Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 2, 1990 TAG: 9004020064
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. LENGTH: Medium
Here comes that kid again.
Just as he did in 1962, when Arnold Palmer and Gary Player were the most recognizable figures Scores in scoreboard. B2 in golf, Jack Nicklaus is muscling in on their territory.
Back then, 28 years ago, the rookie Nicklaus joined Palmer and Player as "The Big Three," the men who dominated the game for more than a decade.
Now, a rookie again, Nicklaus has joined those old foes - along with George Archer - as the only men to win in their first start on the Senior PGA Tour.
He did it Sunday with something approaching ease. Playing again among the men he once dominated in an earlier era of golf, Nicklaus pulled away with a front-running 68 and won by four strokes in the Tradition at Desert Mountain.
"I'm relieved, excited, glad I'm under control," Nicklaus said after his last-hole birdie.
"The battle is half conquered," said Nicklaus, who earlier this year set a goal of winning on both the Senior and regular tours.
"Now, if I can keep playing well, maybe I can win on the other tour pretty soon," Nicklaus said after acquiring his first title since the 1986 Masters.
And, he insisted, the victory also stamped him as a realistic contender for a seventh green jacket when golf's great players gather in Augusta, Ga., for the 54th Masters, beginning Thursday.
"I think my chances [of winning] are pretty good. I think they are," he said.
"If I'm going to win on the regular tour, the Masters is the tournament for me to win.
"I've won there six times. I know the course and what it takes to win there. There are a lot of pluses for me at Augusta.
"I think my chances to win there are good," he said.
Nicklaus, who won this one with a 206 total, 10-under par on the course he built in the remote desert highlands north of Phoenix, had only a couple of anxious moments.
Bruce Crampton tied him for the lead on the fourth hole. Crampton, however, made double bogey on the sixth hole, and Nicklaus wasn't headed again.
Play was delayed for 66 minutes by a thunderstorm immediately after Nicklaus bogeyed the 12th hole.
But it simply delayed the inevitable.
Nicklaus, displaying the killer instinct that helped him to 70 regular tour victories and 18 major professional titles, came back from the delay with birdies on the 14th and 15th holes and had a five-shot lead with three to go.
From that point, it was simply a struggle to see who would finish in second place.
Player, competing in the same group with Nicklaus, eventually gained that position with a 70 and a 210 total.
Crampton and Charles Coody shared third at 212.
Nicklaus' triumph was worth $120,000 from the total purse of $800,000, in sharp contrast to the $33.33 he won in his first start on the regular tour in 1962.
by CNB