Jack

Bill Simmons remembers the Golden Bear on a sports day that became legendary.

I've never been one of those things-were-better-in-the-old-days guys. I like things now. Even wrote an entire column about it last year. And yet those highlights of Nicklaus rising from the dead and capturing that sixth green jacket ... I can't describe what happens to me. It's like Rip Taylor just threw a bag of goose bumps on me. Sometimes I even make the same face that Tom Cruise makes after Goose dies.

What's more amazing; that the whole thing happened or that somebody hasn't made a crappy sports movie about it yet?

. . . . .

There's nobody left. Jack wins.

Here's the best way I can describe it. Imagine Dad winning the Masters. And since that can't happen, imagine the next-best thing. Like Ali and McEnroe, Jack belonged to another era, a time when individual athletes resonated with people.

Yep, I was a punk kid at the time, more interested in playing heavy metal guitar and tormenting my parents about getting a drivers license and a car. Never thought about playing golf till I watched this happen at a friends. Still brings chills to me (even if my golf scores don't always seem much better than they were in 1986).

Read the whole thing. Its very good.