Exclusive: Highlights from Tony Jacklin's Bermuda Q & A

Golf legend Tony Jacklin captivated an audience at the Southampton Fairmont during his Evening With... event on Saturday night, which supplemented the Bacardi World Par 3 Championship.

Hosted by Golf Channel's Charlie Rymer, among the topics touched on were anchored putters (see separate article), winning his first Major, becoming Ryder Cup captain, the famous concession putt by Jack Nicklaus, and managing the likes of Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros.

Here's the best bits from the mind of a genuine golf pioneer and legend.

On playing at the Bacardi World Par 3 Championship
I still get nervous. I try to keep stress to a minimum. And of course when you get out into this competitive environment – I don’t think I could win this thing – but you still get intense and you go through the old routine and discipline. These top players that you watch on a weekly basis, it all comes down to discipline – you have to be tough on yourself. I don’t go there anymore but when I get these couple of opportunities to come to a wonderful place like this and I play, I go into this sort of mode of not being allowed to make mistakes and being too tough in myself sometimes. But I enjoy it, it’s been a great life and I don’t regret a minute of it.

What are your recollections from winning the 1969 Open at Royal Lytham & St Annes?
Well, I met (Arnold) Palmer and (Jack) Nicklaus for the first time in 1966 in Japan at the World Championships and I wanted to be the best player in the world, I’d made my mind up on that. And I knew if I wanted to be the best player in the world I had to beat the best and of course the first thing you’ve got to do is get to know them.

Playing with Jack and Arnold and getting my Tour card in 1967, getting closer to Jack and playing more practice rounds and just associating with them got me into their world and put me in a higher mental state. I won very quickly in the spring of 1968 on the PGA Tour, which was the first European win on the PGA Tour. It really set me off that Jacksonville win and the commitment to play  on the Tour. It all comes down to pressure and I do believe and this is something I gained from playing with the likes of Palmer, Nicklaus and Gary Player, it comes down to courage on that last day. There’s no hiding place. You’re leading the tournament, the eyes of the world are on you, you’ve made up your mind you want to be good and you’ve put yourself up in this position but if you fail you can look like a bit of fool.

You wait until mid-afternoon on the final day and God knows what goes through your mind. I remember, I’m not an overly religious person, but when I won the US Open I had a four shot lead on the last day. I prayed not to win but just for the strength to get through the day and do what I was supposed to do. You’re so exposed there is totally no hiding place. I was frightened of the consequences – I knew if I didn’t win the US Open with a four-shot lead I’d be branded a choker.
It all comes down to putting yourself in and being able to deal with the moment. And that of course is a very easy thing to say but a very hard thing to do.

That’s still the hardest thing for the pros playing today and that’s why I still like to watch the final day of tournaments now to see how they deal with it. I said to Jack back in ‘69 – he finished third or fourth – and I said I didn’t think I could be that nervous and still play. And he said “I know, isn’t it great”. That told me that was where he was all the time. There’s no high like it.
I just regret I didn’t move to America when I had those two Majors. I was in the wrong place living in England trying to be all things to all people, opening garden fetes and presenting prizes. I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. I didn’t have any examples prior to that to go by so hopefully some of the ones that followed learned from me.

Ryder Cup 1969, Royal Birkdale, talk us through the last couple of holes of the match, which ended in a 16-16 draw.
It was a tight match, obviously. It wasn’t the same format as it is now, we played two singles matches on the final day. I’d played Jack Nicklaus in the morning and he wasn’t on his best game. We went out in the afternoon and it was really close and we were all square, and I bogeyed and lost the 16^th, which was a par four. The 17^th was a reachable par five and we both got on the green in two, I was 50 feet away and Jack was 20 feet away and I holed this thing! My caddie jumped high off the ground and Jack then missed his putt.

[Team-mate[ Brian Hugget thought the roar was me beating Jack but, of course, we were level. He made his five-footer and he went over to Eric Brown our captain and said “we’ve done it” and Eric said “no, no Jacklin just got all-square!.”

So me and Jack hit our tee shots off the 18^th and Eric comes over, the fiery Scot they used to call him because he had a bit of a temper, he strolled up trying to look nonchalant and said “yer noo wat yer got ta doo” . I said: “Eric, I think I know!”

Jack had already said to me “are you nervous?” and I said: “I’m petrified.” He said: “I just thought I’d ask because if it’s any consolation, I feel just the same way you do.”

