At my own web site, I wish a happy 75th birthday to perhaps the greatest sportsman (in all facets/meanings of that word) of our lifetimes, Jack Nicklaus.

Please take a look.

Herewith, a few other notes. First, to get a great sense of Nicklaus at what most people think of as his defining performance, his win at Augusta in 1986, this video is well worth watching. And this is a fine tribute to his off-the-course virtues.

One great thing about Nicklaus as a golfer was his approachability. I got to see it several times. Once, at Congressional (I can’t remember whether it was the 1995 U.S. Open or the 1997 U.S. Senior Open), there was a big rain delay right after Nicklaus drove a bit into the right rough off the sixth fairway. With the rain having stopped, organizers sent the players back to the course after a while, but then — apparently looking at radar and not quite feeling confident giving the “all clear” — took at least another half hour before sounding the horn to resume play. So there Nicklaus stood, waiting to play, with just about six or seven of us who had waited out the weather. He had a notoriously balky back, so he had us take turns holding a gallery stake that was in the ground, us pulling it one way while he used it to hold onto for purposes of his back exercises. And the whole time he kept up a constant chatter, telling us stories, cracking subtle one-liners, engaging us entirely rather than ignoring us. He didn’t actually say “thank you” to us, but it seemed as if he was making an extra effort to reward us for braving the intense thunder storm and remaining on the course.

I also was there when he officially opened the English Turn golf course that he designed just outside of New Orleans, in about 1988. He was miked up, and as he played an entire round, he would describe what he was thinking when he designed each hole and, as he looked at each shot, what he was thinking when choosing his club and deciding what sort of shot to hit. It was fascinating. But what really astonished me was his patience with some of the members of the gallery. Probably seven or eight times as he walked from shot to shot, right among the crowd walking down the fairway with him, somebody would fall in step beside him and say something like: “You know, I hit my five-irons great, but I just can’t hit my seven-irons. Why would that be?” Rather than find some polite way to brush the person off (after all, how the hell could Nicklaus have any clue, without seeing somebody hit, what the swing problem was with the seven-irons?), Nicklaus would patiently come up with some answer that might at least have a chance of being helpful. (“Well,” he’d say, “sometimes even though the club is shorter, some people don’t inch up a tiny bit closer to the ball, so with a shorter club it means they have to hunch over to get the club down to the ground, and that messes up their swing planes. Try moving closer to the ball, even if by just a half inch.” . . . Or something like that.)

Nicklaus’s graciousness on course and off was exceeded only by his still-unsurpassed excellence in competition. There was nothing like a Nicklaus charge. It had a different quality than the lightning bolts Tiger Woods would throw. With Nicklaus, it was more of a slowly gathering force, building up tension rather than unleashing fury. Watch not just the 1986 Masters, but a replay of the 1975 Masters as well, to see what I mean.

So, again, Happy Birthday to Jack Nicklaus, still young at 75.