Jack Nicklaus

JACK NICKLAUS

July 25, 2013

KELLY ELBIN: It's my pleasure to welcome you to this conference call leading up to the season's final major, the 95th PGA Championship at OakHill Country Club in Rochester, New York.

The PGA Championship will be contested on the East Course at OakHill during the week of August 5 through 11 and we are delighted to have with us today, PGA Member Jack Nicklaus, who won his fifth and final PGA Championship at OakHill in 1980. That year, Jack was the only player to break par at the PGA Championship finishing at 6under par 274 and winning by seven shots over Andy Bean. That was a record margin of victory and it stood for just over 30 years until Rory McIlroy's eightshot victory a year ago at Kiawah Island.

Jack, welcome. I'm sure you have many fond memories of Oak Hill and winning that championship which tied you with Rochester native, Walter Hagen, for the most PGA Championship victories of all time.

JACK NICKLAUS: Yeah, I obviously enjoyed it. I remember that was the year that I came to OakHill having won the U.S. Open at Baltusrol and I remember following that, I had a letdown and I had a hard time getting myself back up from a ballstriking standpoint.

I was up there playing the weekend before with my son, Jack. We were playing, and I was hitting the ball fair, but I was just putting awful. And Jackie gave me a putting lesson on taking the heel of my putter through the line and breaking it off; I was breaking off my stroke. And anyway, that week, I never did hit the ball very well, but I absolutely ran the tables with my putter. Everything I drew back went in the hole.

It was one of those weeks that I just turned around and I make a mistake, and all of a sudden I hole a 30footer and I just started chuckling and I'd think, okay, here we go, let's keep on going. But it was fun.

I love OakHill. It's a wonderful golf course. It's changed a lot through the years, from the first time that I played the U.S. Open there, I think it was 1966, if I recall '68, and the 18th hole was changed greatly, a couple holes on the front nine were changed and I think the par3 15th was changed. There were some holes that were changed that made the golf course a little bit more difficult.

But it was still OakHill and OakHill was still a beautiful, northern, treelined, softlyrolling piece of property that was very enjoyable to play.

KELLY ELBIN: Why do you think OakHill has stood the test of time throughout the years? It's going to be the 11th national championship to be played there when the PGA Championship is played in just a couple weeks.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I don't really know, except that as I described earlier, it's a good test. Nobody has ever really chewed it apart, and it's one you've got to play smart on, but you've got to control your golf ball and you've also got to putt, because the greens are not easy greens.

KELLY ELBIN: Let's take a few more minutes and we'll discuss a few items of note and we'll move on to questions.

Want to start first with this year, 2013, this Sunday to the day, marked the anniversary of your first PGA Championship victory on I'm sure what you remember was an incredibly sweltering day and I guess a sweltering week at Dallas Athletic Club in 1963. What do you recall from that week as you came from behind to win your first PGA Championship?

JACK NICKLAUS: You know, I don't remember much about the Championship itself. I guess I did start, I think I started the last round with an eagle, if I'm not mistaken.

KELLY ELBIN: You eagled the first hole and you had some birdies on 8, 12 and 15 that really helped put it away.

JACK NICKLAUS: Basically, what really happened that week, when they used to have the British Open and the PGA backtoback, which was really kind of silly, but that's what they had. I think that's probably why Hogan did not play in the fourth major because he couldn't get back to play in it. It was before the time of jets.

So I was fortunate to be able to get back, and we came from where I lost by a shot at Lytham, I sort of felt like I gave that one away. And then bogeying the last two holes, going from a 50degree championship or a 55degree championship to a 100 or 110degree temperature, it was a big change. I think a lot of the guys got back, and I think they were probably pretty tired from the British Open and I think they were pretty tired from the weather just absolutely beat them down. I guess I was a young guy that I handled those conditions pretty well.

I remember we had a fair amount of rain, and I don't think we had a lot of wind, but we had some really hot, hot weather, and it was I just sort of managed my game pretty well, played a good last round and won the championship.

KELLY ELBIN: You closed with 68. Bruce Cranston led by three strokes going into the final round. That eagle on the first hole, you don't have a lot of golf courses that have par 5s in major championships; Riviera comes to mind. But to be able to eagle the first hole of a major championship has to provide, I would imagine, incredible confidence in continuing the round.

