Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 3, 1992 TAG: 9202030053
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: PEBBLE BEACH, CALIF. LENGTH: Long
NICKLAUS PLAYING OUT GOLDEN YEARS
After nearly going backrupt, the Golden Bear has got his business empire back under control and now is playing with retirement as the only upcoming obstacle.Jack Nicklaus, who forever will symbolize steely eyed certitude, has in recent years led a life of profound ambivalence. Each successive January now holds the hope of resurgence and the specter of retirement.
Even as he pursues one more great moment like his victory in the 1986 Masters, the man who often has said his greatest fear is embarrassing himself acknowledges he is not that many poor performances from quitting altogether.
"Once I feel I'm not competitive on the regular tour, I will probably totally stop competitive golf," he said during a recent interview in his North Palm Beach, Fla., office. "When I'm not able to play at the level of Jack Nicklaus, or what I anticipate my level to be, it is very tough for me.
"Even if I'm playing in an exhibition or the odd tournament, I cannot stand to go out and not play well. It just eats me up inside. I have a responsibility to be part of the game and play some, but it's often a responsibility that hurts. So when the time comes, except for social golf with my family, I'm just not going to play. Anything. Period."
They are strong words, stronger than similar ones made in the past, and Nicklaus delivers them seriously. As he wrestles with the question of how vigorously to pursue his playing career, he has become that much more focused on the other major area of his professional life: his business, Golden Bear International.
The financial good health of his ventures has provided a viable and rewarding option to golf, and Nicklaus has embraced it. Just seven years ago, his business was a constant source of concern - associates say he had trouble sleeping - as bad investments led to liabilities of about $150 million and brought his company close to bankruptcy. Now, with restructuring and new pursuits having turned things around, Nicklaus says he is ready to solidify a business empire for his children that will endure long after he is gone.
Yet even as he plans this transition, Nicklaus, who turned 52 on Jan. 21 and officially opened his season at the Pebble Beach AT&T National Pro-Am, is still a most viable golfer. The total of $854,000 he won in 1991 (from regular and senior tournaments, along with skins games) represents the most prize money he has earned in 30 seasons of professional golf.
He expects to play about 15 tournaments in 1992 and still has a goal of becoming the first player to win a senior and regular tour event in the same year. What truly sustains him is his belief that he can add to his astounding total of 18 professional major championships.
Nicklaus is putting his faith in a new physical regimen, which includes weight training with 25-pound barbells for his upper body and leg extensions and calisthenics for his lower body. They are designed to alleviate a troublesome hip and a back problem by increasing his overall strength. He reports that in the past four months his jacket size has gone from 41 to 44 while his waist has stayed at 36 and his weight at 194 pounds.
But Nicklaus these days is more cognizant of his limitations than his assets. Despite winning three Senior Tour events in 1991, he will remember the year more for his inability to stay in contention through 72 holes of the four major championships or a regular PGA Tour event. If that pattern is continued much longer, Nicklaus vows he will quit.
What troubles him, he said, is what the full weight of retirement from tournament golf will mean to his life.
"That's the real hard thing that I have facing me," said Nicklaus, his distinctive voice lowering from its usual upper register. "And I just don't know how I'll react to it."
Whatever void is created, Nicklaus doesn't believe he will turn to senior golf to fill it. Although he expects to play in as many as five senior events this year, Nicklaus views the Senior Tour as a place where he has very little to gain and a lot to lose. In two years, he has won five of the nine tournaments he has played, a ratio even he wouldn't bet he can improve on.
"Senior golf was good for me because it made me prepare so I wouldn't go out and get embarrassed," said Nicklaus. "I enjoy being in the position of having to win because it puts pressure on me and makes me prepare. But I just can't see myself going out and playing a lot of senior golf."
So it will be Nicklaus' business that will occupy more and more of his time. He started Golden Bear International in 1970 after breaking with his first manager, Mark McCormack of International Management Group. Today, Golden Bear International has eight divisions, the most prominent, and profitable, being his golf-course design business, Jack Nicklaus Golf Services. Nicklaus has built 82 courses around the world, with 40 more under construction and 62 others in the design phase. His fee for designing a course is $1.25 million.
