An interview session with Jack Nicklaus is one of the key media events of US Masters week, but, in view of his recent hip surgery, this week's exercise went on considerably longer than usual. Indeed it became so protracted that the transcript extended to no fewer than 39 quarto pages.
"If it comes down to Tiger and David on the back nine on Sunday, who's your money on," Nicklaus was asked about two-thirds of the way through the session. And before he could draw on years of experience to neatly side-step the issue, an imposing, bespectacled, grey-haired man stood up and headed for the door.
"Furman, you don't want to find out about that, huh?" said the Bear. With a courteous nod towards the top table, Furman Bisher replied: "At my age, a man respects his kidneys." Whereupon Nicklaus acknowledged with a knowing grin: "I figured that's where you were going."
The exchange was from a different world, a time when major sporting figures treated newspaper columnists as respected friends, rather than with the deep-seated suspicion which modern, tabloid journalism has created. But there was another reason why Nicklaus happily deferred to the man from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Bisher was covering his 50th successive Masters.
At 80, he still walks the hills and valleys of Augusta National with the energy of a man half his age. "This is what keeps me young," he says. And it has the effect of instilling a remarkable freshness into his writing.
It is more than 30 years since I became aware of Bisher as one of the foremost sports journalists in the US. The enlightenment came from David Guiney, the former Olympic athlete and sports editor of the late, lamented Irish Press, who became a firm friend of Bisher's from their first meeting at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.
He is among the most charming of men, invariably friendly and helpful. And a measure of his standing in the Atlanta area is that the media centre for the Sarazen World Open at Chateau Elan is named after him. As it happened, he was at Portmarnock for the Irish Open of 1990, before heading on to the soccer World Cup in Rome.
His first Masters was in 1950, when Jimmy Demaret emerged victorious by two strokes from Jim Ferrier. "In those days, the leaders didn't start last, but in the middle of the day so that slow players and high scorers could be at the end of the field," he recalled.
The procedure caused him something of an embarrassment in 1957 when Doug Ford beat Sam Snead by three strokes. Bisher was having lunch in the clubhouse dining room when Ford walked in, having completed his round. "Nobody knew it at the time, but Ford had already won the Masters," he said.
Incidentally, he didn't return to the interview area in time for Nicklaus's reply to the loaded question about Duval and Woods. Experience had taught him that there was no need to rush. The Bear's reply? "I wouldn't answer that question in 100 years."
"I wouldn't care if they put on my tombstone `Winner of $190 million (Georgia) Lottery'. But if they put `Winner of Masters at Augusta National', that would mean something." - American journeyman Fred Funk.
IT IS a virtual certainty that when the new US Masters champion dons the green jacket tomorrow, one of the first questions from the assembled media will concern his thoughts on the so-called modern grand slam. And the question will be two-fold, incorporating the possibility of winning all four professional "majors" in a season, or in his lifetime.
Bobby Jones, the only player to have won a genuine grand slam through his victories in the US Amateur, US Open, British Amateur and British Open in 1930, had very definite views on this particular subject. And they are revealed in some fascinating letters published only recently in the US.
He wrote: "The only man who could ever be justified in considering himself the world champion of golf would be one who had won the Open Championship of both Great Britain and the United States in the same year. Offhand, I think the record will show that this feat has been accomplished by only three men in the history of the game - Gene Sarazen did it in 1932, Ben Hogan in 1953 and I did it twice, in 1926 and 1930."
(Since the letter was written in September 1967, the double in question was also accomplished by Lee Trevino in 1971 and by Tom Watson in 1982.)
Jones went on: "The professionals and the television people have now come up with a new `Grand Slam', accomplished by winning the Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the PGA; and by winning these, not in one year, but in a lifetime. I must confess that I get pretty tired of hearing about the only four men (Sarazen, Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player) who have won all four of the major championships (meaning those above). "Obviously, no professional can ever win the four championships comprising my Grand Slam; but neither can any amateur ever win the phoney Grand Slam created by the pros and the television people. I think if you can win both the British and US Opens in one year, this should be enough." It's hard to argue with that.
THIS day in golf history . . . On April 10th, 1960, Arnold Palmer became only the second player in US Masters history to lead from start to finish. With rounds of 67, 73, 72, 70, he emulated the achievement of the 1941 winner, Craig Wood.
It was Palmer's second green jacket and, typically, he did it in style. A stroke behind Ken Venturi with two holes to play, he finished birdie, birdie, to win by a shot. His reward was $17,500, a gold medal, a silver cigarette box engraved with the player's names and a bas-relief sterling silver replica of the Masters trophy.
Thirty-nine years on, close on 1,000 fans, many of them veterans of Arnie's Army, waited in line for a book-signing by Palmer earlier this week at Borders bookstore in Augusta. "I think this is wonderful," he enthused after being there for nearly two hours. Happily, some things in golf never change.
Teaser: A player searched for his ball for two minutes, declared it lost and started back to play another ball at the spot from which the original ball was played. Before he put another ball into play, his original ball was found within the five-minute period allowed for search. What is the ruling?
Answer: A player cannot render a ball lost by a declaration. The original ball remained in play.