JACK NICKLAUS: I don't remember how long the first hole was. I don't think it was a particularly long hole, because I think I mate maybe I don't remember, it was like a driver and a 5iron or something. It would be a par 4 today.

But the golf course has changed. Matter of fact, I changed the golf course quite a bit. I don't even remember what I changed, it's been awhile since I've been there.

You know, it was a golf course that was chosen for the PGA Championship and you say, well, the conditions in August are not something that's supposed to suit your game. But the golf course may suit a lot of guys' games, but that's not what the game is. The game is to change yourself to fit the golf course and that's why you play different courses every week. Obviously I was able to do that that week, and as were several other guys that were close. I guess I was lucky and prevailed.

KELLY ELBIN: This year at OakHill you are involved n something very different and unique that was announced on Monday, the PGA Championship Pick the Hole Location Challenge Hosted by Jack Nicklaus. You were good enough to partner with the PGA on this, and I know you spent some time with Kerry Haigh, our Chief Championships Officer, about this.

Can you talk further about what this Pick the Hole Location Challenge is and what it means for fans of the game?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I think the 15th hole is the last par 3 at OakHill. It's got water on the right. It's a hole that was redesigned. I don't remember whether the original hole had water on it. I doubt if it did.

Kerry had come up with what he thought would be the most likely four pin placements on the green, which I think were front part of the green, I think sort of middle left, middle threequarter back, and then all the way back.

And then to get the fans involved, I think it was a great idea, because the response has been terrific to it. People have been very involved in being interested and saying, hey, I'm going to be part of the PGA Championship and I think that's what The PGA of America wants. They want to include people in the game and grow the game and make sure that people feel like they are part of what the Championship is. I think it's kind of a neat thing.

I tried to get the PGA to do it all four holes, and I said, well, maybe that was a little bit too much the first year, all four pin placements, maybe too much the first year, seeing if the weather conditions and everything it was going to change. One was the last round, and I'm not going to divulge which one I think it will be, but I think there was one that's a little bit more difficult than the others, and my bet is that's the one they are picking.

KELLY ELBIN: And fans can go onto PGA.COM now through the third round of the PGA Championship, August 10 to vote for the one that they want and can vote once a day.

You made a holeinone, I believe, on that hole in 1980 in a practice round.

JACK NICKLAUS: Thank you for reminding me. I didn't remember.

Q. Lee Trevino is going to be honored at the PGA later on in August, and I wanted to ask you if you had played with him yet or what you knew about him by the time he was in the hunt in 1968 at that U.S. Open, and in that final round, you came in seven strokes behind. Was there a point that you thought you might have a chance there, and also, at what point did you feel like it wasn't going to be your day?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I go back on my first time that I saw Trevino. He played Baltusrol in '67 and he finished fifth, and we were in Cleveland the next week. And I saw this fellow on the practice tee hitting balls that I didn't recognize. I said: Who is that?

And they said: That's the newfellow, Lee Trevino.

I said: Oh, that's the kid who finished fifth last week.

Yeah, that was the kid. Anyway, that was my first sighting of Trevino.

I don't know whether we played that year or not. But at OakHill, the last round, I thought that I was going to win the tournament and Trevino holed some unbelievable putts coming down the stretch. Every time I seemed to do something well, he seemed to, he was hitting it he was not hitting it straight for him, but he was holing everything he looked at coming out of here with a 25footer on two or three holes coming back coming down the stretch and that certainly made the difference.

I think that that tournament itself, obviously, established Lee Trevino, and from then on, he was always a force to be reckoned with. He was a terrific player, he was a great competitor, and he's become a great friend.

Q. Lee talked about this it a bit during Merion, in '71, you took him aside in the locker room. What motivated you to sit him down and tell him about how good you thought he could be?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, I don't remember I did that at Merion. But Lee had always talked about, he couldn't play Augusta. He always said there were certain courses that he couldn't play.

And I said: Lee, don't be ridiculous. I said: You are an unbelievable ballstriker. You can hit any shot there is. You're as good as I've ever seen, and you know, I think that don't put yourself down. You can win all these tournaments.

He won everything but the Masters, and I still think that had he not had an attitude in that direction, he would have won that, too.

You know, why did I do that? Well, I like him. I like to see guys play well. I have never had any hesitation to help a fellow competitor. Didn't bother me. He still had to beat me, and of course, I had to beat him. So for me the better he was playing, that was fine with me; all I had to do was play better.

