The Day Jack Nicklaus Almost Ran Me Over

“Don’t worry. I won’t run you over.” – Jack Nicklaus

For several years, my son Chris and I attended the PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando. The tournament features 20 pairings of golfers, one of which must have won a major championship on the PGA Tour. The second golfer in the pairing is usually the major champion’s son, but it can also be his daughter or even his dad.

I always went to see my all-time favorite golfer and sports hero, Jack Nicklaus, while Chris liked to follow Fuzzy Zoeller around the course. What a treat it was to watch the “Golden Bear”, still striping the ball down the middle of the fairway well into his late 70’s. As for Fuzzy, he was a ball of fun and even invited Chris to join him on the tee box for a picture one year.

Another time, Chris and I were walking along the cart path after watching Jack hit another quality shot when suddenly, Chris grabbed my arm to pull me to the side. “Don’t worry, I won’t run you over,” said a high-pitched voice behind me. As a turned around to see who it was, Mr. Nicklaus chuckled and gave me a little wink as he drove past in his cart with a state trooper on the back.

As you might imagine, I was walking on air for the rest of the round because my golf idol – the greatest player in the history of the sport – had just spoken to me directly.

Well, my friend, as down-to-earth as Jack Nicklaus was that day (and Fuzzy Zoeller even more so), the God who created the universe once lowered Himself to take on human flesh and dwell among us. Not only that, but He also bled and died for your sins and mine so that we could spend eternity with Him in heaven.

That would be like Jack Nicklaus handing me one of the six green jackets he won at the Masters tournament and personally escorting me down Magnolia Lane and onto the sacred grounds of Augusta National Golf Club. And not as a one-time guest, mind you, but as a permanent member.

Here is how Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers”, once put it…

“God's making Himself little is the cause of our being made great. We are so little that if God should display His greatness without condescension, we would be trampled under His feet; but God, who must stoop to view the skies and bow to see what angels do, turns His eye yet lower and looks to the lowly and contrite and makes them great.”

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness." Philippians 2:5-7 (BSB)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President