In 1986, Jack Nicklaus won his sixth Masters at Augusta National. Tiger Woods came close with 5 wins, but he still holds the record for the most Masters wins in golf history. However, that journey had a rather unconventional start because what should have numbed the veteran golfer’s legs instead helped him swing better.
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Jack Nicklaus injured his hip during the 1963 season at a San Francisco event. He was playing from the rough when he hit an 8-iron and felt sharp pain in his left hip—a niggling injury that persisted. He didn’t think much about it, but the pain remained the next day. As a result, he couldn’t swing from left to right at all.
“So actually it was a good thing it happened to me because all I could play was right to left, to get my hip out of the way. I ended up having 25 injections in 10 weeks in my hip,” Jack Nicklaus told the Golf Channel. “It was the tendon slipping back over the bone. That’s all I had wrong with me. I suppose today they would have found that out in a minute, manipulated it back into place. My hip problem went away … I went to Augusta. The benefit of the spring was that I learned how to play right to left. I used that to my advantage. I say my hip injury probably helped me win the Masters. It was a blessing in disguise.”
The American golfer’s natural shot is a fade. When speaking to Golf.com, he revealed that it is one of the most frequently used shots in the game. He said he’s used it for most of his professional career, and it is his favorite shot to play. However, playing the shot requires a golfer to swing from left to right. Because the injury kept him from playing that shot, he had to learn to swing from right to left and rely on a draw instead of a fade.
He used it at Augusta National in 1963 to storm a second round of 66. This got him among the leaders before the rain came. The rains softened the greens, reducing the effectiveness of his fade, which relies on firm conditions. In such a scenario, a fade is generally better because it reduces backspin in waterlogged conditions.
However, Jack Nicklaus didn’t lose hope and instead battled through it. The veteran golfer later recalled communicating with his caddie about the leaderboard during the third round. He asked his caddie, Willie Peterson, “How many of those ones up there are red, meaning under par?”
On the final day, he, Sam Snead, and Gary Player were the three golfers in contention. Nicklaus fell behind initially, but both his competitors hit many bogeys in the final round. Ultimately, Jack Nicklaus won his first Masters in 1963, becoming the youngest winner of the event at the time. He then went on to win five more Masters in 1965, 1966, 1972, 1975, and 1986.
He even managed a remarkably durable 40-plus-year competitive golf career, during which he won 73 PGA Tour events, including 18 major championships.
But this wasn’t his only injury. He then had a left knee injury in December 1984, chronic back issues between the 1990s and 2000s, and hip replacement surgery in 1999, but he never got that lucky because of an injury.