the improbable

I suggest not viewing the attached video until you’ve finished reading through the back-story I've provided (a proper detailing of this historic moment may render the scene a bit more powerful).

Below is a brief clip of Jack Nicklaus, perhaps the greatest golfer the game has ever seen. Tiger may statistically wrest that title from Jack in the coming years, but as things stand at present, Nicklaus captured eighteen major championships—the standard measure by which most golf historians quantify success—to Tiger’s fourteen and 73 PGA tournaments to Tiger’s 65. Those are some mighty numbers.

Here’s Jack on the tee at Augusta National’s 16th hole. We’re reliving Masters Sunday,1986, the fourth and final day of the tournament. Jack is 46 years of age, two decades removed from his prime, seemingly unaware that he’s not supposed to be contending for the green jacket (Augusta’s prize to the victor) this afternoon. Not at his age. For the sake of comparison, Spaniard Seve Ballesteros—one of the few keeping pace with Jack throughout the back nine—is seventeen years Jack’s junior.

Jack arrives at the par-three 16th needing par or better to give himself an outside chance of winning this thing. It’s a bitch of a shot, too. There’s water left of the cup and a severe pondward (not a word—made it up) slope on the surface of the green which ushers pulled shots to certain death.

I’d like you to be Jack for just one moment. Here’s the situation:

You’re standing roughly 180 yards from a cylindrical hole in the ground the size of your fist. You must use a metal stick to strike an even smaller ball and project it into the air, imparting just the right measures of height, spin, speed and arc to allow it to land somewhere in the vicinity of the fist. This requires a perfect golf swing. If you miss your intended target (the fattest portion of the back of the ball) by two millimeters in either direction, your ball will act accordingly and assume a potentially reckless flight. Two millimeters! All this while accelerating through impact, clearing your hips, locking the left elbow, rotating your shoulders—not necessarily in that order. Oh, and you’re nervous. And you’re 46.

To be fair, you’ve been in this position before. You’re probably not experiencing the nerves of a virginal contender, but the ol' heart is beating a bit faster, which has got to be worth a millimeter or two right there. Legions of rubberneckers have lined both sides of the 16th to witness your fate. You stuff a peg in the ground, place the ball on the hollowed groove, commence your pre-shot routine.

What you’re about to see chills me every time I watch it. The musical crack between 1:04-1:05 is the purest sound I’ve ever heard, and perhaps the most beautiful: