Comeback Jack

An old pro wins the U.S. Open

In the lowering afternoon sun, Jack Nicklaus strode up the shadowed fairway toward the 18th green at New Jersey's Baltusrol Golf Club. The crowd began to surge and roar, cheering each step and move of the man who was leading the U.S. Open. It had been a long time since Nicklaus had heard the sound.

Since he first burst on the scene, a prodigy who won the 1959 U.S. Amateur at 19, Nicklaus, now 40, had won 66 tournaments, including 17 in the great competitions of golfs major tournaments: three U.S. Opens, five Masters, three British Opens, four P.G.A. championships and two U.S. Amateur championships. But he had not won any tournament since July 1978. Last year he slipped to 71st place on the list of P.G.A. money winners after 17 consecutive years in the top four. As recently as a week before Baltusrol, at the Atlanta Golf Classic, he had performed so poorly that he was eliminated after two rounds. With his putts stopping short, his drives wandering into the rough, his irons missing the greens, people were whispering that his championship days were over.

Not yet, not by a long tee shot. Nicklaus was tied for the lead the first day, but was alone at the top through the remaining three rounds. His score after each round was a new tournament record, and he needed every stroke to stave off the direct challenge of his surprising playing partner, Japan's Isao Aoki. Nicklaus, who admitted afterward that he too had come to doubt his ability, birdied the final two holes, nerveless as of old. His winning score of 272 (to Aoki's 274) broke by three strokes the U.S. Open record he had shared with Lee Trevino*. While a crowd of 25,000 chanted his name, Nicklaus acknowledged: "This is the best of them all." Trevino himself paid moving tribute to the only man ever to win a major golf title in four separate decades: "In my dreams, Jack, you always win."

*He made an extra $50,000 from Golf Magazine for eclipsing the old mark.

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