Free The Magnificent Masters: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Weiskopf, and the 1975 Cliffhanger at Augusta by Gil Capps Page A

youngsters around. Just as Nicklaus and Miller played with Jimmy Demaret in their first Masters rounds, each of the seven amateurs would be paired with one of the twelve Masters champions in the field. Complete first-round tee times were released Wednesday, but tournament officials publicizedeight featured pairings the day before with marquee names such as Palmer, Trevino, Player, and Weiskopf.
    “Somebody asked me, ‘Have you seen the pairings?’ I said, ‘No’,” recalls Strange. He had been drawn with Jack Nicklaus. “I was a basket case until I teed off Thursday.”
    NEARLY TWO DOZEN players were already on the grounds Sunday, and the rest of them arrived Monday. Gates opened for the first time at 8:00 a.m. Monday. Tickets were no longer available at King’s Way Pharmacy or Bill’s Barber Shop. The Masters was now one of the toughest tickets in sports. For the tenth consecutive year, tickets for the Masters were sold out. Series badges, as they were called, allowed patrons admission to the tournament rounds only, Thursday–Sunday, and, if necessary, to an 18-hole playoff on Monday. Since 1966, these tickets for the tournament rounds proper had been sold out on a priority basis to established customers, a list that numbered around 30,000. The high demand and increased numbers of people on the grounds—everyone who applied was once sold a ticket—forced the club to close this list in 1972. A waiting list was then established. In 1975, there were five times as many requests as tickets. Soon, even the waiting list was closed. “I’m still most unhappy about the fact that we can only take care of about one-fifth of the people that would like to attend the Masters Tournament,” said Clifford Roberts.
    Season badges were not good for practice days, so Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, people could walk right up to the gate and buy a daily ticket for $5. They were unlimited. Practice round patrons could walk the course, take photographs, film with movie cameras, get autographs, and see all the best players. All except the favorite, Jack Nicklaus.
    The pudgy kid from Columbus had figured out a lot since his first trip to Augusta sixteen years earlier. Gone were the long car rides and side-trips to other Tour stops. It was now a private planeand regimented schedule. Nicklaus planned the first three-and-a-half months of the year around the Masters, and for a half-dozen years it was unchanged—roughly three events on the West Coast and then three events in the South.
    “I always started in January picking the tournaments that I wanted to play that would give me the competition that I wanted and maybe give me similar conditions that I wanted, give me the opportunity to play shots that I wanted to play, that I thought that I might play (at Augusta),” says Nicklaus. “I avoided a lot of tournaments two or three weeks before the Masters simply because you knew you were going to hit a ton of wind and you were going to be playing a lot of knock down shots and stuff like that. Occasionally, I would play some of those, but most of the time, not. I like to play the courses where you needed to fly your ball in the air.”
    Another custom that continued just as it had the previous ten years: Jack Nicklaus traveled to Augusta for his practice rounds the week before the 1975 Masters. It was a routine he continued at the other majors as well with lots of success. “I always believed in being prepared,” says Nicklaus.
    Fate also played a part. In 1963, bursitis in his left hip caused him to shuffle his schedule. Instead of playing the week before, he went to Augusta for some practice. And he won his first Masters. The next year, he played the Greater Greensboro Open, a tournament that had been moved to the week before the Masters that season and would stay that way on the calendar for twenty-five years. “I went to Greensboro in 1964 (finishing 4th) and didn’t win the Masters (tied for 2nd). That was my last time at