Jack Nicklaus weighed in on several topics during his Memorial Tuesday chat with the media, ranging from Boo Weekley to furrowed bunkers to the golf ball. For a summary of his lengthy Ryder Cup dialogue, check out Steve Elling's blog summation. Elling also offered this overview of the press conference if you don't want to read the entire transcript. Mark Soltau summarizes a Jack anecdote related to Tiger's decision not to play (it doesn't sound great with his knee) and also on the topic of thank-you cards from players.
And separate of his press conference, Nicklaus offered this to Doug Ferguson in response to a question about his support of the USGA's new deal with RBS.
Jack Nicklaus has been barking about technology for at least a decade, with seemingly no help from the USGA. But he took part in an announcement earlier this month when golf’s governing body in the United States and Mexico announced it had signed its fourth corporate partner in the last 18 months.
He was asked about any perception that the USGA is more interested in getting corporate support than governing the game.
“I wish I had a good answer to that,” Nicklaus replied. “I haven’t had a good answer from the USGA on it. I think their heart is in the right place. I don’t think they’re trying to avoid being a good steward to the game. They’re probably between a rock and a hard place.
“Their efforts in the grassroots of the game, being involved in youth, certainly has been good,” he said. “They do so many good things. It’s just the one thing they aren’t having success at is controlling the length of the golf ball.”
Okay, now the highlights from the press conference.
Q. Furrowed bunkers again this year?
JACK NICKLAUS: We went to about halfway between what we were. I think that the first year we probably were a little severe. Probably the second year we were probably too light and this year we're somewhere in the middle. It's about the same exact same thing that basically I was at Birkdale last week and the rakes are almost identical to Birkdale. So I think it's pretty much the standard rake. It's just not a smooth surface.
And the intention is, as I've said in here many times, the intention is not to make it a penalty, but to have it in a player's mind that it could be a penalty. And so if you're going to hit the ball, you got to challenge a bunker and you're going to say, you know, well, if I hit in there what difference does it make, I'm just going to take my whatever club it is and knock it out and knock it on the green. The players don't worry about it.
But if you got it where you might not get a perfect lie -- and you can get a good lie in the bunkers the way we got them, but you can get a bad lie. And if that's the case, then you're going to think about whether you want to really challenge that bunker in a way that you wouldn't even consider. So it's just forcing the players to strategize, to play the strategy of the golf course.
I came up with it, the reason I did it was we just kept changing bunkers and lowering them and it didn't make that much difference. I always go through what they did at the Masters and there's two bunkers at the fifth hole at the Masters and, you know, you can't hardly shoot a gun out of them over the top, but -- they're so deep. And but Hootie saw that and didn't know if they could get out. And I said, Hootie, I promise you they're going to get out. There will be no problems. The first round Mickelson knocked it in the bunkers, knocked a 9-iron out of the bunker onto the green and made birdie. End of question there, end of subject.
So if you keep taking the bunkers and keep doing things to them, you just are destroying your membership. The membership can't play out of those bunkers. The membership is having a hard time playing, a hard time playing out of a lot of them over here. So I said basically let's not make the bunkers any tougher. Just one week a year rough it up a little bit. They call it rough raking it. And that's what we have done and that's -- I don't think they will find it to be much of a deal.
It certainly will not be a big deal around the greens. That's not where they have to worry. It's more in the fairways, because the fairway bunkers here have always been fairly easy to play out of because the guys will take whatever club they need and just pop it out of them because we just have them so perfect. And we'll just sort of rough rake them a little bit.
I loved this question. Now if we could just get Jack and the field staff on the same page!
Q. You talked about 14, a couple weeks ago about practicing, preparing your driving for the U.S. Open there. Have you ever thought about maybe one day during the tournament moving it up, moving the tee up just a little bit to put the thought in their head to give it a crack?
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't control the tees. The tees are controlled by the TOUR. Would I object to it if they put it up? Probably wouldn't if we would talk about it ahead of time so I could prepare the hole so it would play for that, as far as the occasional guy who stands back and whacks it today, but I haven't really -- I really haven't prepared and thought a whole lot about the second shot, that landing area up there as relates to receiving a tee shot. And I would bet there are going to be 10 players this week who will take a run at that. If they do, then I probably will prepare the fairway a little differently and probably -- meaning would I probably eliminate any rough that comes along the edge of it. So if you're going to take a run at it and you don't hit it where you're supposed to, you're probably going to get a little bit more -- the water will come into play a little bit more. But it's never been a big issue yet. But that would be what we would probably do.
I went out there, I used to practice from the ladies' tee and it was a perfect tee shot practice for me because it was left-to-right slope hitting up the left edge, and sort of working the ball I could run it up into the green there. And I thought that was good practice. And the guys today, I mean, you know, they could go back on 13 fairway and drive it up there they hit the ball so far today.
And the proverbial technology talk turned interesting when it came to Augusta National.
Q. You were talking about equipment.
(Laughter.)
JACK NICKLAUS: Well surprise there.
(Laughter.)
We talk about the game has changed tremendously because of equipment and I think largely the golf ball. And yet we're asked to play the same golf courses.
So I mean obviously if the golf ball goes further and equipment hits the ball straighter, and the guys are bigger, all those combinations would only, common sense would say, duh, scores are going to be lower.
Well, okay. But then you take the golf courses and we keep changing them and changing them and changing them and spend millions of dollars to protect almighty par. Is that really the right thing to do? I think that we're trying to, we try to take today's golf courses and make them -- we take equipment, which has no relevance whatsoever to the equipment that I played or we played versus what Jones played. Yet we want to make the golf course play, to be relevant. Does that make sense?
I mean why would you want to take -- I mean it's a different game, it's different equipment. Why would you worry about that it's relevant? Though we spend millions of dollars trying to make it so. And so that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Augusta is the perfect example. I think Augusta is a, to what it is right now, frankly, I think it's a great golf course. And I think what they have done to it is what they had to do to it if they wanted to protect par. Would Bobby Jones have liked that? Probably not. His philosophy was very much the St. Andrews philosophy. And that's wide fairways, second shot golf, put the ball in the right position, you got the right angle to the hole. You do that, you take advantage of the golf course and you can score it. Okay. Well obviously with today's equipment you just take a golf course apart.
But they have changed the golf course and probably rightly so. I have two thoughts on it. Rightly so. They changed the golf course to fit today's game. But they have taken the golf course away from Jones' philosophy of what the game was to him.
So you got two things happening there. Which do you protect? And they could have had the -- they're the only place that had the option probably to say, okay, we can do, take the golf ball and make them play a certain golf ball there. And they could have gotten away with that.
But I think they did the right thing there again, as I said to you before, in not putting themselves above the game. So I don't know what the answer really is. What was your question? Was that your question?
Nicklaus made similar complimentary comments regarding ANGC to ESPN.com's Jason Sobel in this interview. Well, complimentary if you read it a certain way!
