Rory McIlroy

I just love this kid. He's possibly the next great one. He's not only a champion, but he's managed to remain grounded and humble, something that can't be easy to do when you've had the kind of success he's had and have all the hangers-on around you trying to ingratiate themselves.

I loved the fact that he was man, or gentleman enough to say after the great win by Jordan Spieth in Australia that given a hundred tries he couldn't have duplicated Spieth's incredible final round. I'm not sure that what he said was strictly true, because he's capable of absolute magic on the course when his driver and putter cooperate. In fact, when his driver and putter are working at the same time, the rest of the field is playing for second.

I just wish I could give him some advice. Actually, my advice and half a buck wouldn't get you a coffee, so I wish Jack Nicklaus would give him some advice. He seems to be becoming fitness-obsessed, like Tiger. When I see pictures of him doing squats, or lunges or whatever with a bar with two volkswagons on each end over his shoulder, I just cringe. You can do too much of a good thing and pay dearly for it. If he wants to be one of the greats and have longevity in this game, he needs to be careful about becoming a powerlifter. He needs to watch video of Sam Snead.

In speaking of the modern players and their swings, Harvey Penick said he preferred to watch the players on the Senior tour whose swings had stood the test of time. He warned that the modern players with their swings that rely so heavily on strong cores and rotation won't be around to play the Senior tour if they're not careful. As they age, their bodies won't stand up to the stresses. 

I think Tiger serves as both an example and a warning for Rory and others coming along. Tiger was and still may be magic, but his training regimen has hurt him. He was a better ball striker and player as a scrawny kid than he is now. Bobby Jones said you don't need the kind of strength used to bend iron bars to hit it far, you need speed. He should know. When necessary, he could hit it the ball prodigious distances with hickory shafts.

So, Jack, I'm asking you, if you agree, please have a word with the kid. I for one want to see him around for a long time. He's a breath of fresh air.

The Wisdom of Bobby Jones: Learn by Playing

How do we best learn to play golf?  I suppose there is no hard and fast answer to that question.  It probably depends on our age, our circumstances, and perhaps even our personality.  We are all, after all, individuals.  Bobby Jones, however, felt we only really learn to play golf by really playing golf.  Sounds obvious doesn't it?

One of the world's greatest ball strikers, Moe Norman, said there were only two players in history who had an extra club in their bags that gave them a leg up on everyone else. According to Moe, that extra club was five and a half inches, the distance between their ears. That extra club was their mind; their intellect, especially as it related to playing golf. Those two players were Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones. Considering what Moe Norman had to say, it comes as no surprise that Jack Nicklaus was a huge admirer of Bobby Jones and vice versa.

I have indicated that, in my view, Bobby Jones was not only golf's greatest player, with Jack Nicklaus a close second, but also golf's greatest teacher.  Because his teaching is not so readily available, I have used this blog to pass along the teaching Bobby Jones provided in the books Golf is my Game and Bobby Jones on Golf.  I try to quote Bobby extensively, trying to add, only as little as possible, my own words, or interpretation of his teaching. I fully realize that to want to add to what Bobby Jones had written might be akin to wanting to paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa. 

The first chapter of Golf is my Game is entitled "Learn by Playing." It is worth noting that this was written by Bobby after he had been afflicted with a crippling disease at the age of forty six and could no longer play. Bobby began golfing at the age of six after his parents moved from the city of Atlanta, some six miles to a small summer colony near the East Lake Golf Club. That move not only extended young Bobby's life, it changed the game of golf forever.

In his own words, Bobby writes: "I began life as a sickly child, and at the age of forty-six was stricken by a crippling ailment. Even so, to this day, golf has been the major interest of my life... I know I can thank golf for having given me forty years of active life filled with exciting experiences and warm human contacts. I know that my physical affliction was not derived in any sense from playing the game, and I doubt that without this playing I should ever have lived to see a full maturity... The game for me will always be, as it has been in the past, a consuming interest." 

Ben Hogan inspired and continues to this day to inspire others to become ardent practisers. He practised harder than anyone before or after him because he felt he needed to in order to bring his swing under control and have total confidence in his game. In an interview in later life, Hogan said that he felt he had a "terrible swing." That's why he worked longer and harder at hitting balls than all of his contemporaries.  However, for Hogan, practising wasn't onerous. He loved to practise.

