The following passage is excerpted from Tiger v. Jack, by Bob Harig. Copyright © 2026 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group. A portion of this excerpt also appeared in the March, 2026 issue of Sports Illustrated. You can order the book here.
The 1986 Masters
One of the most pivotal moments of the tournament—Jack Nicklaus’ eagle putt on the 15th green—was not shown live.
The old Quonset hut that used to house the media at the Masters could no longer handle the throng of reporters looking to interview the top players following every round, so Augusta National had added a small interview room at the back of the premises, the room now bustling with energy and tension as Jack Nicklaus had taken his seat at the dais along with moderator Billy Morris, a club member and Nicklaus’ friend.
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Wearing the green jacket he had just earned for a sixth time, the yellow collar of his shirt piercing through and a glint of perspiration on his forehead, Nicklaus was about to regale the assembled scribblers with details of this historic day when, at age 46, he had defied time and conventional wisdom to beat back the greats of the game and win his 18th major golf title.
Forty years ago this year, Jack Nicklaus stunned the sports world by winning a sixth green jacket. | John Iacono/Sports Illustrated
The session got started before Tom McCollister arrived, Nicklaus having already playfully asked about the whereabouts of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer.
“Thanks, Tom,” Nicklaus called out to laughter as McCollister entered the room.
“Anything I can do to help,” McCollister quipped, before adding: “[Tom] Watson wants me to write about him next year.”
McCollister had unwittingly lit the fire that week for the Golden Bear, who had no problem drawing the needle in his moment of glory. The previous weekend, in a full-page Masters advance feature breaking down the field into various groups, including past champions, Nicklaus was covered along with the likes of Tom Watson, Ben Crenshaw, Craig Stadler, and Raymond Floyd.
A well-regarded reporter who was known for his fairness, McCollister questioned the chances of all of those former winners.
Of the five-time champion Nicklaus, who entered the tournament with not much to show for his season and two years past his last victory, McCollister wrote in the April 6 edition of the newspaper: “Nicklaus is gone, done. He just doesn’t have the game anymore. It’s rusted from lack of use. He’s 46, and nobody that old wins the Masters.”
Having done my share of those types of features over the years, they can often be a combination of flippancy and snark with a good bit of statistical truth baked in as well. And that was the reality: Nicklaus was 160th on the PGA Tour money list. He hadn’t posted a top-10 finish in seven months. In his seven previous tournaments that year, he had missed three cuts and withdrawn from a fourth.
How was Jack going to win the Masters? McCollister’s analysis was valid, if not ultimately correct.
“Tom was a great guy and meant nothing bad by it,” says Glenn Sheeley, a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer and McCollister colleague. “It was really sort of a throwaway line.”
Nicklaus, being congratulated by 1985 champion Bernhard Langer, had plenty of doubters heading to the week before ultimately finishing it in another green jacket. | John Iacono/Sports Illustrated
But it caught Jack’s attention. Or the attention of Nicklaus family friend John Montgomery, who saw the story and clipped it out of the newspaper, taped it to the refrigerator door in the Nicklaus rental home, and knew it would provide a spark of motivation.
McCollister, who died in 1999, inadvertently became part of one of golf ’s greatest stories.
And yet, Nicklaus, who playfully jabbed the writer in the aftermath, admitted the obvious.
“When John put that article on the refrigerator when I had to look at it, I had to sizzle for a while,” Nicklaus said that night. “To tell you the truth, I kind of agreed with Tom, I’m afraid, but it helped get me going.”
54 holes into the tournament, Nicklaus was still under the radar
The story is well known 40 years later. Jack Nicklaus was 46 years old and viewed as an afterthought, barely on anyone’s radar, incredible when you think about it. Going into the final round of the 1986 Masters, he was just four shots back. If Tiger Woods trailed the leader by four going into the final round of any tournament, you can bet there’d be plenty of conjecture about his ability to rally and win. But hardly anyone was talking about Jack that day.
Part of that had to do with his being surrounded by superstars. Nick Price shot a course-record 63 on Saturday. Greg Norman (who would match that course record 10 years later) joined Price in the final group. Seve Ballesteros, who won the Masters in 1980 and 1983, was also in contention. So were Tom Kite, Tom Watson and defending champion Bernhard Langer—all ahead of Nicklaus on the leaderboard. Sandy Lyle, the 1985 British Open winner, was paired with Nicklaus.
“I had never played with him before in any kind of tournament,” says Lyle, who would win the Masters in 1988. “You are witnessing an incredible moment in history. The crowd was unlike anything I’ve experienced. When you’re in that kind of sunken bowl, tall trees and lots of people, and at the top of their voices … it can almost blow you over with the vibrations coming in. You’ve got to be in that situation to feel it.”
Nicklaus’s scores of 74-71-69 saw him tied for ninth at two under par, four strokes behind Norman. He and Lyle were in the fifth-to-last grouping.
Four strokes is hardly an insurmountable deficit, especially at Augusta National, but Nicklaus was curiously not in much of the conversation on the CBS broadcast. Today, the TV networks are often criticized for showing too much of the headliners, especially Woods, even when deemed to have no chance of winning. With Nicklaus, CBS went the other way. The network didn’t show or mention him until 39 minutes into its final-round telecast. Standing on the 9th tee, he trailed by six shots. As Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Tom McCollister had written earlier in the week, “He’s 46, and nobody that old wins the Masters.”
At the time, that was true. Only two players that old had won majors: Julius Boros was 48 when he won the 1968 PGA Championship, and Tom Morris Sr. was also 46 when he captured the 1867 British Open in a field of just 14 players at Prestwick Golf Club. Nicklaus hardly seemed like a threat to join them: He was 160th on the PGA Tour money list and hadn’t posted a top-10 finish in seven months.
Greg Norman entered the final round with the lead, but would not hold onto it. | Augusta National/Getty Images
So it was that CBS didn’t show Nicklaus’s birdie putt at the 9th hole live; nor did it have what had occurred moments before at all, hole-out eagles on the par-5 8th by both Kite and Ballesteros.
“He [Nicklaus] was not even a factor in the golf tournament throughout a large part of that round,” Kite says. “Then starting on No. 9, he lit it up. It changed the whole thing. But quite honestly it was between Seve and Greg Norman and myself. That was basically who you thought was going to win the golf tournament. Probably not one person thought anything differently.”
Nicklaus hit driver and 4-iron to set up a 25-foot birdie putt at the 10th (also not shown live), which he made to go four under par and trail Ballesteros by four. Now CBS took notice of Nicklaus. He hit driver and 8-iron to 20 feet at the 11th and made that, too. With three birdies in a row and then a Ballesteros bogey at No. 9, Nicklaus had pulled to within two strokes.
Gary Koch, who later became an analyst for ESPN and NBC, played in the group in front of Nicklaus along with Bob Tway.
“You knew something was going on obviously by the noise being made in the gallery,” Koch says. “We started to look back before we played our shots, it had gotten that loud. If you were in the middle of a stroke and he hit something, it would have been disturbing.”
A bogey at the par-3 12th seemingly derailed Nicklaus. He pulled a 7-iron to the back left fringe, chipped to six feet, then missed his par putt as his ball nicked a spike mark. Nicklaus angrily tapped it down afterward. And that anger manifested itself in the way he played the final six holes. Annoyed, he decided to play more aggressively, but nearly paid the price with a pulled drive at the par-5 13th.
Nicklaus makes his move
From the left side of the fairway, Nicklaus hit a 3-iron to the green and two-putted for a birdie to get back to five under par, two strokes behind Ballesteros, one behind Kite, and tied with Jay Haas, Payne Stewart and Norman, who had double-bogeyed the 10th hole. Still, to CBS’s Ken Venturi, it was too little, too late, calling it a “valiant try today,” as Nicklaus approached the green.
The 14th appeared routine in context, if that was even possible. Nicklaus hit a 6-iron to the back fringe and then chipped up close for his par. Behind him, Ballesteros made his second eagle of the day, hitting a 6-iron to the 13th. Kite was just two back after a birdie. As he teed off at the par-5 15th, Nicklaus was now four strokes behind, tied with Norman.
“The moment was so gigantic,” says Jim Nantz, who was working his first Masters. “I’ve tried to explain this to people through the years. And part of this of course is a young impressionable 26-year-old announcer working the Masters for the very first time … mortified by the idea of making a mistake. And being late in the game in the 16th tower. We had announcers from 10 on in. How are you going to tell the story? What are you going to say that hasn’t already been said? What’s going to happen here?”
A solid drive at the par-5 15th left Nicklaus with 204 yards to the flagstick. “How far do you think a 3 [eagle] would go here?” he asked his son and caddie, Jackie, before settling on a 4-iron that he lasered to 12 feet. As Nicklaus looked over the eagle putt, CBS went to Tom Weiskopf, who was working as an analyst in Butler Cabin. The former British Open champion who followed Nicklaus to Ohio State and often was compared to him proved to be brilliant: “Never needed an eagle more,” Weiskopf said. “He’s just too far behind. He really needs to make 3 here. That’s a must for Jack Nicklaus, I feel.” Nicklaus rolled in the putt, Jackie leaped into the air, and all hell was breaking loose.
CBS’s Ben Wright with the call: “Yes, sir! The battle is joined. My goodness. There is life in the old Bear yet.”
“The eagle at 15 really kind of set things in motion as far as having an outside chance,” Lyle says. “He knew from experience—been there, done that—if you get in the clubhouse with the lead, people might come back to you. … The crowd, the noise, was coming from all angles. From above, the side, behind. It echoes around that area for ages. It was a sense that Jack had a chance. And I think it might have put Seve off as well.”
