Jack Nicklaus: Simply the Best!
Jack Nicklaus: Simply the Best!
There have been many books written about the career of legendary Jack Nicklaus, but few are as informative and photographically outstanding as Martin Davis’ latest, Jack Nicklaus – Simply the Best!
Davis starts off the book with an overall tribute to Nicklaus’ many accomplishments. “Jack’s basic numbers are easy to remember. It’s just a straight arithmetic progression – 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 – as in one NCAA Championship, two U.S. Amateurs, three British Opens, four U.S. Opens, five PGA’s, six Masters and a member of seven winning Ryder Cup teams.”
From there, the book is basically divided into three sections, the first part filled with vignettes by some of Nicklaus’ better known on-course competitors, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson. Each speaks about the great respect that they have for Nicklaus, along with some his attributes, which really struck them.
“Jack was a different animal altogether, unlike anything I had ever chased” says Palmer. “It was uncanny how he could concentrate on the task at hand. I have never seen anyone who could stay that focused the way he did.”
Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer from the New York Times, provides a lengthy biographical essay entitled “He Always Made the Putt (…Well, Almost Always).
Humorist Dan Jenkins talks about his “precautious” playing style, acknowledging his twenty second-place finishes in Majors. “Jack was first or second in 39 major championships. Think about that for a moment. How many more majors he might have won.”
“He had a way of knowing just how good he was and he never let his self-confidence, and often stubbornness, melt into arrogance,” adds broadcaster Jack Whitaker in his essay entitled “Always a Presence.”
The middle section of the book is filled with extensive photographs of Nicklaus’ swing and putting stroke, dating back to when he was 13 years old, with analysis by golf instructor Jim Flick.
The remaining two-hundred pages provides a complete reporting (both in writing and photos) of the major events in Nicklaus’ life, starting with the 1956 Ohio Open, and including his twenty major victories, a few misses, some team championships, his golf course design business, photographs from the Jack Nicklaus Museum and much more.
The finale comes with a 5-½ foot timeline of his life, folded into a two-page spread of Nicklaus being honored by the Ohio State University marching band during their football half-time tribute to him.
Between the well-written essays and more than 600 photographs, this coffee-table sized book is a “must-have” for any true historian of golf.
(Available at local books stores and also on-line. It is published by American Golfer, and retails for $60. It is the fifth book in a series on the world’s greatest golfers).
