Jack Nicklaus Provides Sage Playing Advice Again at the Honda, Albeit Unheeded
On Mondays, Alex Miceli will check in with what he learned over the last week.
Jack Nicklaus sat in the 18th tower with Paul Azinger and Dan Hicks during NBC’s final round coverage of the Honda Classic, providing his usual insightful analysis of a game he hasn’t played competitively for decades.
When he was inside the ropes, Nicklaus was known to rarely beat himself.
Nicklaus also was a great proponent of not aiming into a hazard, which he espoused when discussing how to play the 16th hole at PGA National's Champions course, which he designed.
Clearly, Chris Kirk wasn’t listening as he stood over a fairway wood in the middle of the fairway on the par-5 18th hole with a one-shot lead.
Instead of protecting his lead, Kirk just missed the putting surface by not more than a yard but a yard nonetheless, rinsed his second shot.
Ironically, the ball caromed off the bulkhead surrounding the green and almost hit the Honda that was displayed on a pedestal on the water's surface.
Eric Cole, now in the catbird seat, was also in the middle of the fairway and bailed left, which was smart and left him with a relatively easy chip—if it wasn’t to win his first PGA Tour event at the age of 34.
Cole hit the chip too hard and as he bent his knees everyone knew his ball was in trouble and it ran across the 18th green, the hope being that it would stop before finding the water.
It did, but Cole only made par and Kirk salvaged bogey, only the 11th bogey on Sunday on the 18th hole—the second easiest hole on the course with a stroke average of 4.70.
So, we went to a playoff where Kirk won with a kick in birdie after a drive that found the right rough and also behind a tree, forcing him to lay up in the fairway.
Cole, on the other hand, piped a drive down the middle, killed a 5-wood, hit a solid sand shot to within 10 and half feet and after going 16-for-16 from inside 15 feet throughout the week ... lipped out the putt to lose the playofff.
So, in those two holes what did I learn?
One, winning on the PGA Tour is just hard. It always seems Sunday opens the door to crazy and Honda was not any different.
Two, Nicklaus's competitive years may be long in the past, but his knowledge and approach is still relevant today.
The 83-year-old is a font of knowledge and while you may have heard the stories or thoughts before, the Golden Bear’s analysis and thought process is still beneficial in today’s game with its 300-plus-yard drives and lower and lower scoring.
Three, Kirk as well as the rest of us need to pick up a copy of the Nicklaus autobiography, "My Story," and learn about playing golf. For Kirk, he got lucky, but he wasn’t the best between himself and Cole down the stretch.
Four, it really doesn’t matter how well you play, you can still lose. In the playoff, Cole striped his drive down the middle, nuked a 5-wood for his second shot, hit a very good sand shot for his third and then hit the left edge of the hole to just miss his birdie putt.
If you gave Cole a chance to re-hit any of those shots he probably would not have done anything differently, with the possible exception of hitting less club on the second shot into the 18th.
Golf is a funny game in that sometimes no matter how well you play, you don’t get the result, or in this case for Cole, the win.
In turn, Kirk hit a bad drive and had a tap-in birdie for the win, proving the adage "golf can best be defined as an endless series of tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle."