There are more things in heaven and earth …
Almost anyone who loves golf and saw Jack Nicklaus revel at the Masters of ’65, or has seen the play since on YouTube, will remember the way the ball would seemingly hang in the air forever, before gliding softly back down to the mollifying green earth below.
His shots with the long irons enthralled everyone, especially Bobby Jones, who observed that the type of game Nicklaus was playing was one “with which I am not familiar”.
Anyone who watched the game remembers waiting for the ball to come down. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting huddled together in silence, as people are prone to when they meet the future.
We have all had these Nicklaus Moments. Tournament caddies have described them as “bloody near-religious experiences”.
Of course, we are quite easily of a mind to chuck talk like that off as exhausted, lifeless turns of expression your average Joe turns to to describe a Nicklaus Moment.
However, deliberated upon, and coalesced with some serious watching – look how the high trajectory gives the ball wings – the enigmatic truth in the caddies’ statement comes teasingly to fore. A near-religious experience.
It is notably true because competitive sports, like golf, bring out the beauty in the players that play it, especially since they were designed for competition and not beauty.
After Nicklaus overwhelmed Arnold Palmer in the summer of 1962, The King’s bruised fans could not believe this was happening to His Worship at the height of his game.
They resorted to jeering Nicklaus in the galleries. Nicklaus was a champion in every way. He took it in his stride.
Of course that does not mean to say that sports – and even golf at that – do not engender invisible, machismo, war-like symbolism not entirely visible to the naked eye: chest-thumping, uniforms, nationalist intensity, and hierarchy all meant to parent the
codes of war than those of love.
Howbeit, there is a thing about golf: the goal is not beauty, but that refinement of play of human grace becomes the game.
So much so that when Nicklaus, at 28, wrote The Greatest Game of All – to the ball that hung there in the air forever – it was not to the ball, it was to beauty.
The feats of Nicklaus in the sport of golf should be compared to analogues at the pinnacle of their own, for instance to Roger Federer in tennis, for whom the 78 feet between the baselines seem considerably shortened.
Or to Michael Jordon in basketball, who seems to defy gravity, bounding higher than is considered humanly possible, lingering there longer than the laws of physics would allow.
Or to Mohammed Ali, floating like a butterfly, stinging like a bee, “your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see”.
With Nicklaus, the Golden Bear, it is generally considered he is simply the greatest golfer to have ever lived.
These men and women of golf, as of all sports, are akin to the saints of the religions we esteem. At very young ages, they dedicate their lives to a singular pursuit larger than themselves or their momentary flashes of existence on this wretched planet.
Their skill inspires us, dares us to dream. Their play, like this season’s Ryder Cup ‘Miracle of Medinah’ speaks to us and their lives remind us that “There are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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