Biography

Call 1.800.966.1380 to contact Jack Nicklaus booking agent, publicist, manager, pr firm, representative and management company for booking Jack Nicklaus speaker appearances, autograph signing, endorsement deals or hiring Jack Nicklaus as a keynote speaker for your next event. Find Jack Nicklaus official website information, speaker fees, booking fees, costs and schedule. Golf pro, Jack Nicklaus, was born on January 21, 1940. Nicklaus, also known as "The Golden Bear", is widely regarded as the greatest professional golfer of all time, in large part because of his records in major championships. Jack Nicklaus accumulated a record 18 professional majors in a PGA Tour career lasting 25 years, from 1962 to 1986. Later, on the Champions Tour, the senior version of the PGA Tour, he won 8 of that tour's majors between 1990 and 1996. Both records still stand today.

Jack Nicklaus has also taken part in many off-course activities, including golf course design, golf instruction book writing, and running his own tournament on the PGA Tour, the Memorial Tournament. Together with Arnold Palmer and Gary Player (collectively known as the "Big Three"), he is credited with turning golf into the major spectator sport it has become. While Palmer brought golf into the television era, it was the developing Nicklaus-Palmer-Player rivalry that drove subsequent interest.

With a win at the 1971 PGA Championship in February, Nicklaus became the first golfer to win all four majors twice in a career. By the end of the year he had won four additional tournaments including the Tournament of Champions and the National Team Championship with Arnold Palmer.

Nicklaus won the first two majors of 1972, the Masters and the U.S. Open, creating talk of a Grand Slam. In the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, Nicklaus struck a one-iron on the par-three 17th hole into a stiff, gusty ocean breeze which landed, hit the flagstick and ended up six inches from the cup. The U.S. Open was Nicklaus's 13th career major, and tied him with Bobby Jones for career majors (although a different group of tournaments had been considered majors in Jones's time). He won a total of seven tournaments during the year, and was runner-up in a further three. Nicklaus did not win the Grand Slam in 1972, however, as Lee Trevino repeated as the British Open champion (Nicklaus finished second, one shot behind), and Gary Player prevailed in the PGA Championship.

Jones's record of majors was soon broken when Jack Nicklaus won the PGA Championship in August 1973 for his 14th professional major. In that year he won another six tournaments. The PGA Player of the Year was awarded to Nicklaus for the third time, and the second year in a row. Nicklaus's failure to win a major in 1974 was offset somewhat by his being named one of the 13 original inductees into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Nicklaus says this honor was a "nice memento" after a "disappointing season".

Nicklaus started off well in 1975: he won the Doral-Eastern Open, the Heritage Classic, and the Masters in consecutive starts. His Masters win was his fifth, a record he was to break eleven years later. In this tournament, Nicklaus made a 40-foot putt on the 16th hole to all but secure his victory. He also won the PGA Championship for the fourth time in August. His performance in 1975 resulted in his being named PGA Player of the Year for the fourth time, tying Ben Hogan, and he was also named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year.

He placed first on the tour money list again in 1976, despite competing in only 16 events, winning only two — neither of them majors — and playing what he called "hang-back-and-hope golf".[ He also won the PGA Player of the Year award for a record fifth time. Between 1972 and 1976 the only time he failed to win this award was 1974.

The following year, 1977, was also majorless for Nicklaus, but his second-place finish behind Tom Watson at the British Open at Turnberry created headlines around the world. In a one-on-one battle dubbed the "Duel in the Sun," Nicklaus shot 65-66 in the final two rounds, only to be beaten by Watson, who scored 65-65. Nicklaus would later say:

"There are those in golf who would argue into next month that the final two rounds of the 1977 British Open were the greatest head-to-head golf match ever played. Not having been around for the first five hundred or so years of the game, I'm not qualified to speak on such matters. What's for sure, however, is that it was the most thrilling one-on-one battle of my career."

During 1977, Jack Nicklaus won his 63rd tour event, passing Ben Hogan to take second place on the career wins list, behind only Sam Snead. Nicklaus won the 1978 British Open to become the only player to have won each major championship three times. This record has since been tied by Tiger Woods, by winning the 2008 U.S. Open. Nicklaus and Woods are the only two to win three "Career Grand Slams." Nicklaus won three other tournaments on the PGA Tour including the Tournament Players Championship, and was named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated. After this year he suffered a lapse of form, not winning another tournament until June 1980. The year of 1979 was the first in which he failed to win a tournament; he had only one runner-up finish.

In 1980, Jack Nicklaus recorded only three top-ten finishes, but two of these were victories in majors (the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship); the other was a runner-up finish in the Doral-Eastern Open. During the next five years Nicklaus won only twice on the tour, including his own tournament (Memorial Tournament) in 1984.

In 1986, Nicklaus capped his career by recording his sixth Masters victory under incredible circumstances, posting a six-under 30 on the back nine at Augusta for a final round of seven-under 65. At the 17th hole, Nicklaus hit it to within 18 feet and rolled it in for birdie, raising his putter in celebration and completing an eagle-birdie-birdie run. Nicklaus made a victory-sealing par-4 at the 72nd hole, and waited for the succeeding players to falter. At age 46, Jack Nicklaus became the oldest Masters winner in history, a record which still stands. On the feat, sports columnist Thomas Boswell remarked,

"Some things cannot possibly happen, because they are both too improbable and too imperfect. The US hockey team cannot beat the Russians in the 1980 Olympics. Jack Nicklaus cannot shoot 65 to win the Masters at age 46. Nothing else comes immediately to mind."

This victory was his 18th major title as a professional.

Jack Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters using the Response ZT putter. Its manufacturer, MacGregor Golf, received 5,000 orders the next day; it had planned to sell only 6,000 copies of this model for the entire year.[12] Before the tournament, Tom McCollister, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said that Nicklaus was "done, washed up, through," and this spurred him on, as he says:

"I kept thinking all week, 'Through, washed up, huh?' I sizzled for a while. But then I said to myself, 'I'm not going to quit now, playing the way I'm playing. I've played too well, too long to let a shorter period of bad golf be my last."

This victory was to be his last in his long career on the PGA Tour. At the age of 58, Jack Nicklaus made another valiant run at the 1998 Masters, where he tied for sixth.

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