Five of Jack Nicklaus’s Best Sports Illustrated Covers

The Golden Bear won 18 majors and appeared on more than 20 Sports Illustrated covers. Here’s five of our favorites for SI's 70th anniversary.

This year Sports Illustrated celebrates its 70th anniversary, and golf has been a big part of the magazine since its beginning. As part of our celebration the SI Golf staff looked back at the magazine’s rich collection of golf covers—there were more than 150 to peruse—and selected some of the best featuring Jack Nicklaus. What's your favorite? Let us hear it on X, formerly Twitter.

More 70th anniversary covers: SI Golf staff picks

“Golf’s Best Amateur”

Sept. 12, 1960 / John G. Zimmerman/Sports Illustrated

Well, it looks like this kid might be pretty good. When this cover published in September 1960, the 20-year-old Nicklaus had one U.S. Amateur under his belt (1959, with another to come in 1961) and had finished two strokes behind winner Arnold Palmer that summer in the U.S. Open. Also, photos of flying sand from a bunker are cool now but were really something then—SI featured Sam Snead from a bunker in 1956 and again here.

The Big Three

April 4, 1966 / Edward Sorel/Sports Illustrated

To preview the 1966 Masters, SI featured artwork of The Big Three—Jack, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player. Smart choice considering the three combined to win every Masters since 1960, and sure enough Nicklaus would win in ’66 for his third green jacket.

Sportsman of the Year

Dec. 25, 1978 / Lane Stewart/Sports Illustrated

Hardware, anyone? Nicklaus was the 1978 Sportsman of the Year and posed here with trophies from all four majors plus the U.S. Amateur, while wearing a jacket from his Memorial Tournament. He won the British Open that year but ironically missed the cut at the PGA Championship—his only missed cut in a major the entire decade (and his next wouldn’t come until 1985). 

“Jack’s Back”

June 23, 1980 / John Iacono/Sports Illustrated

Less than two years after that Sportsman of the Year, Nicklaus had gone into a bit of a slump (for him)—no wins in 1979 on the PGA Tour with only one top-3 in a major (every other year in the 1970s he either won a major or had multiple top-3s)—and he opened the 1980 major season with a very un-Jack-like T33 at the Masters. But at the U.S. Open at Baltusrol, the Bear roared to victory again and order was restored in golf. He would go on to win the PGA Championship, too.

“One for the Ages”

April 21, 1986 / Michael O'Bryon/Sports Illustrated

Can't have a Nicklaus SI cover list without the 1986 Masters, where he won his sixth green jacket at age 46. Rick Reilly wrote the cover story: “It is a trick no other golf god has pulled, not Palmer or Hogan or Snead or Sarazen. Nicklaus had beaten young men at a young man's game on young men's greens and beaten them when they were at their youthful best.”