Forty years ago, Nicklaus stunned the world and this first-year announcer.
Every April there seems to be a special anniversary awaiting us at Augusta National. This year marks one of the greatest of all – 40 years since Jack Nicklaus’ epic sixth Masters triumph, the most anyone
has won.
All these decades later, for the seven million TV viewers and those fortunate enough to witness that Masters in person, the surreal events of Sunday, April 13, 1986, still seem like a fairy tale. Did it really happen? How did Jack do it?
I was in the CBS tower behind the par-3 16th hole that day, but the story for me began almost two years earlier. In June 1984, I caddied for Jack Nicklaus during an exhibition at Park Meadows Country Club, a course in Park City, Utah, that he designed. Jack invited his good friend Johnny Miller to join him for the 18-hole debut round before several thousand fans. Two local sports broadcasters were invited to serve as bag toters for the afternoon. I was one of them and assigned to the great man. You can imagine the honour of carrying Jack’s big MacGregor tour bag for 18 holes. The thrill was enormous, and Jack occasionally even sought my input on yardages and green reads. Jack was warm and kind to his rookie caddie, even though I steered him to a birdie-free 73 that featured 17 pars and one three-putt bogey.
I was hired by CBS Sports the next summer. I was 26 and only four years removed from a dormitory on the University of Houston campus. Soon after, I was informed that CBS’ legendary golf producer Frank Chirkinian had asked the brass at the network to include me as part of his broadcast team.
Frank usually got what he wanted, and in January I was at Pebble Beach for our first event of the season. Upon arriving, Frank told me three things: first, I wouldn’t be calling the action that weekend. “You are here only to observe how we present a telecast,” he said. Second, the Lodge at Pebble Beach was sold out and CBS would instead stash me in a villa off the left side of the first fairway that was once the home of 1940s golf great Lawson Little. My roommate: the curmudgeon reporter and famed golf writer, Bob Drum. Lastly, Frank dropped a bomb: if things went well in the coming weeks, including an on-air premiere at the Doral Open, he planned to include me in the Masters broadcast 10 weeks later.
My first glimpse of Augusta National came that March when Frank asked me to record network promotional spots for the tournament. When April finally arrived, my learning curve was short. The tower was so close to the action that I learned to lower my voice to not distract the players. I noticed late in the day how the setting sun was at my back and shone brightly on the players as they hit their tee shots. The intense light made the golf balls appear larger than they were. It felt like I was tracking beach balls, not objects 1.68 inches in diameter.
On Sunday, the leaderboard was filled with iconic hall-of-fame names. Greg Norman, the third-round leader, and Nick Price, who had shot a course-record 63 on Saturday, were in the final pairing. One group ahead of them were Seve Ballesteros, seeking his third green jacket, and Bernhard Langer, at the time seeking a repeat victory. Tom Kite was in the mix, as were Corey Pavin, Tom Watson and Sandy Lyle. Nicklaus was tied for ninth, six strokes back. Jack didn’t figure to have any chance at all. He was 46 and hadn’t won a major in six years. As far as I could tell from the 73 I’d witnessed in Park City, his best days were behind him.
Jack came alive with birdies at the ninth, 10th and 11th holes. He bogeyed the 12th but then birdied the 13th. When he eagled No.15, he suddenly was only two shots behind the leader, Ballesteros. As Jack prepared to play the par-3 16th, I quickly dispensed information about his rich history on the hole, including his pivotal birdie in 1963 on his way to his first green jacket and his 40-footer for birdie up the hill in 1975 to fend off Miller and Tom Weiskopf. As he addressed the ball with a 6-iron, it now was time for me to “lay out”, broadcaster parlance for not saying anything at all.
The next thing I knew, the beach ball was flying towards me. I could tell, after four days of watching numerous shots, that this one was going to be close. As the ball drifted down the slope and trickled towards the cup, thoughts of a hole-in-one danced in my head. Coincidentally, I had asked Frank earlier that morning about how I should handle a situation in which someone knocked in an ace. In typical tough-love fashion, he’d said, “Son, this is a visual medium. If you ever talk over a moment like that, I will walk out of the truck, come down to 16 and personally throw you out of the tower!” With that thought circling my brain, I said only, “Right at it” as the ball was in the air. When it settled three feet below, I exclaimed, “Oh, my!”
For the next five minutes I pretty much remained silent. Frank, directing brilliantly, let the camera linger on Jack as he walked along the water’s edge towards the green. Jack centre-cut his putt for birdie, and as he strode off the green, I exclaimed against the roar in the background, “There is no doubt about it, the Bear has come out of hibernation.”
Jack went on to win, of course, and after the broadcast concluded, I walked up the hill to the CBS compound. A cart suddenly pulled alongside. Our lead golf analyst, the legendary Ken Venturi, was behind the wheel. Ken was downright giddy. He said, “Jimmy, you may be lucky enough to one day broadcast 50 Masters tournaments, but I can promise you this, you will never see a day greater than this around Augusta National.”
I’ve been blessed to see many things through the years: Tiger in 1997, Tiger again with his “return to glory” in 2019, Rory last year. But 1986 in many ways stands alone. We remember it as the day Jack Nicklaus composed a golf fairy tale that somehow came true.
Photograph by getty images/augusta national
