Virginia Golfer July / August 2015 | Page 20

Make Room Golden Bear for the The new Jack Nicklaus Room at the USGA Museum honors an icon By KEN KLAVON F PHOTO CREDIT HERE ew golfers have tapped into American consciousness the way Jack Nicklaus has done over the past 50 years. After all, not everyone who ever teed it up has rubbed elbows with the likes of Hank Aaron, Peggy Fleming and Snoopy in Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strips. That’s beside the point. On one end of the golf landscape, some might say Arnold Palmer meshed in with American culture the way the contemporaneous Nicklaus did. Palmer had it all: swashbuckling good looks, a growing army of fans and, later on, charismatic commercial appeal. 18 V I R G I N I A G O L F E R | J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 5 w w w. v s g a . o r g