Jack Nicklaus on Tiger Woods: “I don’t mean this in a nasty way”

Jack Nicklaus has seen it all and done it all.
Where do you even begin to pick out the best moment from his illustrious career?

This was one question posed to the Golden Bear at his annual news conference ahead of the 2024 Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village.

Nicklaus, now 84 years old, had a clear answer in mind: meeting his wife, Barbara, in college. He is certain that without her, he wouldn’t have had the hall-of-fame career that saw him collect 18 major titles and 73 PGA Tour wins. The couple wed in 1960.

“That set the tone of my career,” Nicklaus said of meeting Barbara, who was a nursing student. “Not everybody gets the right partner. I had somebody who loved me, cared for me, supported me, and that was really important. So that was a big thing to me. I don’t know that anything was more important than that to me. And then of course, we have five children, I have 24 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, so we got a few mouths to feed at home. But that’s all because of her, and I give her a lot of credit for what I’ve won because a golfer goes out on Tour and if you’re not married, if you got your family, you get support, your caddie or whoever it might be, that’s very important to you.”

Nicklaus believes having a significant other has been crucial to others’ success.

Just look at Tiger Woods, to whom he passed the torch in 2000 at Valhalla Golf Club. Nicklaus, then aged 60, played in his final PGA