Let's Do Lunch

I recently read an article by Doug Ferguson about a lunch meeting that I would have given an arm, a leg and maybe a vital organ to attend. The sit-down was alas, a private one. Rory McIlroy, my hero, had a some contacts and they got in touch with some people who arranged for this lunch with none other than Jack Nicklaus. The purpose was for Rory to get some time with the greatest major winner of them all and find out his philosophy and mental tricks to closing the deal. McIlroy may have tried to arrange a similar meeting with Tiger Woods, but as we know Tiger doesn't answer questions.

McIlroy would reveal tidbits of the conversation the most interesting of which to me had to do with allowing the competition to wilt.  Jack told him one of the tricks was patience, playing well but waiting for the field to make a mistake. Nicklaus said it was how he won the bulk of tournaments, rarely did he actually have to 'win' to win. The Golden Bear even went so far as to say that the best tournament he ever played he finished runner-up, the 1977 British Open at Turnberry.

The admittance of waiting for fellow competitors to "wilt" should bring some validity to the strength of today's tournament fields. The knock on today's Tour Pros has been that they hand Tiger tournaments by giving up a stroke at crucial moments or just plain folding when he is in contention. With what Nicklaus said he admitted that the players he faced in his day did largely the same thing. Shouldn't this quiet the question of if Tiger surpasses Jack with the most majors won that maybe he did so against lesser competition? Who actually beat the better players?

With what Nicklaus told McIlroy the parallel has been created between the Bear Era and the Tiger Era. Sure Tiger and Jack both have made clutch shots and clutch putts to win, and both have lapped the field a time or two on the biggest stages; it's what separates them from the rest. However, it's the amount of times the two have played well and waited for a mistake from the closest challengers that levels the fields. It makes the contemporaries of Woods and Nicklaus, well, contemporaries.

What do you think?