Now just two shots back, Nicklaus headed to the par-3 16th, where Nantz, despite being a rookie Masters announcer, set the stage perfectly. He noted how Nicklaus had made a big birdie putt at the hole on his way to winning his first green jacket in 1963. And that he had holed a long putt at the 1975 Masters on his way to a fifth.
After draining a birdie on 16, Nicklaus had all of Augusta National rocking. | John Iacono/Sports Illustrated
“If anyone has owned this hole, it would be Jack Nicklaus,” Nantz said. When Nicklaus backed off for a moment, it allowed Nantz to ask Weiskopf what must be going through Nicklaus’s mind. “If I knew the answer to that question, I’d have won this tournament!” Weiskopf said to nervous laughter. Then he delivered the prescient setup: “No, he’s just going to fire at the pin … your destiny is right here.” And that is exactly what happened, as Nicklaus struck a 5-iron that soared through the air. “Be the right club,” Jackie implored. “It is,” Jack said, not even following the flight of the ball.
“The moment was so large,” Nantz says. “There was so much energy. The place was abuzz. We use that term electric, but it really, really was. The air was thick with electricity … it came spinning off the hill and for a moment there, I thought it was going in.”
“That was the day that raised the hair on your neck when you watched it,” says two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw, who had finished his round and was awaiting the outcome. “It was amazing … when he hit that tee shot on 16 right up next to the hole, that might have been the loudest roar ever at Augusta.”
The ball came to rest three feet below the hole. Lyle still had to hit his tee shot and knocked on the green about 15 feet below the pin. They made the trek to the green and CBS kept the camera on Nicklaus for the entire walk as he waved to the crowd. Nantz said nothing and all you could hear was wild cheering. Incredibly amid all of that, Lyle rolled in his birdie putt. Then Nicklaus did, too. He had moved to eight under par for the tournament and was just one back. Said Nantz as Nicklaus walked off the green: “The Bear has come out of hibernation.”
Kite, waiting in the 15th fairway with a view up ahead, smiled in disbelief as the noise reverberated around him. Both he and Ballesteros were preparing to play their second shots to the green. Kite knocked his to 20 feet, but Ballesteros, from 198 yards with a 4-iron, was between clubs. A combination cheer/groan soon followed. “I knew exactly what had happened,” Nicklaus says. The ball was in the water.
With Kite making a birdie, there was now a three-way tie for the lead. Nicklaus played his drive at the 17th hole—which he pulled well to the left, into the 7th fairway—then hit a tricky pitching wedge second shot to the par-4 17th, leaving himself an 18-footer for birdie.
An electric scene unfolds
By now, Augusta National was on fire. “I looked at one of the concession stands and there was nobody there,” says Rick Reilly, the Sports Illustrated writer covering his first Masters. “They just left. I’ve never heard anything so loud. For outdoors, that’s about as loud as I can remember.”
Nicklaus now had a tricky birdie putt to take the lead. The scene has been played out many times, with CBS’s Verne Lundquist’s call as iconic as the putt itself. The “Yes, sir!” from Lundquist is among the enduring sights and sounds of that tournament, a moment frozen in time as Nicklaus held up his putter with his left arm, a knowing grin coming across his face, the ball diving into the cup.
For the first time all tournament, Nicklaus led at Augusta National, the ground shaking in wonder and amazement with that birdie putt, an improbable victory unfolding before a mesmerized audience. And off to the side stood a tall, blond kid, all of 24 years old, his heart pounding through his white jumpsuit, awash in every imaginable emotion that he didn’t dare let out.
Jack Nicklaus II had an incredible front-row seat to history, a mind-boggling experience that he still recounts with unbridled pride.
“What I relish about it today was the time I was able to share with Dad when he won his sixth green jacket, his final major,” Jack’s oldest son says. “Pretty incredible. That’s what I embrace, being with my dad, that time shared with him and what that still means to me today.”
The putt all these years later remains the stuff of wonder.
Jack II had a front-row view of his father’s dramatic Sunday charge. | John Iacono/Sports Illustrated
“How is a 24-year-old kid … there’s no way I know those greens as well or better than him,” Jackie says. “Not anywhere as close as my dad. We are sitting there on 17 with a putt to put him in the outright lead. I thought the putt went to the right, away from Rae’s Creek. I thought it was probably an inch outside the hole. He said, ‘You know this is where Rae’s Creek comes in, it has an influence over the entire property. I don’t think it will go to the right. I think it might go to the left.’ ”
Lyle recalled the difficulty of the putt. “That was a very, very nasty putt,” he says. “You could putt 30 balls from that spot and you’d be lucky to make two of them. I was trying to read it, too, and it was incredible. It seemed to go both ways. Even he had a spot of bother trying to read it, but you wouldn’t think it. It looked very easy on TV, but from a player’s point of view, that was as good of a putt as you’ll see.”
