Every once in a while, the universe gives you a mulligan. It could be a second ball off the first hole, a second chance at the “one who got away,” or a second run at the presidency (see Hillary Clinton). This is not a political piece. It’s a reflection on one of the greatest golf tournaments ever played and the mulligan I received Sunday night with the opportunity to watch it. I fell in love with The Masters in 1979. Fuzzy Zoeller won a three-way playoff with a birdie putt on the 2nd playoff hole to beat Tom Watson and Ed Sneed. Since then, I’ve watched virtually every final round at Augusta, the last three in person.
17th HOLE BIRDIE
But I missed the greatest one ever, when the legendary Jack Nicklaus won his 6th Green Jacket in 1986. I was a freshman at Yale and, if I recall, there was some intramural athletic competition involving relay sprints and chugging beer. Not especially memorable. What I definitely remember is picking up the USA Today the next morning and finding out that the 46-year-old Golden Bear had emerged from a multi-year hibernation, staging a remarkable comeback victory to defeat the greatest players in the game. I distinctly recall the regret I felt that I had missed it.
Anyway, 30 years later, I got my mulligan Sunday night. On www.masters.com, the lords of Augusta bestowed a wonderful gift, the full 3-hour CBS telecast of Jack’s final round charge. I’ve seen the highlights many times over the year but, as a golf fan and former TV producer, it was great fun to see the events as they happened in real time. The website cautioned that it was available for a limited time only; I’m glad I didn’t wait because I couldn’t find the link today.
There will be many broadcast and written tributes this week to the 30th anniversary of Nicklaus’ classic win; this piece is about the telecast, with interesting notes about how the events unfolded and about the men who called the action.
When the final round started, Nicklaus was an afterthought. He started five shots behind 3rd round leader Nick Price, who had fired a course record 63 in the third round. Jack was in the 5th to last group on the last day, a position which rarely produces a Masters champion. The names in the groups before him were littered with great players, all younger than he and nearly all past or future major champions.
Final group: Nick Price (-7) & Greg Norman (-6)
Second to last group: Bernhard Langer (-5) & Donnie Hammond (-5)
Third to last group: Seve Ballesteros (-5) & Tom Kite (-4)
Fourth to last group: Tom Watson (-4) & Tommy Nakajima (-4)
Fifth to last group: Jack Nicklaus (-2) Sandy Lyle (-2)
Of the players Nicklaus was chasing, defending champion Bernhard Langer, Seve Ballesteros and Tom Watson had captured five of the previous nine Masters titles, with two wins each for Ballesteros and Watson. Jack’s playing competitor, Sandy Lyle, had won the 1985 British Open and was coming to Augusta red-hot, having captured the previous week’s Greater Greensboro Open. Nicklaus entered the Masters ice cold, having finished no better than 39th place in his previous seven tournament starts. (Lyle, incidentally, would win the Masters two years later with an 18th-hole birdie).
When CBS came on the air for their three-hour telecast (today they devote six hours to the final round), Nicklaus was not on the first two pages of the leader board, meaning he wasn’t even in the top 12. The Golden Bear had managed one birdie and one bogey on the first eight holes of his final round, hardly a start that would inspire a comeback from five shots behind. The greatest player in the history of the game was not even mentioned in the first 20 minutes of the broadcast.
In 1986, Brent Musberger was the top dog at CBS and he was assigned the role of hosting the event from Butler Cabin, sitting with Tom Weiskopf. Only two members of the 1986 broadcast team still cover The Masters, Jim Nantz and Verne Lundquist. Nantz was fairly new to CBS but had a golfing pedigree (having been Fred Couples’ roommate at Houston); he was assigned the prestigious 16th hole tower. Lundquist, who had previously been the long-time voice of the Dallas Cowboys, was on the 17th hole. The understated Pat Summerall, covering his 19th Masters, was on the 18th hole with longtime announcing partner Ken Venturi. The other members of the broadcast team were Bob Murphy (not the Mets announcer), Steve Melnyk, and Gary McCord (who would years later be permanently banned from future telecasts by the lords of Augusta National for saying the slick putting greens were so fast that they must have had bikini wax on them).
Nicklaus birdied the 9th hole; this was the first time he was mentioned in the telecast. He followed up with a long birdie putt at the 10th and another one at 11. By now, he was climbing the leader board but, if you were a novice golf fan, you wouldn’t have had any idea that this was the greatest golfer of all time. It wasn’t until he was on 13 (after a 12th hole bogey) that Venturi let the audience know that Nicklaus had won the event five times before.
Nicklaus made a two-putt birdie on 13 and parred the 14th. He was four shots behind the leader (Ballesteros) when he reached the 15th tee. CBS’ telecasts, helmed by long-time director Frank Chirkinian, were the gold standard of televised golf. Chirkinian, who would eventually be inducted to the World Golf Hall of Fame, was the architect of the network’s rapid-fire approach, sending the audience from hole to hole to hole to capture almost all of the relevant action. Still, the broadcasts of 1986 didn’t have the seemingly thousands of cameras available today. Ballesteros and Tom Kite had both eagled the 8th hole during the broadcast window but no video was available.