Bobby Jones, however, was very much a player, not a practiser of the game. He did not see the virtue in practising or hitting balls for its own sake. He believed we learned best and most naturally by playing. When he was physically able to play Jones wrote: "I was always an ardent player of the game." Though also a student of the game, he went on to write, "whatever thoughts I had about the game were directed towards enjoyment of competition, this did not have to be formal competition, because I could throw myself as enthusiastically into a four-ball match for a dollar Nassau as into a tournament for a national championship...The proposition is thus very clear to me that golf is a game meant to be played, and played as a contest worthy of the best effort of any man alive."

Bobby felt that golf was very therapeutic, especially for those people whose "lives are filled with responsibilities for making important decisions." He went on to point out that golfers "know, and have known for a long time, that when playing golf, it is almost impossible to think of anything else. The most complete rest for the mind, and the most effective renewal of mental keenness and vigour, come not from thinking of nothing, but from putting one's mind completely upon fresh and stimulating activities. It is, therefore, the all-absorbing challenge of golf which makes it such an effective agent of mental therapy."

Notice Bobby indicated that it was the "all-absorbing challenge" of the game of golf that made it so therapeutic. He went on to write: "In this view, then, it seems to me that we are defeating or detracting from the effectiveness of the game as recreation when we urge people to relax, take it easy, or be casual and carefree on the golf course. I think we should urge them to do just the opposite - to put themselves wholeheartedly into their play. What they want and need most from the game can be had only when intense concentration upon the play helps to sweep away the problems, worries, and even troubles of everyday life."

When he wrote the book "Bobby Jones on Golf," it had been ten years since Jones had actually been able to play. However, this time had been spent thinking about golf and how best to teach or learn the game. It seemed obvious to him that "writing about the golf swing has become too technical and complicated, and even the most earnest teaching professional presents the game to his pupil as a far more difficult thing than it really is." If teaching had become too technical and complicated when Jones wrote this in 1959, imagine what Jones would think now, with video and track man and all the swing aids and contraptions teachers are using to further complicate the game.

Bobby felt that it was "equally obvious that what the game needs most if it is to continue to grow in popularity is a simplification of teaching routines which will present a less formidable aspect to the beginner, and offer the average player a rosier prospect of improvement." Clearly, these musings have largely fallen on deaf ears among the teaching professionals. 

The trouble was and still is, as Jones added, because "golf is not taught as it is learned. It is taught more as a science or as a prescribed set of calisthenic exercises, whereas it is learned as a game." Speaking of all the top players, including himself, Jones pointed out that they "learned to play golf, just as others have learned to play baseball, by playing and playing and playing because they liked the game. In most cases it has been only after gaining considerable proficiency that thoughts of method have been of much concern."

Bobby, as we all do when learning the game as kids, chose to model his swing after the best player he was able to observe. In his case, it was the East Lake club's professional, Stewart Maiden. But, Bobby wrote: "Although Stewart Maiden has quite properly been known as my first instructor and the man from whom I learned the game, it is yet true that I never had a formal lesson from him while I was in active competitive play. In fact, it was not until He had returned to Atlanta, only two years before he died, that I ever went on to a practice tee with him." Bobby Jones won thirteen major championships without having ever had a formal lesson.

Concerning Stewart Maiden, Bobby further stated: "Although neither Maiden nor I ever saw much point in spending laborious hours on a practice tee, there were many times when I required a few words from him to put my game (notice Bobby wrote game, not swing) back in the right groove." Bobby then told the story of him having gone to Maiden before a big tournament because he was hitting the ball all over the place with his long irons. Maiden accompanied him to the tee, watched him hit two shots, then told him to wait before hitting another. He rapped Bobby on the left shoulder with the handle of a club he was holding in order to move him back. He rapped him again to move him even farther back, then when Bobby asked him sarcastically what he wanted him to do now, Maiden simply replied, "Knock the hell out of it." Bobby's next two shots went right at the flag. Maiden was already heading back to the clubhouse.

By telling this story, Bobby explained: "I am trying to show how I think instruction in golf can be most useful. A good instructor can be helpful... But it is most important that the doses of instruction be simple, direct and practical. It is folly for either teacher or pupil to expect that any swing can be perfected in an afternoon, a week, or even a season. It is significant that Stewart did not try to fill my head with theories. He merely put me in position to hit the ball and then told me to go on and hit it."

When praising Stewart Maiden as a teacher, Bobby wrote: "I am sure he never once thought of trying to remake a swing or to create one from scratch precisely along copybook lines. Throughout all the years I knew Stewart he never once allowed himself to be drawn into a discussion of the golf swing. To him, the game of golf consisted entirely of knocking the ball towards the hole, or into it, and that in the simplest manner possible."

