With each passing year the list grew longer.   Watson, Miller, Crenshaw.   Today the list includes Woods, Duval, Garcia, and the young men whose swings and skills defy explanation, and still defy my emulation.

I was there in my living room in 1986 when against all golf etiquette I screamed at my television as Seve Ballisteros hooked a ball toward the water on 15 at Augusta.  The announcer simply said, "It's hooking."  And with a million other people watching around the country I literally rose out of my chair and muttered a quiet wish which soon became a shout, "Go in the water!"  followed by a whoop of joy when it did.  I knew then that Nicklaus was going to win another Masters.  I knew, too, somehow that at the age of 46 it would likely be The Bear's last green jacket and his last major.  It was.  And somehow everyone who cheered for Nicklaus that day knew that with a final round 65 he had caught lightning in a bottle one more time.

Amazingly, Nicklaus was in a similar position one more time.  In 1998, he again began a Sunday at Augusta five shots behind the leaders, and as he had in 1986, he began to make a charge as if to say to Tiger Woods who had won his first Masters the previous year, "Hey you young whippersnapper.  You have a long way to go to catch me."  It was not meant to be, but again, nearly every golfing fan knew whom they would have wanted to win.  A measure of Nicklaus's greatness as the best ever perhaps came in an interview the previous day.  He had shot a 64 in the final round in 1986.  When asked what it would take to win again in 1998, Nicklaus simply said, "A 64."  He shot a 68 on that Sunday in 1998.  At the age of 56. He finished in sixth place four shots back.  Yep.  A 64 would have done it one more time.

As a senior player only Hogan had ever done better on a final day in Georgia when he shot a 66 at the age of 57.  It seems as if the great ones always have one more great round in them.  And we fans of the game always kind of hope that for these special few there is just one more time.

Arnold Palmer walked up the 18th fairway of Augusta for the last time this year, after 48 years of walking up that same grassy slope. Four times it was to the cheers afforded a Masters champion.  This last walk was to the cheers afforded a man who was genuinely a good, honest man.  This year the cheers were not for the champion of the past so much as they were in appreciation of a career devoted to something a man loved doing.  These were the cheers of love and thanks for the man who simply became The King.  For Arnold Palmer there will be no one more time and we are grateful that we had this one more.

Nicklaus, too, will make that final walk someday.  We already know that there will be no one more time for him in professional golf, certainly not in the majors.  His back is shot.  He has a ceramic hip.  He's 50 yards shorter than the pros on tour now.  He can't compete anymore.  Still, we hope, we can see him walk up that 18th fairway at Augusta one more time.  The cheers for the greatest ever will be enormous and make grown men weep.  We just want one more time.

We can only wish for some physics professor to invent a time machine.  How did Bobby Jones hit 300 yard drives with hickory shafts?  If Nicklaus was hitting 300 yard drives with a Persimmon head wood, just how far would it go with today's graphite shafts and titanium heads?  Would Hogan finally get a round that he truly thought was possible, to birdie every hole?  Wouldn't it be great to get a Ryder cup team comprised of all those guys in their primes?   Couldn't we see these guys play that way just one more time?

For Tiger Woods and all the great players of today, there is a lot more time.  Sam Snead won 81 PGA tournaments.  Tiger has 50 to go.  Gary Player won a championship in every decade since the 50's.  Tiger has another 3 decades to catch up.  Player also won 167 tournaments around the world.  Tiger is good, but he has about 135 to go yet.  And then there's Nicklaus with the majors.  And that magic lightning in a bottle trick he pulled off in 1986.

I have no doubt that Tiger is capable of doing all those things.   He certainly is the greatest golfer of this generation.  He's got plenty of time to prove he's the best ever.  But every golfer reaches a point where he just can't go against the young Turks any more.  As Trevino said, it becomes a matter of the fat bellies against the flat bellies.

Someday, Tiger may have six green jackets from Augusta.  He'll be about 40-45 years old.  The sports pundits will write him off as too old, out of step with the younger talent.  And he'll amaze us.  He'll be behind on a final Sunday in Georgia when the magnolias are in bloom.  He'll get a couple of birdies.  He'll ignite the crowd.  He'll put it stiff at the 12th.  He'll eagle one of the par fives.  He'll come home in a 65 or 66, and we will have witnesses something magical.  We'll be cheering, weeping, coming out of our seats in our living rooms.  We'll know in the back of our minds that Tiger will have won his seventh Masters, to break Jack's record, and perhaps even the record for the number of majors.

We'll know, too, that it will probably be the last one.  We'll have seen it all, one more time.