DUBLIN, Ohio — The 39-year-old legend could not win a golf tournament for trying, giving rise to amateur diagnoses that the infirmities in his game were incurable. On Sunday, Jack Nicklaus remembered that 1979 season, the first winless year of his Hall of Fame career.
“My short game was so bad, I was putting around bunkers,” Nicklaus said, adding, “Sometimes you have to step back and make an assessment of what’s going on and start over.”
As Nicklaus spoke, Tiger Woods was on the course that Nicklaus built here at Muirfield Village, applying the finishing strokes to the worst 72-hole score of his professional career.