Bobby tells another story of him having read an article by the great Harry Vardon on how to hit a punch shot. Bobby went to the practice tee to try to follow the direction given by Vardon. He hit about a hundred shots, none of which were any good. Stewart Maiden had been watching from a distance and when Bobby finally gave up, he observed Maiden sitting on a bench, shaking with silent laughter. 

Bobby wrote: "Never again did I try to learn a shot or stroke from a written description, and ever after, I have been careful in writing or talking about the golf swing. Certainly, there are ways of translating from one person to another ideas which can be helpful in playing golf, but it is not feasible for the learner to follow a prescription for the entire performance. No matter how clear the complete picture may be, the mind cannot possibly think through the process from beginning to end within the time required for the accomplishment."

So, I suppose you have a choice. You can can certainly decide to follow the example and teaching of Ben Hogan, whose book Five Lessons the Modern Fundamentals of Golf has been embraced as the  quintessential source on the mechanics of the golf swing, and head to the practice tee to try to perfect your swing.  Or, you can follow the example of Bobby Jones and just go play.  Or, you can, and perhaps should, do both.  There is certainly no argument that intelligent practice improves your ability as a ball striker.  But it is also true that golf is about more than just hitting balls.  It is also a mind game.

Frankly, I suspect the Jones way, of learning by playing, will be the most fun for most of us. Hitting balls can be tedious; although there are plenty of people who just love to hit balls and, if they are having fun, should certainly continue to hit as many as they like.  Playing the game, however, is ultimately the only way to truly learn it.  That's why, as Lee Trevino so aptly put it, the longest walk in golf is from the practice tee to the first tee.  We don't learn to play by practising, we learn to play by playing. Makes perfect sense to me.

Bobby Jones: Golf's Greatest Player and Teacher

There are often discussions by sports enthusiasts trying to determine who was the greatest. Settling on who was the best in any sport is difficult because, from one era to another, the person being considered for the title of the greatest faced different opponents from the one he is being compared to. In golf, the discussion becomes possibly more difficult yet because the game has evolved so much. The courses are better manicured, but longer, the equipment has improved drastically, and there are more accomplished players that must be beaten to get to the top of the heap now than there ever were.

That having been said, I honestly don't know how anyone in possession of all the facts cannot conclude that Bobby Jones was the greatest player of all time. The fascinating thing about Bobby Jones is that he was the greatest golfer of his day while remaining an amateur and essentially playing part time. The other interesting thing about Bobby Jones is that he was not only golf's greatest player, he became and, in my opinion, remains golf's greatest teacher.

When writing the foreword to Bobby Jones' book entitled "Bobby Jones on Golf," Charles Price pointed out that in the eight years prior to his retirement at the "laughable" age of twenty eight, Bobby won sixty two percent of the national championships he entered. He won thirteen major championships, winning all four of the Major championships of his day in his final year of competition, a feat that came to be called the Grand Slam. Mr. Price pointed out that no amateur or professional golfer has come close to compiling such a record, and suggested that "nobody with any sense could imagine that anybody else ever will." Of course, this assertion was made BT (before Tiger). Tiger's record has been truly amazing, as was Jack's, but I believe winning sixty two percent of the Majors entered over an eight year span still holds up as the best, and likely always will.

Again, as Charles Price aptly pointed out, not only did "he beat everybody in the world worth beating," he did so while playing less golf than virtually all the players he beat. During his competitive career, while he was beating all the pros and amateurs of his day, Bobby Jones studied mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, secured a degree in English literature from Harvard, and studied law at Emory University. After passing the state bar examinations midway through his second year, he quit school to go practise. After Bobby won the Grand Slam, he retired. There were essentially no more mountains in the game of golf for him to climb, so he went home to his family and practised law with his father.

Bobby Jones didn't, however, stop there. He wrote extensively about golf. He made golf instructional films that included many of the famous Hollywood stars of his day, and he helped design and build the Augusta National golf course. He also organized and started the Masters golf tournament which he hosted for many years. Two of his books on golf, entitled "Golf is my Game" and "Bobby Jones on Golf" are classics, and for my money still contain the finest instruction on how to play the game that can be found. 

The interesting thing about Bobby Jones, as Charles Price was quick to point out, was that he was a great champion and a true sporting legend and hero, not to mention his off course accomplishments, but he was also intensely human. He had frailties. In fact, the only reason he took up golf in the first place was because he was a very sickly child and his parents moved out of town, and across the road from East Lake golf course, because they felt it might be good for Bobby's fragile health. 

