Hats off to Jack

The Golf Channel held a love-fest in honor of Jack Nicklaus yesterday, celebrating his 70th birthday with a barrage of shows and tributes.

The evening lineup started with a half-hour feature on "the top 10 highlights" of the Golden Bear's career. An hour-long show called Planet Jack followed focusing on Nicklaus' travels around the world in his second career as a golf course designer. They were followed by an hour-long highlights show looking back on Nicklaus' improbable Masters victory in 1986 at age 46.

Even in the next show, scheduled to be coverage of the Bob Hope Classic, Nicklaus grabbed center stage when rain canceled second-round play in La Quinta, Calif. To fill the time slot, the Golf Channel allowed the Hope coverage to morph into another tribute to Nicklaus as a bevy of broadcasters and analysts discussed his unmatched career and the many memories they had of him.

Oldgolfdawg didn't watch all of these offerings. Though a fan of the Golden Bear, he also had to check out the Lakers-Cavs game featuring a showdown between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. But as soon as that game was over, it was back to the Golf Channel to watch more tributes to Jack.

The amazing thing about the Golf Channel's nearly six hours of tributes to Nicklaus last night is the fact that it still just barely scratched the surface on the subject matter. The towheaded kid from Upper Arlington has come a long way since shooting a 51 in his first nine-hole round at Scioto Country Club.