A Loop With A Boyhood Hero

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE pastimes on tour is watching kids get autographs from their golf heroes.

- Jim Nantz

I never weary of the starstruck expressions on the kids’ faces, the way they’re some times rendered speechless. I love the way the players interact with them and the joy that pervades that environment. It always reminds me of my first encounter with Jack Nicklaus, one of my boyhood heroes. The fact it happened when I was 25 years old is irrelevant.

Park City, Utah, June 1, 1984. I was still finding my legs as a sports anchor at KSL, then the local CBS affiliate in Salt Lake City. A couple of weeks earlier, someone wanting publicity arranged for me to caddie for Jack at the opening of Park Meadows, a course he’d designed. The unspoken return favour was the understanding I would follow up with a first-person report on the 10 o’clock news.

It should’ve been no sweat. I knew golf, having played on the team at the University of Houston. A few days before the 18-hole exhibition, which I learned would be a “match” between Jack and the local Utah hero, Johnny Miller, I even scouted the course and carefully walked off yardages. I was going to come prepared.