Bursting onto the golf scene as a teenaged golfing prodigy, Bobby Jones endured seven lean years during which he never won a major championship. He first learned how to lose and bring under control his prodigious temper. His frailties perhaps became his greatest strengths and helped him gain such profound insight into both himself and the game of golf. He might have been a golfing genius, but, as Charles Price wrote, "he was also the sort of golfer who could come to the last three holes of a major tournament he was leading by the almost incredible margin of eighteen strokes and then limp home four over par. He could travel clear to California by train to play in an Amateur Championship he was almost certain to win and then lose in the first round to somebody the public had never heard of. He could break into tears from nervous exhaustion an hour after he had defeated the top professionals in the country."

Price went on to write: "But what really set Jones apart from all the other athletes of his day, and from all the other golfers before or since him, was not so much his educated intelligence, although that had a lot to do with it, nor his modesty, although that had something to do with it, nor his native talent, although without that we might not be privileged to be reading this book. No, what really set him apart was his insight into the game, gorgeous in its dimensions... No other player so effectively reduced this fearfully complex game to such common sense."

Anyone who truly loves this game, and wants to better understand its complexities, does themselves a disservice if they don't seek to read everything they can get their hands on by Bobby Jones. Not only was he a golfing genius, but his incredible intelligence and sensitivity allowed him to make observations and gain insights about the game that continue to escape or allude most of the rest of us. If you love golf, do yourself a favour and get your hands on Bobby Jones' books on golf. You'll be awfully glad you did.

A Double Eagle For The Colonel

If you are lucky enough to have had a great father who taught you to love the game of golf, and a best friend who shared a love of the game, you are fortunate indeed. I had both, and now they're gone. I lost my father six years ago. The following year I lost my best friend. We played so many enjoyable rounds of golf together, and now, unless there's golf in the hereafter, all I've got left are my memories of our time together out on the links.

When my father died, I just couldn't face teeing it up again. I just knew that returning to our club would bring the memories flooding back, and though they were good memories, I just didn't want to play there again without the old Colonel. My friends understood and didn't push me to come back, so I didn't hit a ball for at least three months after my father passed away.

Finally, my friend Steve convinced me it was time and we headed to the course. Steve, his dad, Leftie and I teed it up and made our way around the Picton course. As we played, I spent most of my time silently conversing with my father. It was okay to be back playing, but I still had mixed emotions about it.

On the sixteenth hole, which is a reasonably short par five of four hundred and sixty yards or so, I hit my drive into the left rough and had a little over two hundred yards to the green. I pulled my nine wood, which may not be very macho, but it's pretty useful from the rough. Besides, I'm a lousy long iron player, so what are you going to do? Steve was standing next to me, and as soon as I struck it, I said, "It's perfect."

We watched the ball sail towards the green, take one hop and trickle straight into the hole for a double eagle. The boys were hooting and hollering and I was crying. It was my first double eagle, and it happened the first time I played after my father's death. 

The older I get the less I know for sure. In fact, sometimes I wish I could go back to being twenty one when I knew everything. But I am not a great believer in coincidence, so I have to figure the Colonel was sending me a message. He was telling me to get back out there and just keep hitting it, even if it had to be without him. My buddies felt the same way. The old Colonel had to somehow have been involved in that double eagle.

Maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part, because I would have loved to make that shot with my old father looking on. I hope he was watching. I feel he was watching, and I hope somehow that he understands that shot was for him. 

Finding Your Swing

Golf is a strange game. It is essentially a game that involves hitting a ball with a stick. Actually, there are two quotes that I think sum it up quite nicely. Winston Churchill said that golf involved hitting a very small ball into an even smaller hole with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose. An unknown author wrote that golf involves two of America's favourite pastimes; taking long walks in the woods and hitting things with a stick.

Hitting a golf ball should be much easier than hitting a baseball, or a tennis ball, because the ball isn't moving when you hit it. How hard can it be? Hell, you should be able to train a monkey to do it.  And yet, golfers are constantly tying themselves up in knots trying to figure out how to properly and consistently hit that little white pill. Perhaps that really is the problem with golf; the ball is just sitting there. We are supposed to be in control. We get to decide when to hit it. We get to decide how we want to hit it and where we want to hit it. The ball reacts to us, rather than us reacting to it, as in baseball or tennis. So what's the problem?

