Nicklaus Family Tragedy

http://www.chron.com/CDA/umstory.mpl/sports/3120528

April 5, 2005, 10:55PM

Nicklaus returns, game at half-mast
Legend's mind isn't on golf as he mourns recent death of grandson

By STEVE CAMPBELL
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle


AUGUSTA, GA. - The joke around the Nicklaus family was that of the 17 grandchildren, Jake just might be the smartest. Ever the bundle of energy, he wouldn't merely enter a room. He'd sprint. If he happened on to the old softie he knew as "Peepaw," Jake would flash a smile that could light up a month and hold out his arms insistently.

"Mother and Dad couldn't get him out of my arms," Jack Nicklaus said. "I'd try to give him back, and he would go, 'Uh-uh.' I said, 'Well, that kid is set for life.' "

The words tumbled out of Jack Nicklaus on Tuesday at Augusta National Golf Club. Set for life one day. Gone and so achingly unforgettable the next. What was Jake — son of Steve and Krista, grandson of a golfing legend — like? Five weeks to the day after Jake drowned in an in-ground hot tub at his parents' home in North Palm Beach, Fla., Nicklaus grappled with referring to one of his grandchildren in the past tense.

Jake was 17 months old when he slipped away while his nanny was changing out of the clothes she'd gotten wet taking him into the hot tub. He toddled through an open sliding-glass door, past a baby barrier around the pool area and disappeared.

"He's just starting to develop a personality," Nicklaus said. "He's just running around. He was just starting to talk, just jabbering a few words. The parents, they had that child from birth, and they grow with that. The hardest part is watching your children suffer. It's a double whammy for a grandparent. That's just not supposed to happen."

Nicklaus is bracing more than preparing himself to play in his 45th and possibly final Masters. He is 65, his last made cut at the Masters is five years in the rearview mirror, and he long has insisted he would never be one to "clutter up the field." He hadn't planned to play in the 2005 Masters in the first place. Burying a loved one didn't put him in the mood to change his mind.

"I had canceled everything after Jake passed away to spend time with Steve, which I did," Nicklaus said. "And Steve wanted to play golf, because he didn't have anything else to do because he wasn't doing anything, either. So we started playing golf. If he had wanted to go fishing, we would have gone fishing."


Returns at son's request
Two weeks ago, Steve asked his father if they could make an escape to Augusta. Next thing Jack Nicklaus knew, his son was urging him to tee it up for real at the Masters.

"So I'm here," Nicklaus said. "That's why I'm playing. I feel like next year is going to be tougher than this year to try to get a golf game ready, and this year, I can't say it's going to be much of a golf game, but it's going to be what I've got. And it may be my last time; it may not be my last time. Probably will be, but we're here, and we'll go play. I thought last year was probably going to be my last year.

"I don't think I need to make a big deal out of whether I'm going to play or not going to play. I've had my time at Augusta. I don't need a lot of fanfare for that. When I decide to quit, I can't think that that's any big deal, at least certainly not to me. I don't know why it should be to anybody else."

Maybe because Nicklaus set the PGA Tour's Golden Bear standard with 18 major championships. Maybe because Nicklaus and the Masters go together like Amen and Corner. Maybe because Augusta National isn't ready to give up Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, who played in his 50th and final Masters last year, cold turkey. Maybe because the other players would like another chance to somehow reach out to Nicklaus.

"I think it's great," said Kenny Perry, a two-time champion of Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament. "I think he's going to have to face the people sooner or later. It's a terrible thing that happened, and it's a lot better for him to get out and talk to everybody. I think it's easier when you talk about it than holding it inside. I can't imagine losing one of my kids. I think it will be good for him. I think it will be medicine."

Nicklaus said he can't even begin to guess how many thousands of letters, e-mails and phone calls he has received in the past five weeks. On Monday, Nicklaus' wife, Barbara, showed him the latest batch of e-mails to arrive — a stack at least six inches high. People he hadn't heard from in a half-century have reached out to touch him with their condolences.

"With what his family has been through, how do you put it in words?" Masters rookie Joe Ogilvie said. "Any time you get to play golf in the same tournament as Jack is pretty awesome. To be able to play in the same tournament as Jack at your first Masters is even more awesome."


Jackie on the bag
Carrying the bag this week will be the oldest of his five children, Jackie, who was the caddie when Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters. Nicklaus was 46 and hadn't won a major since 1980 when he teed off that Sunday. He shot 30 on the back nine to catapult to the top of the leader board, one stroke clear of Greg Norman and Tom Kite. His expectations back then?

"They were a little more than they are now — that I promise you," Nicklaus said. "I still had a golf game, thought I had a golf game, thought I could compete. I had not played particularly well, but I continued to prepare and work at it like I could, wanted to. I haven't done that now. I go play golf two days in a row, I've got to go take two days of rest."


Par 3s and Peepaw
Nicklaus poked fun at how his advancing years might cause him to look at the traditional Wednesday par-3 contest in a different light. The par-3 winner has never gone on to win that year's Masters, which should shed some light on how Nicklaus viewed it in his prime.

"It's never been my priority, I must say," Nicklaus said. "It may become my priority. I can reach all of those greens, I think."

Nicklaus managed a smile. These days, he takes light moments where he can get them. Nicklaus is in a friendly, familiar place, surrounded by a career's worth of fond memories. He can't for the life of him see, though, how any of this is therapeutic. Not when Jake will never again bound into a room calling for "Peepaw." Not when Steve and Krista are crying themselves to sleep at night.

"You're never going to get over something like that, and you shouldn't," Jack Nicklaus said. "That's always going to be part of their life, and they have to live with that, and so do we, and we understand it, and we've got great memories of things.

"But there's nothing anybody can say. And no matter what you say, you always think it's the wrong thing to say because there's no right thing to say. You just move on to what you have to do and grieve as you would grieve and say life will get better. But it's difficult."

steve.campbell@chron.com