Lundquist noted that the putt was for the lead. Then there was silence as 10 seconds elapsed before Nicklaus stroked the ball.
As it rolled, Lundquist said: “Maybe … yes, sir!”
Price, playing with Norman and in the 15th fairway at the time, saw it all unfold. “The green is up a little bit so we can sort of see Jack’s head and we saw the putter go up and we knew it was going in and the loudest roar I have ever heard on a golf course right there and then,” Price says.
“When we hit the turn, Jack is going through 12 and 13 and we’re going through 10,” Norman says. “You could hear roar after roar after roar. And it was like, Holy s—! There’s only one roar and you know who that is for. Nick and I were still near the lead and all of a sudden all of our spectators started to disappear. We’re walking up to the 14th green and there’s maybe 50 people at the green.
“Then as we walked off the 15th tee, you could see the 17th green. Jack is putting down that hill. And I see him raise the putter. He’s going to make that putt. Of course. Then I knew the game was really on. We had to eagle or birdie our way in. That is one moment etched in my mind, that vision, for the rest of my life.”
For the first time in 11 years since he won the 1975 Masters, Nicklaus had the lead to himself at Augusta.
“Every year he went back, he went back to the same spot but has never been able to recreate that same putt and have it break the same way,” Jack II said. “There are magical things that happen at Augusta. And I hold that in my head. The golf gods were smiling on him.”
A son’s unlikely journey to Augusta
Jack II got his dad bag’s somewhat by accident 10 years earlier. Nicklaus was playing a practice round on the day before the start of the British Open at Royal Birkdale in 1976, and 14-year-old Jackie was tagging along.
On the 9th hole, Nicklaus’s caddie, Jimmy Dickinson, tried to navigate a hill and suffered an injury to his Achilles. Jack II was summoned.
“No one else was around and I remember him saying, ‘You mind carrying the bag on the back nine?’ ” Jack II says. “I remember he hit a 4-iron into the 10th hole there. I threw the bag on my back and started walking down the fairway and heard, ‘Did you get the divot?’ Oh my gosh, I have to get the divot. It was a reality check. I got thrown into a pretty big scene right away. I just tried to do what I thought a caddie should do.”
As Nicklaus’s career began to wind down, he began using his sons more frequently and Jack II was a good player, having attended North Carolina and winning the 1985 North-South Amateur at Pinehurst.
And he had previous experience on his dad’s bag, including a victory at the 1984 Memorial Tournament. But it was the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach that he remembered as having a big influence.
Nicklaus lost that U.S. Open when Watson chipped in on the 71st hole for an improbable birdie, then added another birdie at the 18th. After a slow start that day, Nicklaus made five straight birdies through the 7th hole. “I remember getting right in his face, arms up, ‘Dad, this is great, way to go!’ ” Jack II says. Nicklaus then bogeyed the 8th hole. “And I remember thinking, Did he bogey because I got him out of his zone? I kind of blamed myself. He could have won that tournament so easily. Fast forward to the Masters and that’s why in no way did I want him to see any of my emotions. I didn’t want to feel like I got him out of the zone.”
Jack and Jackie embraced once the epic win was official. | John Iacono/Sports Illustrated
After the birdie at the 17th put him in the lead, Nicklaus still had to navigate the 18th hole and wait out the other contenders. He left himself a 40-footer on the final green, one he lagged up to the cup, leaving himself a short putt for par. Jackie, going to his default line in which he reminded his father to keep his head down on putts, did so again. “He grinned at me, ‘I can handle this one,’ ” he said.
Nicklaus played the last four holes in four under, the final nine in 30 strokes, the round in 65. He led by one, but Kite and Norman still had a chance to tie or beat him.
“We were in the Jones Cabin beside [the] No. 10 tee,” Jackie said. “Mom [Jack’s wife, Barbara], Dad’s mom, Helen. We’re watching it on TV, and he can no longer control what happened. It was actually the first time I saw him nervous all day. He was pacing back and forth. You had two guys who could force a playoff or win outright and I’m thinking, How in the world is dad going to recollect his emotions and thoughts and his energy? I knew he was exhausted at that point, but I knew we’d have to go back out there [if there was a playoff].”
Kite stayed close and faced a birdie putt on the 18th that narrowly missed. Norman, after falling off the pace with that double bogey at the 10th, stormed back with consecutive birdies at the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th and was tied. A birdie would have won the tournament, a par forcing a sudden-death playoff. But Norman sprayed his approach into the crowd and couldn’t get it up and down.
Nicklaus had a sixth green jacket and an 18th major championship. “I just remember we had a great embrace, tears, excitement,” Jackie said. “We walked out of that cabin and a roar erupted.”
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