Moe Norman said that you just hit this dumb thing (the ball), with that dumb thing (the club), over there(the target). He thought it was easy. And actually, when you have that sort of clarity of mind and purpose, it probably was easy for Moe. But Moe Norman didn't just have clarity of mind, he hit literally millions of golf balls with that clarity of mind. So maybe golf is only easy, if it is ever easy, after you've devoted countless hours digging it out of the dirt; finding a swing that works. There is no shortcut to golfing greatness. It involves the kind of devotion and hard work that surely most of us just aren't prepared for. Nor should we be. Unless we have dreams of playing the tour, we should be content to find a swing that gets the job done for us and then go have fun.

Today we see the best players in the world, almost without exception, thinking they need a teacher, or a coach, to keep them on track. If they, as professionals, with the time and opportunity to hit hundreds, if not thousands, of balls every week, actually really need help figuring out how to hit the ball properly, what sort of chance do we have? Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest player ever, and certainly the greatest player of his generation by a significant margin, has been going from one instructor to another searching for his swing. Hell, that's like Picasso, after becoming famous, deciding to go to art school to work on his technique. Tiger should be teaching them, not the other way around. I like Lee Trevino's philosophy on teachers. He wouldn't let anyone teach him unless they could beat him. That certainly narrowed the field as far as candidates for the job were concerned.

Bobby Jones pointed out that golf is a game that gets more difficult the longer you play it. One reason for that seems to be that golf seems to involve a lot of time spent searching for a swing, or a swing thought, that works for us, only to find that the next time out whatever seemed to work doesn't work any more. Golf is a constant search for perfection, only to then realize, at the end of the day, perfection is but a dream. 

For the average player, utility is the best we should be hoping for, forget about perfection. If you can find a way to put the club on the ball that generally results in a useable shot, stop searching and go learn how to play.

We need to go out every day and find our swing; the swing that will best allow us to gain a modicum of control over that little white ball that just sits there waiting for us to hit it. We're going to feel different every day and so we will just have to commit to every day finding something that seems to work, and then sticking with it until it stops working. The best advice is Moe's. Just hit the dumb ball, with the dumb club, over there. It is the "over there" part that is important. We aren't just trying to hit the ball. That's easy enough after a bit of practice. It is the control of the ball that is the issue. So we have to find the way that works best for us to make that ball behave and go where we want it to.

Just look at the swings of the greats. Their swings are as unique to them as their signature. They can be copied or imitated, but their swing belongs to them alone. They have the copyright. Would we teach someone to swing like Arnold Palmer, Raymond Floyd, Lee Trevino or Moe Norman? We actually do teach people to swing like Moe Norman, so I guess we would. But the reality is, if you didn't hear the sound of the club striking the ball and see the results, you might think Moe Norman, Lee Trevino, or Arnold Palmer were just hackers like the rest of us watching them swing the club. Their swings are not syrupy and sweet like Bobby Jones, Sam Snead or Freddie Couples. They certainly aren't textbook swings. But the results speak for themselves. As Harvey Penick said, pretty is as pretty does. It's all about the results. There are no style points in golf.

I am reminded of one of my favourite golfing buddies who is always working at making a "good swing."  When we play, he often hits it and then looks over and asks me how that swing was. My usual response is that it looks good to me, because it usually does, but of course the issue is not the swing, it's where the ball went. If you hit the ball where you were looking, it was a good swing even if you looked like you were falling off a ladder when you struck it. 

It isn't really about the swing anyway, it's the strike that's all important. We tend to get all caught up in the mechanics of the swing, when in reality it's all about the moment of truth; when the ball is struck. If your club is square to the target and moving down the target line with reasonable speed when you strike the ball, you must hit a good shot, even if you happen to look less than graceful while doing it. 

Don't fall into the trap of working too much on your swing. If you must work on something, better to work on impact; the strike. It's all about impact. In fact, all the great golfers look pretty much the same at impact. Keep in mind the story of Bobby Jones, who once asked his mentor, Stewart Maiden, about his backswing. Maiden replied, like a typical, no nonsense Scottish pro, "You don't hit the ball with your backswing, laddie." Forget the mechanics of the swing. Just hit the dumb thing over there.

Just Do It

Golf, like life, is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes you are going to be faced with a situation or a shot that scares the daylights out of you. You then have a choice to make. You can just pick the ball up and forget it. You can and probably should look for an easier way to avoid the difficult shot. But sometimes you just have to do it.

