More Jack for Jack

"A man wants to improve at anything he does," said Jack Nicklaus. "And I'm certainly not doing my best." It was the sort of sincere, sensible thing any young man might say if he was just 23 and had practically his whole life ahead of him. But coming from Nicklaus, it sent a surge of dismay through the battle-scarred ranks of golf's professionals. In the space of eleven short months. Jack ("Baby Beef") Nicklaus has won the U.S. Open (prize: $15,000). the World Series of Golf ($50,000), the Seattle Open ($4,300). the Portland Open ($3,500), the Palm Springs Golf Classic ($9,000). and the Masters ($20,000). He has collected a paycheck in all but two of the 37 professional tournaments he has entered, and he has finished among the top ten in 24. Last week, in the Las Vegas Tournament of Champions. Jack Nicklaus--doggone him anyway--got richer still. Ah, but the way he did it. On opening day at the 7,073-yd. Desert Inn Country Club course, his second tee shot strayed from the fairway and conked a spectator on the head. That rattled the spectator. Not Jack. He paused briefly to comfort the injured bystander, drilled an iron to the green and neatly two-putted for a birdie four. He then birdied five of the next twelve holes, bogeyed only once and clomped up to the 15th, a 501 -yd. dogleg left, with six under par on his scorecard. A drive like a German 88 carried him 305 yds. down the fairway, a crisp No. 4 iron nicked the green--and a curling 35-ft. putt plunked in the cup for an eagle three. Score for the day: a record eight-under-par 64 that gave him a two-stroke lead over Defending Champion Arnold Palmer. Nobody got any closer. Over the next three days, Nicklaus shot rounds of 68, 72 and 69; he had only one three-putt green in the entire tournament, and his 72-hole total of 273 was five strokes better than those of Runners-up Palmer and Tony Lema, not to mention 15 strokes better than par. The victory was worth $13,000 in silver dollars, which swelled his 1963 winnings to $52,715 (v. $32,496 for Lema, $31,375 for Palmer). Then it was off to the Colonial National Invitation at Fort Worth, where the winner's purse is $12,000. Naturally, Texas oddsmakers made him a 4 to 1 favorite.

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