That was great. He had no need to do that. He was a pal anyway but a competitor as well. It was an unenviable situation to be in whatever anyone tells you, the whole Ryder Cup resting on your match.

We hit our shots on to the green, mine to the back, his to 20 feet, and I putted up and marked it and he had a putt to win the Ryder Cup for America, which he took a run at. And as he picked his ball out of the whole he picked my marker up and said: “I don’t think you would have missed that but I would NEVER have given you the opportunity in these circumstances.”

Mentally I was ready to make the putt but when he picked the marker up I was shocked, relieved obviously – I didn’t know where I was for a few minutes. That was a great gesture.

That moment was worthy of memorializing. Jack always saw the big picture.

As a four-time Ryder Cup captain when you were first asked to be captain, you thought about and came back with conditions. What were those and why?

In 1981 I was left out of the team. I had played in Europe’s first ever match – ‘79 Greenbrier. Then in 81 I was left out and I was a bit miffed, I wasn’t an automatic pick but I was 13^th in the money list, I played seven times, and I was passed over.

But that was nothing to what happened to Seve [Ballesteros]. The European Tour, in their wisdom, had formed a three-man committee, John Jacobs, who was the captain, Neil Coles, who was the chairman of the Tour Committee, and Bernhard Langer was called on to it because he was the leader of the Order of Merit. And they banned Seve from playing because, when Seve played a tournament 50 per cent more people turned up, and his people thought he should be compensated for that. Seve’s PR wasn’t very good at that time but he was the best player in the world then. So in 1981, Walton Heath comes along and they invite me as an official and I told them… [where to go].

So mentally I was done with the Ryder Cup. We’d now had two European Ryder Cup teams that were supposed to make the difference but we had really one-sided matches going on. So I was in total shock when Ken Schofield and Colin Snape, secretary of the [British] PGA at the time, came to me together and asked me whether I’d consider being the captain for the Ryder Cup in 1983. I thought “this is not happening” because it was the farthest thing from my mind. I said: “I’ll have to think about this. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I had a really long think about things.

Throughout the 70s I saw how we were doing things and how America were doing things and we were being sent off to play in the Ryder Cups by administrators – none of them knew what it was like to stand over a four/five foot putt that was meaningful. We were wearing anything anybody would give us, we were going the back of the bus, we didn’t know who was paying for our drinks, we couldn’t take our caddies. Just one thing after another, we were being treated like second-class citizens. This affects your self esteem. America were coming out like adonises dressed in the best gear, they were flying Concorde, we were back of the bus on British Airways – we were two down before we even hit a ball.

So I went back the next day and said I want “Concorde, Kashmir, I want an extra player pick, I want to take the caddies, nothing more than our American contemporaries had been doing for 10 years before. They said “yes”, so I said “yes”. I basically had carte blanche to do what I wanted. I then went to Lord Derby who was the Queen’s cousin and the PGA president. I said what about Seve and he said: “You’ve accepted the captaincy, he’s your problem.” Of course, Seve was anything but a problem to me.

So I arranged a breakfast meeting with him at Southport and we sat down and he vented for half an hour “nobody understands me” etc and I said it’s different now, they’ve given me carte blanche to do what I want and I can’t do it without you, and at the end of the meeting he said “okay, I’ll help you.” And the rest is history – he was like a one man army this fella.

On Davis Love III’s captaincy

I thought his statements last year that he wanted everyone to have a good time and all this…he’ll be happy playing with him and he’ll be happy playing with him. It wasn’t quite like that from our end. I’m a great believer that certain people rise to other people around them and get the best out of people by pairings. I wanted guys that gelled to be together, Certain personalities don’t gel as well. Lee Trevino in 1985 said it didn’t matter who plays with who – well, I adamantly disagree with that. I think pairings are very important and getting them right and making them compatible.

On managing players

It’s a daunting task, you have all these egos. I remember vividly in ‘83 and saying to the players “in this room there is are egos – we all hang it on the door outside, we’re all pals in here, we have a mission to win the Ryder Cup.”

As a captain you have to be an observer, you have to see whether a guy is comfortable in his own skin that week. Faldo, for example, in ‘85 was going through a divorce and that was an emotional, stressful thing. I took him to one side and I was able to discuss it with him. I said am I going to put you out there with Langer or am I going to throw Ken Brown in and let you sit it out? You tell me. And he was straight and said “put Ken in”. I said “thanks for that”. That was the relationship I had with all the guys. The mission was to win the Ryder Cup, it wasn’t to do people favours or anything like that.