Why Jack's Tracks?

Tom Weiskopf thinks he knows why three of the four tournaments designated as majors on the Senior tour are played on golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus. "What I heard is that we play these courses because that's the only way Nicklaus will play," Weiskopf says.

Nicklaus is having none of it. He points out that the PGA Seniors Championship was held at PGA National for seven years before he redesigned the Champion course and that the Tour made the Tradition a major without any lobbying by himself or founder Lyle Anderson.

But if what the critics say of Nicklaus's designs is true—that they suit only one style of play, his own—then is it not reasonable to assume that holding the Senior Players Championship at his TPC of Michigan gives Jack an unfair advantage? To that, Nicklaus notes that he won the Senior Players in 1990 when it was held at Dearborn ( Mich.) Country Club.

Although Nicklaus has incorporated a wide variety of styles into the more than 100 courses that he has designed, some characteristics—for instance, wide fairways and a premium on approaches that call for a long left-to-right shot to well-protected, multileveled greens—can be found on most of them. That's what bothers Weiskopf, who's also a big player in the course-design business. "I'll be honest with you. I'm tired of playing Jack Nicklaus courses all the time," he says. "Why do we have to play his courses? Nobody likes them that much. They all look the same. They all require the same shots."

Nicklaus has a simple answer: "I guess if he doesn't like it, he doesn't have to play in them."

Hot Stuff

When he woke up a couple of Monday mornings ago, Mike Magerman, the president of putter manufacturer Odyssey Golf, was the same 34-year-old father of two who had gone to sleep the night before. His company, though, had been transformed overnight. The previous day, Nick Faldo had used Odyssey's Dual Force Rossie II, a mallet with a composite insert, to win the Masters, and as every equipment-company honcho knows, having one of your clubs in the right player's hands at the right time can lead to the type of windfall upon which careers, not to mention fortunes, are made.

"Nick's win was worth $10 million to us this year," says Magerman, who projects that Odyssey will do $30 million in sales in 1996. "Our phones and faxes were buzzing all day. We took orders from around the world for about 30,000 putters. We had a champagne celebration on the shipping dock. Heck, the only guy who was as happy as us was Nick Faldo—maybe."

The Rossie had not been in Faldo's bag for long. He bought it earlier this year in the pro shop at Lake Nona, the club in Orlando where he lives and practices. Faldo used it first at the Players Championship and then at Augusta, where he had one three-putt all week.

Although Faldo has praised the Odyssey putter, the company has no plans to mention him or use photos of him in its commercials. Odyssey pays only one Tour pro, Mike Hulbert, to endorse its goods. Other Tour players using Odyssey putters are included in a weekly $5,000 bonus pool, with $1,000 going to the highest finisher.