When faced with most fear provoking situations, just remind yourself that failure is not the end of the world. If you crash and burn, it won't kill you. Chances are, even if you fail miserably, your dog will still love you and you'll still get your supper. So, why not go for it. Why not take a walk on the wild side and test yourself. You might just succeed.

Kathryn isn't a golfer. But she won a trip to Florida and as part of this trip we were able to play the Copperhead course at the Innisbrook Resort near Tampa. The Copperhead course is a regular stop on the PGA tour and the course is known as one of the most difficult. Kathryn had only played nine holes of golf before teeing it up at the Copperhead.

For most of us real golfers, we would have found playing this course, especially accompanied by a stranger, rather daunting. But not Kathryn; she stood at the first tee and watched the group of men tee off. The last fellow took a mighty lash and dribbled the ball about sixty yards. Unfortunately, not understanding golfers and just how embarrassing this was for this fellow who had no doubt forked out about two hundred dollars for the opportunity to humiliate himself, Kathryn laughed and said, "I could play with you guys."

This comment was met with an icy stare and I had to explain to Kathryn the facts of life regarding golf, namely that many golfers take themselves way too seriously and are not inclined to understand that when you laugh, you are just laughing with them and not at them. In fact, we could not laugh with this fellow because he definitely wasn't laughing. He had completely failed to see the humour in his rather pathetic tee shot.

We patiently waited for the group ahead to zig zag their way out of range and began our adventure. Kathryn hits a low draw with a seven iron. It is a low draw that consistently goes between eighty and a hundred yards. From the forward tees it is enough to get her there or thereabouts in three shots on the par fours and four shots on the par fives. Fortified during the round by a steady supply of margaritas, Kathryn acquitted herself quite well.

Her swing, though never going to be described as pretty, served her well enough to actually be scoring better than the young hockey player who was accompanying us. He hit it miles, but rarely in the intended direction, a recipe for disaster on the Copperhead course.

We eventually came to a pretty little par three that required Kathryn to hit the ball over a pond. It just so happened that at this point we were being watched by a couple of men in a golf cart who looked to be important. I suspected we were being watched by the pro and the superintendent out for a drive, although they never introduced themselves.

Kathryn looked at the water, looked at me, and in earshot of our observers asked me what on earth she supposed to do. There appeared to be no option but for her to hit the ball over the water. Both she and I knew she didn't have that shot, but there appeared to be no alternate route to the green. So I just told her to hit it, that in all probability the ball would skip over the water.

She complied, took a swipe and hit that little low draw. The ball skipped two or three times over the water, ran up the bank and settled about ten feet from the pin. I smiled, Kathryn laughed and our two observers shook their heads. Kathryn learned the sheer joy of just doing it. If you just keep swinging a lot of good things can happen. Don't worry, just do it.

The Difference Between Me and Jack Nicklaus

I suppose I could write a book about all the ways in which I'm different from the great Jack Nicklaus. The obvious biggest difference is LOFT (Lack of Fricken Talent), but there are many others. 

I was just a kid, living in England, when Jack won the Open at St Andrews in 1970.  I still remember that Sunday, when he drove the ball over the eighteenth green, some three hundred and sixty yards, up a bank and into some thick grass. The first time I played the Old Course, which was just five years ago, I thought about Jack as I stood on the eighteenth and swung for all I was worth.  Instead of driving the green, I was about forty yards short and had to traverse the Valley of Sin.

I stood over that shot and thought I would run the ball through the Valley of Sin using a hybrid. It was a great plan, but I never practise chipping with a hybrid. That was something Jack would never do. He would never try a shot he hadn't practised. He only hit shots he knew from experience he could hit. But I tried it anyway and, after hitting it way too hard, the ball ran through the green and up the bank into an eerily similar spot to where Jack had hit his drive in 1970.

It just so happened I had a small audience at the time, and I announced that this was the shot Jack pulled off in 1970. I said I would see if I could get it up and down. That was another difference between Jack and I.  I had a small audience and was playing for fun. Jack had the world watching and he was needing to get it up and down to give himself the chance to win the Open.

I took my sand wedge and chipped the ball three feet from the hole, just like Jack did. I was feeling pretty good and tipped my cap to the father and son who were watching nearby and had appreciated my effort. The pin was in approximately the same spot it was in when Jack made his famous chip. 

I calmly approached the ball, made a beautiful stroke, and missed it. Jack, of course, made his. Oh well, there's only one Jack Nicklaus. I'll just have to settle for being me.