AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Jack Nicklaus has won, and he knows it. He knows Tiger Woods is never getting within a long par-4 of his record 18 major championships, and he sees no reason to do some elaborate end zone dance over that fact in public.
So while appearing at Augusta National on Tuesday evening, Nicklaus declared his belief that Woods will someday win more golf tournaments. "I don't think he's done," he said.
Never mind that Tiger Woods himself has already suggested Tiger Woods might be done. On the 30-year anniversary of his sixth and final Masters victory at age 46, still the sport's signature moment, Nicklaus maintained the 40-year-old Woods will experience his very own 1986 over the next four, five, six years.
"I know his personality," Nicklaus said. "I know his determination. I know his work ethic. He was at my house for dinner ... six weeks ago, and he really looked great, physically. He said he felt great, physically. He could stand over chips and putts without his back hurting, and he had no twinges. I'm very surprised he's not here.
"He's just too good not to win. Now, whether he'll win to the level he's used to winning, I don't know; that remains to be seen. He is just too good a talent not to win."
But when asked if he felt his magic number, 18, was now safe and secure, Nicklaus opened a little door on his competitive soul. "No, not necessarily," he answered. "They've got Rory [McIlroy] coming along and Jordan Spieth and Jason Day. And Tiger is still out there."
Nicklaus punctuated that response with a chuckle. He'd mentioned McIlroy (four majors), Spieth (two) and Day (one) before he got around to Woods (14), and, really, that said it all.
Nicklaus knows he has survived the Woods onslaught and retained the unofficial title of greatest player ever. Jack knows, and Tiger knows, and Jack knows that Tiger knows that Jack knows. In these cross-generational debates over athletic superiority, American sports fans almost always come back to simple math.
If Nicklaus' 18-14 advantage in the big ones doesn't represent a satisfactory tiebreaker, then the Augusta National scoreboard chips in. The Masters is the closest thing golf has to a Super Bowl, and Jack has six rings to Tiger's four, a cushion big enough to account for Woods' 1986 moment to come.
"I've said I expect Tiger to break my record, but I said he's still got to do it," Nicklaus recalled. "I've said that 100 times. And he still has to do it. Do I think his chances are as good now as they were before? No, of course not. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a chance."
Nicklaus realizes Woods has no chance to tie or break his record. He also realizes there's no point in kicking bunker sand into Woods' eyes. Listen, there is a perfectly reasonable case to be made that Tiger Woods is the best player ever. He won 79 PGA Tour events to Nicklaus' 73, and Woods was more dominant in his prime against deeper fields. Woods made more consecutive cuts (142 to Nicklaus' 105). Woods won four consecutive majors, and Nicklaus never won more than two in a row (though he did hold three major trophies at the same time after winning the U.S. Open and Open Championship in the summer of 1972; he'd prevailed at a 1971 PGA Championship held in February).
I do believe that Woods has one last magical Sunday somewhere in his bag, that he will win one more major (probably here at the Masters) at age 44 or 45, if only because lesser champions have done it in their forties.
I also believe it's quite possible that at the same age, on the same course, using the same clubs and balls, Woods would've beaten Nicklaus by a stroke with a birdie at 18. Tiger at his peak played the game at a slightly higher level than Jack did.
But Nicklaus holds a decisive edge on the full-body-of-work front, winning his 18 majors over 25 seasons, while Woods won his 14 over 12. In one of the game's most compelling ironies, the doughy golfer once derided as "Fat Jack" held up better physically than the ripped fitness freak, Woods, who lost himself inside Navy SEALs workouts that would've made Jack LaLanne puke.
Nicklaus made a remarkable 146 consecutive starts in the majors; Woods' longest streak was 46. "I guess I was just lucky from a physical standpoint," Nicklaus said. "I never really had many injuries." He focused on four tournaments a year, he said, "so when you do that, you're not abusing yourself too much."
Nicklaus managed 37 top twos in the majors, and Woods has 20. And when Nicklaus lost a major, he often lost them to titans like Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. Woods lost duels with Rich Beem, Michael Campbell, Angel Cabrera, Trevor Immelman and Y.E. Yang. Though competing against fewer players with the talent to win, Nicklaus' chief rivals in his prime (Palmer, Player, Trevino and Watson) were superior to Woods' (Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Sergio Garcia and David Duval).
Too bad Jack and Tiger were born 35 years apart or they could've settled this from tee to green.
But just for the hell of it, in his last lights-out performance in a major, Nicklaus contended at the 1998 Masters and outplayed Woods, the defending champ who finished two shots behind a 58-year-old legend already booked for hip-replacement surgery.
Asked once to name the superior player, Tiger or Jack, Player said, "If you gave Jack that [modern] equipment, I think Jack would've been better."
Woods was widely expected to make that opinion moot. He took Jack's tournament, The Memorial, for a fourth time in 2009, a year after winning the U.S. Open (his 14th major victory) on a badly damaged knee and leg, and people were predicting then that Woods might end up with as many as 25 majors.
"It's five to pass him, four to tie him," Woods said then. "That's a lot. Most of the guys in my generation haven't won more than three. So it's quite a challenge, there's no doubt about it. I probably wouldn't have had as good a chance to put myself in position to tie or pass, whatever it may be, if I hadn't had the surgery. My leg was deteriorating the past couple of years. I'm healthy enough where I think I can give it a go."
Truth was, Woods' body was just beginning to betray him. He lost to Yang at the 2009 PGA Championship and then collapsed under the weight of his sex scandal, divorce and, ultimately, more back surgeries than his fans could count. He couldn't chip. He couldn't putt. He couldn't convince himself he could be that terminator in red he used to be.
"I, amongst other players, believe that it has to do with his personal issues, and that it is none of our business," Yang wrote in an email to ESPN.com last summer. "Tiger is not a machine and is a person like all of us. I think once he gets his focus back, he will be fine."
Woods hasn't remained healthy long enough to give his fractured focus a fighting chance. Nicklaus has long said that he didn't want his record broken, but that he didn't want injuries to be the reason Woods fell short. Would a healthy Tiger have pulled it off? Would Woods be sitting on 16 majors right now if his body hadn't turned on him the way Kobe Bryant's turned on him? We'll never know.
On the subject of his dwindling chances to run down Nicklaus, Woods has been much like his golf game -- all over the place. At an October news conference in Mexico City, he said, "It's important for me to have more than 18 majors when all is said and done. It took Jack his whole career to achieve it, and mine is not done yet." In a December presser in the Bahamas, Woods all but surrendered to the notion his glory days were over when he described any future accomplishments as "gravy" and said, "For my 20 years out here, I think I've achieved a lot, and if that's all it entails, then I've had a pretty good run."
It was one of the greatest runs in American sports history.
His agent told ESPN that Woods will "absolutely" return to competition this year, and for those who have benefited financially from Woods' staggering talent and presence, his return can't come a weekend too soon.
"We all miss him, want him back," Mickelson said Tuesday. "He's a big part of the game even when he's not playing." Like Palmer, Tiger was a far more impactful figure than Jack. But in the end, Woods didn't win the one trophy he wanted most of all. He's going to go down as the second greatest golfer ever, even if Jack Nicklaus sees no reason to state the obvious.