Wind immediately thought of Nicklaus when considering who might do an Afterword for the historic first instruction book -
Hints on the Game of Golf. Wind had been impressed early on by how well Nicklaus understood the golf swing in general and his own swing in particular and felt that Nicklaus was almost unique in being able to correct a swing problem during a competitive round.
Founding Publisher of Classics of Golf, Robert S. Macdonald, tells the story of being at Augusta during the Masters in the 1980s with Herb Wind, when the barriers between the players and the fans were almost non-existent. Wind and Macdonald watched as Nicklaus was stopped on his way from the practice tee back to the locker room by an ordinary fan who wanted some help with his game.
Macdonald writes, "This, we thought, could turn out to be
amusing, and we were interested in how Nicklaus would handle the situation. To our surprise Nicklaus listened carefully to the young man. A crowd began to gather. Soon they were surrounded by forty or fifty people. This did not seem to bother Nicklaus; in fact, he seemed to enjoy it. He then proceeded to give the young man a golf lesson, including various demonstrations with his arms and hands and at one point reaching up and placing the young man's hands in a better position at the top of his backswing. Nicklaus devoted perhaps fifteen minutes of his time in order to make sure the young man understood his ideas."
The second volume that Nicklaus was asked to contribute to was
Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links, published in
1887 only a year after Hints on Golf, and one of the rarest books in the literature of golf, fetching staggering prices in the auction houses. It is a small book with only some fifty pages of text and no illustrations. The writer, James Balfour, was not an established author or well-known personality. He was a decent golfer, and one of his sons, Leslie Balfour-Melville, won the 1895 British Amateur championship.
That was about it in the fame department, but as Herb Wind wrote: "Far more clearly than any other book written about St. Andrews, James Balfour's Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links quietly explains the deep hold that the Old Course, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, and the town of St. Andrews come to have on those who play the course steadily over the years."
Jack Nicklaus has been associated with the Old Course more than any American golfer since Bobby Jones.
He first went to Scotland in 1959 as an amateur for the Walker Cup matches at Muirfield. On that trip his father took the opportunity to drive up to Fife and have a look at hard-baked, brown St. Andrews. He came back with a harrowing scouting report: it was the worst course he had ever seen. Five years later Nicklaus played at St. Andrews for the first time: "What I was prepared for in 1964 was not very much," Nicklaus later said, "but when I got there, I just fell in love with it right from the first day".
Nicklaus won the Open championship there in 1970 and 1978. The 2005 Open at St. Andrews as the place he would play his last major championship. After hitting his tee shot off the 18th tee in the second round, Nicklaus received a ten-minute standing ovation from the crowd. At the age of 65, Nicklaus birdied the final hole for a 72 and a two-round total of 147, missing the cut by two shots.
Like his hero, Bobby Jones, Nicklaus produced an autobiography at an early age - twenty-eight -
The Greatest Game of All; unlike Jones, he did not write it himself, but almost no athletes did. Jones was unique in this regard as in so many others. Nicklaus had no trouble selecting Herb Wind as his collaborator. Wind was the best writer around and did not intrude himself into the project, but made every attempt to conceal himself and capture the voice, outlook and sensibility of the subject.
This method had resulted in a spectacular success with the
Sarazen autobiography
Thirty Years of Championship Golf, but it required time-consuming craftmanship. Sarazen, who was more or less retired from championship golf, met with Wind, who had rented a small room near the Sarazen farm, every day for six consecutive weeks during the summer of 1949. Nicklaus didn't have that kind of time to offer. He and Wind had to get together a few days here and a few there whenever Nicklaus's hectic schedule permitted, but Wind insisted they spend enough time to produce a first-rate book.
"There's nothing magical about a good book," Wind said. "It takes a lot of time and hard work, that's all there is to it."
In 1988, when Nicklaus wrote his Afterwords (with the help of his long-time associate and distinguished author Ken Bowden) it was not at all sure that his winning days were behind him. He had won the Masters two years earlier at the age of forty-six, a feat which Wind, never given over to superlatives, called "the most important accomplishment in golf since Bobby Jones's Grand Slam, in 1930".
Nicklaus's record at that point was nothing short of amazing: eighteen major championships, and two U.S. Amateur titles. It turned out that he was not to win again, but he got into contention in the 1998 Masters at the unheard of age of fifty-eight...(until Tom Watson's historic performance last week.)
About his longevity, Wind wrote: "What is astounding is that Nicklaus won his first major title, the U.S. Amateur, in 1959, and won his latest major title, the Masters, in 1986. That adds up to a span of twenty-seven years".
Perhaps equally astounding were his nineteen second place finishes in the major championships. In 1982, after Nicklaus had won nineteen majors (including two Amateur titles), Wind wrote: "It is easy to see why many authorities consider Nicklaus to be the greatest golfer ever, but I prefer to rank him alongside Vardon, Jones, and Hogan, who were also peerless in their eras."
the original steward of the Classics of Golf Library, and an Afterword by a notable golfer or expert in the field. These insightful and enduring pieces of commentary are unique to the Classics of Golf version of so many of the greatest golf books ever written.
