Tiger hunts Golden Bear

An exasperated Jack Nicklaus shook his head, a look of utter frustration on his face as he fielded the same question, just as he expected, again.

Is Tiger Woods the greatest to ever play the game?

That afternoon, he sat next to Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson at the Blue Hills Golf Club in Leawood, Kan. All of them were considered to have been – at least at one time – the most dominant golfers of their generation.

But Nicklaus had always been different. His drive to win, his dogged determination and his uniquely conservative power game all added up to make him the premier player of not only his generation, but other generations as well. It was his rivalry against Palmer that made golf a viable spectator sport during the 1960s and his subsequent tangles with Player and Trevino and especially Watson in the ‘70s gave him enough steam to cap off his championship career in the mid-‘80s.

Simply put, there was never anybody like the Golden Bear, but then, Nicklaus never really had a bar to measure up against. A winner straight out of college, nearly everything he did ended up a record.

And that’s why Woods is such a danger to his legacy. In much the same way, Woods comes from behind in seemingly every tournament he enters, he has the leader in his sights when it comes to the record books.

At the top stands Nicklaus, with 18 major championships won during the course of his 32-year career (he officially retired from regular competition in 2005, though he had competed in Senior-level tournaments since 1990). In second is Bobby Jones, with 13 majors. Woods, at age 30, already has 12 majors under his belt and the end doesn’t seem anywhere in sight.

“I would never deny that Jack Nicklaus is the greatest player who ever lived,” Player once said, “but Jack was never this dominant.”

In the summer of 2002, when Nicklaus participated in the press conference at Blue Hills, he was 62 and Woods 26. Perhaps Nicklaus would have loved to reverse their ages, just for old time’s sake.

“They already gave up,” Nicklaus lamented when talking about Woods’ opponents. “I wish someone would just take it to him.”

But can anyone really ever take it to Tiger Woods? Perhaps Nicklaus summed it up best himself.

“There’s only one person you can control on the golf course, and that’s yourself. If you don’t win, and your game is capable of winning, that’s your fault. It doesn’t make any difference who’s there.”

One thing is for sure: Come the final round at just about any tournament in golf, you can expect to see Tiger Woods there.