High fiver for Nicklaus in recognition of his notable achievements

ONLY the irredeemably romantic could fail to recognise the marketing astuteness behind the Royal Bank of Scotland's decision to issue a special £5 note in honour of Jack Nicklaus.

This mild cynicism over the commercial aspect of the exercise is not, however, sufficiently distracting to obscure the fact that it is an extraordinary form of acknowledgment of a colossal talent. Even George Washington managed only the one-dollar bill.

The Edinburgh-based bank, now an institution of global renown, will put two million of the special fivers into circulation from tomorrow, the first day of the celebrated Nicklaus's last major championship. They will undoubtedly disappear from the streets with the suddenness of urchins sensing an approaching copper, RBS having achieved a priceless level of publicity it doesn't even have to buy.

But, whatever the economic forces behind the operation, it could hardly have picked a more appropriate figure as the first living person, besides Queen Elizabeth and the late Queen Mother, to have his face on its banknotes.

Nicklaus's achievements on the golf course have been as comprehensively chronicled as any of the most momentous events in history.

Unlike those famous destiny shapers from the past, however, he is still here to bear witness to his own immeasurably influential role in the development of the monster that is modern professional golf. And, in the 45 years since, as an amateur, he finished runner-up to Arnold Palmer in the US Open, nobody - not even Muhammad Ali - has talked more.

The presentation made to him yesterday by the Association of Golf Writers was not only a tribute to his unparalleled success as a golfer, but to his constant compliance with requests for interviews over the course of those four-and-a-half decades.

Nicklaus continues to demonstrate his other astonishing talent. It is that, no matter how often, over how long a period of time, he has consented to pronounce on every issue or event in the game, he remains capable of finding something new to say.

Those who crammed sweatily into the interview area of the press tent at St Andrews yesterday were treated once again to little nuggets of insight and humour, not least of which was the recollection of events at a certain time in his career that said in a few sentences at least as much as, if not more than, all the words previously written about his relentless competitiveness.

It was when dwelling on the circumstances in which he won the his second Open in 1970 - the first of his two were at St Andrews - that Nicklaus made the hardly credible claim that, by 1973, some of the "drive" that had seen him overtake Bobby Jones's record of 13 major championships had waned. This was a revelation that confirmed him as the most relentlessly competitive spirit ever to pick up a club.

In those days, they counted the amateur championships of Great Britain and the United States as majors, and Jones had numbered six of these in his haul, which also included three Opens and four US Opens. Having won two US Amateur titles, Jack gained his eighth professional major on the Old Course, when he beat the wretched Doug Sanders in a play-off.

It was his first such victory in three years, his previous championship having come in the USPGA at Canterbury in 1967. "My father passed away in the February of 1970," said Nicklaus, "and I look at myself and said, 'You know, you've just kind of gone along, you haven't really worked at it that hard.'

"I won a lot of tournaments in '68 and '69, but I think I had just got a little lazy. My father lived his life for me and my accomplishments and I think I let him down. So, when he passed away, I said, 'Time to get back to work'. And of course I really got back to work here at St Andrews.

"When I walked in the press room, one of the guys looked at me and said, 'Jack, that's ten majors. You've only got three more to tie Bobby Jones. I just said, 'Oh'. Honest truth, I never counted them. And nobody had ever mentioned it before. And I feel a little sorry for Tiger [Woods] from that standpoint. They started counting him before he won one. From then on I focused on that number 13 and I broke it at Canterbury in '73. I didn't have the drive I had prior to that."

With his reduced motivation, Jack only went on to capture another six majors, including his last, the 1986 Masters at the age of 46. Given the unremitting commitment and application required to win just one of those titles in a career, Nicklaus's achievement in winning half-a-dozen when not on full power puts his capabilities on the unimaginable level.

Failures have been few and far between, but his most famous recent disappointment was the decision by some councillors of St Andrews to veto the proposal to make him an honorary citizen. He has been a study in composure since the news broke, although it is easy to suspect that, privately, he may feel at least a little let down.

But he may take some consolation from the realisation that it took the guardians of the Auld Grey Toon 31 years to make Nicklaus's hero, Jones, a burgess and Freeman of the City. The great amateur was in a wheelchair by the time his victory on the Old Course in 1927 was recognised.

And Jones himself was, reportedly, the first so feted since Benjamin Franklin, the renaissance man of revolutionary America, who graduated from the University of St Andrews in the 18th century. Clearly, the burghers adhere to the belief that these things shouldn't be rushed.