With Nicklaus' approval, Golden Bear International is rapidly expanding into other areas. Last year alone, it added a daily fee golf-course division that in conjunction with the Marriott Corp. will build new public courses or upgrade existing ones; a golf school division; and a sports management firm, Golden Bear Sports Management. In 1991, the company took in more than $50 million in gross revenues.
Nicklaus doesn't pretend that the art of the deal ever will supplant the thrill of winning tournaments, but he has plenty of motivation in taking an active role in the growth of his business.
"I've worked all my life to build a business to leave for my kids, and I'm at the point where I want to finish that off," said Nicklaus, whose four sons and one daughter range in age from 18 to 30. "My goal is to build a business that will be here not only long after my golf game, but beyond my life."
Long-range security is the main theme for Nicklaus, and for good reason. As incongruous as it might seem for a man generally considered one of the richest athletes in the world, much of Nicklaus' career was financially mismanaged. The biggest shock of his professional life came in 1985, when, at age 45, he discovered that 23 years building the best record in the history of golf had amounted to next to nothing monetarily.
Like most athletes, Nicklaus in the prime of his career basically entrusted others to take care of his money. By the 1980s, Nicklaus was involved financially in many ventures outside of golf, several of which were ill-advised. There were investments in gas and oil fields and travel agencies; even shrimp farms were being explored.
What turned out to be the biggest drain on his finances were two golf course-real estate projects - Bear Creek Golf Club in Murrietta, Calif., and St. Andrews Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. At first, Nicklaus had only about a 20 percent ownership in each, but as more investors kept pulling out of the failing ventures, Nicklaus kept making up the difference. By 1985, he owned almost 90 percent of each project.
When Nicklaus took an overall accounting of his assets in September 1985, he was horrified to find out that he had total liabilities of $150 million and a business that at the time was making only $6 million a year.
Against that grim backdrop, when it became clear that neither the Bear Creek nor the St. Andrews projects could be completed without accumulating more debt, Nicklaus decided to call off the loans he had for the projects with Chemical Bank. The settlement with the bank cost him $12 million of his own money to escape St. Andrews and Bear Creek.
"We were close to bankruptcy, and it was shocking to Jack," said Richard Bellinger, chief operating officer of Golden Bear International. "I remember him telling me that for the first time in his life he was having trouble sleeping. He was having shortness of breath, basically anxiety attacks. The weight was tremendous."
Nicklaus restructured his business, dismissing longtime associates, and made a rule that all future projects would be golf-related. He increased his travel load for business-related projects. Most important, he began to take a primary role in the decision-making process.
"He reacted as if he had made a triple bogey in a major championship," said Bellinger. "Instead of panicking, he kind of hunkered down, rolled up his sleeves, and said: `We may not get out of this, but we're are going to give it a hell of a try.' And in five years, he got 100 percent out of debt. He doesn't owe anyone a dime."
Today, remembering that time, Nicklaus plays down the crisis.
"It wasn't good," he admits. "But I didn't look at it as extreme pressure. But if I had ever fully realized the magnitude of what that period could have been when I started to try to recover from it, then I probably would have gotten scared."
In the midst of a financial housecleaning, Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters in storybook fashion. He denies the motivation was provided by his financial woes.
"Golfwise, I couldn't have bailed myself out of that with a golf club in four hundred years," said Nicklaus. "People were amazed that I could even play golf during that period, let alone play well. But I've been lucky to have that ability to block everything out and concentrate."
Ironically, it is that innate ability to focus and achieve that keeps Nicklaus so intrigued with his own ability to compete, even as so many other signals tell him to let go. He has taken his game off the scrap heap and totally restored it countless times. While he hasn't won a regular tournament since the Masters, rounds like the 63 he shot in last year's Doral-Ryder Open on his way to finishing tied for fifth tell him he still can.
"I know," he said, "when I have a good week, I can still play as well as I ever did."
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