I watched an interview with Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Scottie Scheffler today. It brought back memories from years past. I was working in Jacksonville, Fla. for Hartford, the sponsor of the Bay Meadows tournament. Myself and my manager had free tickets to the event. We could only go out one day so we chose the day when the golfers played with the sponsors. We could not play but we did have access to the pros and could walk the course with them.
I was around 27 years old then and my manager was about the same age. Jack Nicklaus was a couple years older and we decided to follow him around. He was not the super star then but a great golfer.. There were only 5-6 of us in the party and we were observers. We chose that day to avoid the crowds. Jack would tell us about every shot he was taking and how he would make the shot.
He was every part the gentleman and cordial and it was like friends walking down the fairways together. Everything was very relaxed. Just watching and listening to Jack tell about his strokes and how he did them was valuable information. Both Dick, my manager, and I played golf every week or two and we both picked up enough information from Jack Nicklaus to take strokes off our games.
Watching Jack in the interview today I saw the same easy going and congenial man we walked that golf course with all those years ago. Of all the pros that were available we sure picked the right guy to follow around. Any other day of the tournament there would be throngs of people but on this day there were only a few of us following Jack Nicklaus. Some of the other pros had larger groups following them but our group was small. What a wonderful memory.
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