Tiger Woods vs. Jack Nicklaus: who is the greatest player of all time? There has never been a better time to compare

Golf Digest, Dec, 2002 by Jaime Diaz

Since moving to Florida in 1965, Nicklaus has lived in the same one-story home in North Palm Beach, and all five of his grown children and 15 grandchildren live within 10 minutes. Last year when he followed son Gary at the Memorial Tournament, Nicklaus moved easily among people from his hometown. "As abnormal as Jack's success has been, it has never overpowered all the very normal things about him," says Ken Bowden, Nicklaus' co-author on 10 books. "He has never lost who he is."

Woods also had a stable upbringing and close relationship with his parents, but from the age of 8 he has led a highly structured life geared to success in competitive golf. Woods has made an uneasy peace with being a public figure; almost in surrender, his favorite pastimes have become solitude-seeking escapes like scuba diving and fishing. "No autographs underwater," he says, marveling at Nicklaus' run at having it all. "What's so remarkable about Jack is the balance he retained in his life while staying the best for so long," Tiger said in 2000. "I can already see how difficult that's going to be for me."

`Playing badly well': Over three decades, Nicklaus garnered the majority of his victories while compensating in various ways for a flawed swing. He called it "playing badly well."

Nicklaus often has said he probably swung the club better as an amateur than as a professional. The 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills and the 1960 World Amateur at Merion are two events in particular where he achieved sensations of effortless control and power that he never was able to recapture.

As a pro, Nicklaus found that the constant travel and changing conditions of tour life made it harder to maintain a groove. Thereafter, he mostly relied on well-conceived band-aids and management skills to bring his game up for the biggest moments.

Nicklaus' knack for self-correction had its source in teacher Jack Grout, who, after imparting the fundamentals, liked to see his students employ trial and error to understand how and why their swings worked. Nicklaus was further encouraged in this approach by Bobby Jones, who had not considered himself a good player until he could diagnose himself. Nicklaus' emotional control also was vital to accepting less than his best.

"When he was hitting it bad, Jack would find a way to live with it," says Weiskopf. "Considering his talent and perfectionism, that took an incredible amount of patience. He just refused to get disgusted, and beat us with will."

All in all, says Player, "Jack's greatest strength was playing junk and scoring 68."

Woods probably plays less "junk," but he doesn't live with it quite as well. He seems by perfectionist temperament inclined to fight tendencies he doesn't like rather than working around them, as his relative lack of second-place finishes indicate. His most recent decision to curtail his work with Butch Harmon suggests he wants to be more self-reliant, in the Jones tradition. Without seeking help at this year's PGA, an out-of-sync Woods finished second in a major for the first time.