JACK NICKLAUS WAS BORN ON THIS day in 1940 in Upper Arlington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. He took up golf in earnest at age 10, putting in long hours at Scioto Country Club, where Bobby Jones won the 1926 U.S. Open.
Compared to others, the game came easily to Nicklaus, and he won often at every level before experiencing his first prolonged slump in the late 1960s. Even then the man who would become known as the Golden Bear won golf tournaments, although he did have to endure a majors drought from the summer of 1967 to the summer of 1970.