Nicklaus Gives Tips to Sindelar on Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. —  The guy is from Horseheads, and that makes everybody laugh a little, even the guy from Horseheads. The other day, the guy from Horseheads, N.Y., joined a guy from Columbus, Ohio, on the first tee of the Augusta National Golf Club, and they had a few laughs together as they played a practice round in preparation for the Masters, which begins today.

For the guy from Columbus, one Jack William Nicklaus, it was maybe the 200th time he had played Augusta. For the guy from Horseheads, one Joseph Paul Sindelar, it was the first time.

Nicklaus is playing in the Masters for the 27th time, and he can play in it for life, having won it a record five times. Sindelar is playing in it for the first time, having qualified for it on Sunday by winning the Greater Greensboro Open. “What more could you ask for,” Sindelar said, “to win your first tournament, get invited to the Masters and play with Jack Nicklaus, all in three days. That’s pretty heavy stuff for a guy from Horseheads.”

Playing with Nicklaus was as much a surprise as winning the GGO and getting the invitation to the Masters, and he could not have found a better playing partner.

As Sindelar maneuvered his way through the tall pines, clipped fairways, lightning-quick greens and awestruck crowds, Nicklaus taught his version of Augusta National 101. There was Nicklaus pointing to this tree and that blade of grass and that break in the green, and there was Sindelar, taking it all in as fast as he could.

“He was telling me where the pin placements would be, what angles you had to come into the green from,” Sindelar said. “It was kind of ‘watch this.’ He’d hit the kind of shot that you are supposed to be hitting here. I was thrilled to be playing with him.”

He was thrilled, too, to be following the tradition of fine golf started by Nicklaus at Ohio State, from which Sindelar was graduated in 1981. In that year, Sindelar won 10 collegiate titles, including the Big Ten championship by 12 strokes. He turned professional that year, but did not qualify for his PGA Tour card, and that meant finding competition and paychecks elsewhere. He played in mini-tour events, tried to qualify for as many big tour events as he could, and went on the Asian tour for 10 weeks. In the fall of 1983 he got his tour card and last year, his first full year on tour, he won more than $100,000.

This year he has won $87,000 and has shown an ability to play better on the tougher courses, his win at Greensboro coming on the tough Forest Oaks layout. He also finished near the top at Los Angeles, Bay Hill and the Tournament Players Championship.

“Playing the northern courses makes you much more patient,” he said. “You learn to be satisfied with a 72. These southern guys, they have to shoot 66 to make their teams in good weather. I think (the northern guys) have an advantage in the bad weather. The southern guys have an advantage when everybody’s 20 under.”

He has tried to gain an even greater advantage this year by asking his wife, Suzanne, to join him full time. She is a qualified chiropractor, having attended New York Chiropractic College. She had set up a practice in Horseheads, had it going nicely for two years. Yet, when she was at the office she was thinking about her husband, and when she was with her husband, she was thinking about the office.

If Sindelar is to have a chance to win this 50th Anniversary Masters, is not to become overwhelmed by the event. Sindelar has the length off the tee that this course favors, has the soft touch these greens require. And he has Jack Nicklaus’ instructions, the last of which was this: “Enjoy your first Masters, you’ll have a good time.” And the guy from Horseheads laughed.