Nicklaus' record starting to look pretty healthy

   This appeared in Saturday's Daily Times print edition under the Punch Shots banner, but it was worth posting on the golf blog. Plus I don't want you think I'm ignoring the golf blog just because the temperature's been stuck in the 20s a lot lately.

   It was pretty strange watching Tiger Woods wince on every shot on his way to withdrawing before the first round of the Farmers Insurance Open was over Thursday.
   It was at the same Torrey Pines complex at which Tiger won his last major, the 2008 U.S. Open, and where his body first started to betray him in a big way. Woods walked off the North Course Thursday while the 2008 Open was at the tougher South Course.
   Nobody could have imagined at the time that Woods’ 14th major championship victory might very well be his last, but that possibility seemed very real after two weeks of watching the greatest player of his generation chopping it around for an 82 last Friday in Phoenix and then hitting it right of right on nearly every tee shot Thursday at Torrey Pines.
   But there always was that caveat when the thought of Woods equaling and then passing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships was brought up. It was always, if his life off the golf course didn’t cause any problems and if he could stay healthy.
   He has had issues in both areas at various times ever since he won that 2008 Open. Obviously, the 2009 incident that led to the demise of his marriage to Elin Nordegren and the subsequent revelations of infidelity didn’t help.  But co-parenting two kids with an ex — and by all reports, they get along fine — takes some work.
   And he very simply has not stayed healthy. While winning the 2008 Open on a broken leg was heroic, it might very well have led to many of the issues he has dealt with since then, including the weak back that plagued him Thursday.
   Somehow the guy who burst on the scene as Fat Jack in the early 1960s always stayed healthy, had a stable family life and remained motivated to win as many major championships as he could, getting the last one, quite memorably, in 1986 at the age of 46.
   He could never have imagined that a young kid would come along in the next generation and challenge those 18 majors. It’s starting to look, however, that Nicklaus’ 18 is going to remain the standard for a while, maybe even after Tiger’s career is over.