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saying that he had captured so many more majors than Trevino and Watson not because he had more talent than his two biggest rivals after Palmer faded but because “Jack wanted them more.” He sure did. One more—this Masters championship. The thirteenth hole at Augusta—


Azalea—offered several challenges. One was the necessity of hitting the tee shot to the middle of the fairway. There was leeway on many of the other holes, but on 13 landing in the middle of the fairway with enough distance was the only way to reach the green in two, and that was what Nicklaus resolved to do. “Jackie, the 3-wood,” he murmured to his oldest son.


He smashed the ball beautifully. He sent it left and allowed for a slight fade. The flight didn’t have quite the aesthetic grace of a Trevino fade, but the ball sailed gently right and landed in the middle of the fairway, as he had envisioned. It bounced three times and came to rest. Jackie nodded at him. Jack had shown his tall cub that the Golden Bear still had it.


His drive was measured at three


hundred yards. But the approach shot offered another challenge. Nicklaus crunched the numbers as his group strode down the fairway, trying not to be distracted by the over fifteen hundred azaleas that lined the appropriately named hole from tee to green. That darn tributary of the notori-


ous Rae’s Creek guarded the front of the small green. Behind the putting surface was a deep swale and four bunkers. If Nicklaus didn’t land his next shot right on the green, instead of birdie he was looking at double bogey. Coming immediately after the bogey at 12, such a mishap would certainly mean a humiliating exit from contention. He hit a 3-iron. The ball landed safely on the green, thirty feet from the pin. An eagle would be spectacular, but Jack knew not to be greedy. A good lag putt


close to the hole and he’d be very happy with birdie. The ball came to a stop seven feet away. He and Jackie glanced at each other with the same thought: closer would have been better. Nicklaus and his son studied those


seven feet. They came to the same conclusion at the same moment: play for a slight left-to-right break. And be very, very careful about the speed, because here the green sloped slightly downward. After two practice strokes, Nick-


laus backed off for one last read. He bent over the ball. Two more practice strokes. He settled his feet and placed his putter firmly behind the ball. He struck. The ball rolled seven feet and


dropped into the hole. As Wind would write in his compre-


hensive New Yorker account published in the June 2 issue, “The cheers that had gone up for him from the crowd clus- tered near the green were so loud and intense that I thought he might have eagled the hole.” Nicklaus hadn’t, but the birdie on 13 was almost as good. Ballesteros was within the Bear’s grasp. As he walked with an almost jaunty step toward the fourteenth tee, mouthing “Thank you’s” to ecstatic fans, Nicklaus silently allowed that maybe he had one more Masters miracle left in him—and at his age, such an improbable victory would be the best one ever.


Reprinted with permission from One for the Ages: Jack Nicklaus and the 1986 Masters by Tom Clavin. Published by Chicago Review Press (distributed by IPG). Available now.


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