Anyway, on the 15th tee, four shots behind, Nicklaus was not yet a big story of the event. It was Seve, having made his second eagle of the day on 13, chasing his third Green Jacket and Norman chasing his first. This changed when Nicklaus hit the par-five 15th green in two shots, presenting an eagle opportunity. When he drained that putt, the entire tenor of the event changed. All of a sudden, a sixth Masters title was a possibility.
One of the interesting side notes regarding Nicklaus’ eagle at 15 was the call by announcer Ben Wright. The British-born Wright was a stable of CBS’ golf broadcasts until he was pulled off the air in 1996 due to an unfortunate comment he made in a print interview in which he said it’s tougher for women to play golf because their “boobs get in the way.” If only he were running for today’s Republican presidential nomination in which comments like that are made on a weekly basis.
Anyway, there’s an irony to Wright’s call of Jack’s eagle. As the ball went into the cup, he emphatically said “Yes Sir!!” Of course, these are the same simple but emphatic two words used by colleague Verne Lundquist shortly thereafter when Nicklaus birdied the 17th. Lundquist’s call has become a part of Masters lore but essentially he copied Wright’s words.
Anyway, the eagle at 15 put the Golden Bear squarely in the hunt for the title. As he stood on the tee of the par 3 16th hole, Jim Nantz had the call. Nantz was covering his first Masters for CBS but, looking back 30 years later, you can see that he was ready for the lead role from Day 1. Nantz is superb at weaving the current moment into historical context when provided the opportunity and he didn’t fail here: he reminded viewers that it was the 16th hole where Nicklaus famously made birdie in 1963 for his first Green Jacket and famously drained a 40-footer in 1975 for his fifth. It was the first time in the telecast that any of the announcers provided a level of historical context to a given situation.
With the traditional back left pin position, where a well struck ball in the center of the green can funnel close to the hole, Nicklaus made a magnificent stroke and his ball settled just a few feet from the cup. The ovation for the shot and his ensuing march towards the green clearly distracted the players behind him, as more than one announcer noted. Wright commented that Tom Watson rushed his eagle putt at the 15th because he wanted to get his putt out of the way before another roar from the patrons at 16. Nicklaus made the short putt and suddenly he was one shot behind Ballesteros, who was waiting in the 15th fairway with a chance to hit the par 5 green in two strokes.
While Nicklaus made eagle at 15, Ballesteros made bogey after hitting his second shot into the pond in front of the green. When Jack subsequently birdied the 17th hole (with the more famous “Yes Sir” call by Lundquist), he had the lead for the first time in the tournament.
Nicklaus ultimately parred the 18th hole but still carded a final round 65, finishing at 9 under par, thanks to a magnificent 7 under par run in the final ten holes that included 6 birdies and an eagle. Still, it was hardly a foregone conclusion that Jack would win, with four groups yet to finish. Kite, at 8 under, had a 10-footer on 18 to force a playoff but missed the putt.
Norman, the Great White Shark, who was playing in the final group, seemingly ruined his chances with a double bogey at the 10th hole. But the Shark fought back, with four consecutive birdies at 14, 15, 16 and 17, punctuated by another “Yes Sir” by Lundquist. I’m not picking on Verne here; it was just interesting to see the full broadcast context of his famous call of Nicklaus’ 17th hole birdie. So Norman was tied at 9 under par as he played the 18th hole. But, in what would be the first of several Augusta heartaches, he badly pushed his approach shot to the right of the green and could not get up and down to save par. When he missed his long par attempt, Nicklaus became the winner of his 6th Green Jacket.
Focus on Sport/Getty Images
Three hours earlier, the greatest player in the history of the game was not even worth a mention on the CBS telecast. Now, he was the Masters Champion once again, slipping on the Green Jacket for the sixth time. It’s interesting that both Summerall and Venturi referred to Nicklaus’ win as his 20th major championship. Thirty years ago, people still considered his two U.S. Amateur titles as major victories so those two, in addition to his 18 professional majors, gave him 20. Nobody today counts the Amateur titles as majors but Jack maintains the record anyway with his 18: six Masters, four U.S. Opens, three British Opens, and five PGA Championships.
At the age of 13, I had the distinct privilege of witnessing major championship victory #17, the 1980 PGA Championship at Oak Hill in Rochester, New York. It was the first professional tournament I had ever seen and it was won by the great Nicklaus. And so, just the other day, 30 years after the fact, I finally got my mulligan and got to watch the telecast of the final round of the 1986 Masters from start to finish. It was worth the wait.
Thanks for reading!
Chris Bodig