Just got to this topic belatedly. Great thread. Pulled out Herb Wind’s The Story of American Golf to get his contemporary views of Nicklaus and Locke. Quoting Locke on cautious play:
Didn’t he go for birdies? he was asked. Of course he went for birdies, Bobby replied, but not foolhardily from the tee when there was sizable chance that he would lose his par as well as his birdie if the difficult shot failed to come off. “And suppose I had cleared the trap and my ball had ended up seven or ten feet from the pin, what advantage, really, would I have gained? My shot, my safe shot as you call it, left me no more than twenty or twenty-five feet from the hole. If I am putting I figure to make the twenty-five-foot putts as regularly as I would make the eight-foot putts. One put is not more difficult than the other. The only difference, old boy, is that one putt is longer than the other.”
Sounds like a confident putter to me.
As for Nicklaus, Wind points out that Jack did not take the tour by storm from the start. It took several years, and during this time JN lost his share with three-putts that we tend to forget about in light of his great clutch putting later in his career (including some short putts under three feet that Woods never misses).
I was a kid back in those days and didn’t give a hoot about golf. About the only thing I remember about Jack’s putting (besides making some huge ones) is that he seemed to have a different putter in use from week to week, year to year. Maybe it was simply to sell more putters or a tactic to improve, but in this Woods seems more confident of his tools. Perhaps another perspective on Nicklaus’ putting skills is found in the consensus opinion that he was no match for Tiger in his short game chipping and sand play. By his own admission, he really didn’t start working on improving his short game until he was 40 because his wedge and iron play was so good he was always on the greens. So, to win as much as he did with an average chipping and sand game, he must have been an outstanding putter.
The impression I get is that there was nobody hotter for a decade than Locke, much of it in Europe. Nobody better over an entire career than Nicklaus (so far). And nobody better from the start of his career onwards than Woods. Add in Woods’ total short game (off topic) and I think he’s the all-time champion.