– Exactly 67 years ago, on 2 April 1959, Jack Nicklaus, still an amateur and 19 years old, teed off for the first time at the 1st tee of Augusta National in an official competition round, the first of the 23rd edition of this major which in 2026 will mark its 90th edition.
– Almost three years later, on 5 April 1962, therefore almost 64 years ago, Mr Nicklaus made his professional debut in the Majors at the same mythical venue, the Augusta National, and set in motion a run, a record, a true absurdity that no one to date has come close to and that (almost certainly) will never be equalled (*). Namely: that 1962 Masters was the first of an inhuman stretch of 146 consecutive Majors that this man went on to play, a run that ended with the 1998 US Open.
– Let’s repeat it with a nuance: in total, Nicklaus played 164 Majors and no one has played more than him, but furthermore, between the 1962 Masters and the 1998 US Open, events spanning just over 36 years, he played 146 in a row. (Before that monstrous run he had played eight majors as an amateur; and afterwards he would still play ten more until finally saying goodbye at the Open of 2005, making that total of 164).
– And that’s without even mentioning his 18 Majors conquered… Nor will we on this occasion. But there is an extensive stretch within the aforementioned run that deserves separate comment and which for some (the undersigned, for example) is even more valuable than those 18 victories: over the twelve seasons between 1970 and 1981, inclusive, there was not a single one in which Nicklaus did not achieve at least three top tens in the four corresponding Majors. What is more, in five of those twelve years he recorded a full set of top tens in the four Majors, an unparalleled feat. Tom Watson achieved three such clean sweeps in his career; Tiger only completed two, as did Gary Player and Arnold Palmer. Rory has only done it once to date (2022), as has Scheffler in 2025, Xander Schauffele in 2024, Jon Rahm in 2021, Vijay Singh in 2005, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els, both in 2004, or Sergio García in 2002 (Seve and Faldo, for example, never managed it, nor did Greg Norman or Dustin Johnson). Walter Hagen’s record was nothing to sniff at either: he made four clean sweeps (years 1921, 24, 26 and 28) in the Majors that existed (US Open, Open and PGA) in his prime as a player, because the emergence of the Masters in 1934 found him somewhat on the older side and in fact he didn’t even go on to play the four Majors in the same year.
– These are not unknown facts, of course they are not. It’s simply that at Tengolf we find it appropriate to refresh them from time to time because sometimes we have the feeling that Jack Nicklaus is not usually included in the spontaneous lists, the off-the-cuff ones, of the great legends of men’s sport worldwide. Myths such as Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Pelé, Maradona, Messi, Eddy Merckx, Michael Phelps, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer tend to appear, among many others, but not Jack Nicklaus. Perhaps it is only a partial and hugely subjective feeling, but there it is, what can we do. So, just in case, here is yet another recreation of some of the greatest feats in the history of all sports, starring precisely the great Jack.
(*) At present Adam Scott still has the second-best run in history, as he has played 97 consecutive Majors. If nothing odd happens this year the Australian could reach 101… He would still need eleven uninterrupted years to catch up with Nicklaus. OK, perhaps it is too emphatic to assert that no one will equal Nicklaus’s run of 146, but one must recognise that his record is, indeed, a genuine challenge to the laws of nature, or else a formidable cosmic alignment: how can anyone for more than 36 years dodge or avoid any incapacitating injury or illness?