Q. I'm at one of your other courses, Glen Abbey, for the Canadian Open, and I wonder if you can talk about a couple memories you have of the course, finishing second seven time over the course of your career?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, that's about what my memory is, back in the Canadian Open, way too many times. Barbara said, "I'm going to keep sending you back until you do it right," and I never quite did it right.

There was a couple times I was going to win the golf tournament and one that I probably I always say I should have won and almost did win was I think the year that Norman won.

And I remember the 17th hole, they had parking behind the green, and they had took and moved the outofbounds stakes and Norman hit the ball, which would have been outofbounds and they had moved the stakes. So he ended up being inbounds and I think he got back and made a par or bogey on the hole and ended up beating me, otherwise I would have won the tournament.

You know, I kept saying, I said after the tournament was over, I said, what was all that about?

Oh, they have parking issue and they changed the outofbounds to accommodate it. It was kind of funny.

But it seemed like everything I seemed to do at the Canadian Open turned out to be a secondplace finish. I know the 18th hole at Royal Montreal, I hit 3wood off the tee and hit it in the water and made bogey on the hole and lost to tie with Weiskopf and lost in a playoff; and St. George's, I think finished second, and I finished second at Glen Abbey several times.

I always enjoyed the Canadian Open and always seemed to play pretty well there and never seemed to quite I was always the bridesmaid and never quite the bride on that one.

Q. Glen Abbey as a course you designed?

JACK NICKLAUS: It was the first course that I ever did by myself. I say by myself; obviously I had my team. That was Jay Morrish and Bob Cupp were working for me.

When Reggie Acomb, who was up there, came to us and said, you know, the golf course was there and he had been there for many years and all this kind of stuff. I kept looking at the property and I said, you know, Muirfield is the first golf course that it was ever done from its inception for a gallery. That was used mostly with natural terrain. Well, Glen Abbey was a big flat plain up on top of the hill above the creek, Sixteen Mile Creek, is it? I can't remember. I think that's the name of it.

Anyway, I sort of came up with the idea of putting the clubhouse in the center of the property and then having like spokes of a wheel going out and having the galleries go out on those spokes. Or if you stayed in the clubhouse, you could see an awful lot of golf right from there. You could go out to the driving area and you sort of follow that driving area from hole to hole on the driving area, you see back holes of the clubhouse or all the holes away or you can go on the outside of it and see all that.

Originally it was designed to see from the top of the hill holes to the bottom, but environmentally they didn't want us to remove the trees on the hill to get a window through there so that never actually worked. I thought it was a unique golf course, and still is a unique golf course.

It's obviously been popular for the Canadian Open because you continue to come back there, 26 times is it now, something like that. I'm very proud of that. It's a golf course that we've fiddled with it at times and I think that the RCGA has respected what we have done up there and every time they want to make a major change or something, they come back to us and had us work and do it, which I appreciated.

As I say, it's my first golf course by myself, so one that obviously is very near and dear to my heart.

Q. I think the record is in eight of your 18 professional Majors, you came from behind on Sunday. Talk about what you did from a course management or strategy standpoint when you found yourself trailing going into a major. And then the second part, is that a talent in and of itself for an ability of a player to comefrombehind and win on the final day?

JACK NICKLAUS: You know, I don't know whether you're accurate on that, but I think I was ahead, I think of the 18, I think I was ahead 1 times, so maybe it was six. I might have got behind in a round that I was leading and then came back, so it could be to get to that number, I don't know exactly.

You know, I never was a great frontrunner from the standpoint of being comfortable with that. Obviously I like to be in the lead and I like to stay in the lead and I like to win. But I seem to get a little too conservative sometimes when I was a frontrunner. I still won most of the time. I think I won 11 out of the 12 times or something that I was leading going into the last round, so I didn't actually give it up. It's just I was more apprehensive about it.

But to me, coming down the last nine holes, if I was like within a shot or two, I sort of always liked that challenge because it really put a fire under me and said, okay, now you've really got to go play. I don't know, some mentality, I think Tiger's mentality is the other way. He sort of looks ahead and he tries to get ten shots ahead. I've never tried to do that; although I have won some Majors by pretty good numbers, I guess the Masters by, what, nine, and the PGA Championship by seven, something like that.