker room at the TPC at Michigan to the ambiance to what they do for you here, there's nothing better. This tournament is really good. But as far as electricity and being a major golf course and all that, no. It's not Oakland Hills. This is a really nice tournament but it's not frothing with major-championship electricity." Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle is a regular contributor to the magazine's Golf Plus edition. Click here to send a question to his Golf Mailbag. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
