Our greatest sportsman says goodbye at the cradle of golf.

The greatest sportsman of our lifetime spent about an hour waiting out a rain delay, with five or six fans, near the sixth fairway of famed Congressional Country Club in 1995. They all were swapping stories — okay, mostly listening to his stories — while the fans took turns holding steady a gallery stake on which the great man was pulling to keep his back limber. He was so unassuming that it was like talking to a neighbor over the hedgerow: approachable, comfortable in his own skin. But goodness, did his back — its disks abused by so many golf shots, its nerves weakened by a childhood polio scare — ever need the help!

Nearly seven years earlier, when Jack Nicklaus played the ceremonial opening round at the English Turn golf course he had just built to host the New Orleans stop on the PGA tour, his back was so bad that he had trouble hitting his opening tee shot more than 200 yards. At age 48 then, he was telling people his back was so beyond repair that he might hang up his golf spikes for good. But he kept on playing, the entire 18 holes, all the while chatting amiably with whichever one or two of the hundreds of fans on hand happened to fall in step beside him. By the 15th hole, a daunting par 5 with an island green, he was loose enough to reach the putting surface with two mammoth shots.

Less than four weeks after that round at English Turn on Nov. 1, 1988, Nicklaus began a routine of daily, vigorous back-strengthening exercises, more than a full hour a day, every single day, for some 2,400 days up to that rain delay at Congressional — and beyond. He added two U.S. Senior Open Titles, six other senior "majors," and, at age 58, a final-day charge to finish in an impressive sixth place in the 1998 Masters — ahead of young defending champion Tiger Woods, ahead of Phil Mickelson, ahead of reigning U.S. Open Champion Ernie Els. All of this on a rickety and painful back and a hip so degraded it soon would need total replacement with some new-fangled alloy.

Clearly, this is a man who does not easily give up top-flight golf competition.

Just as clearly, though, he has chosen well the venue for his final major round. Well, indeed, but in several respects rather oddly. After all, the Old Course at St. Andrews, where the British Open starts today, does not (on paper) seem like a Nicklaus-type golf haven.

Even the most casual of golf fans knows that the Old Course at St. Andrews is the ancient "home of golf," the place where grazing sheep and nature's own whimsy preceded Old Tom Morris in helping design the links. But Nicklaus's own golf course architecture tends toward the heavily engineered, massive-earth-moving variety.

Nicklaus at his heyday was best known for his toweringly high golf shots. High-ball hitters usually have trouble handling wind — but the wind off of St. Andrews Bay and the nearby Firth of Tay can be so fierce that not even pounds sterling used as ball marks are safe (one of mine blew 100 feet across the green before coming to rest in a swale).

On stateside courses, Nicklaus has been known to disfavor "blind" shots where the target can't be seen. But at St. Andrews, the gorse is so high that tee shots on six straight holes are mere matters of faith, with the fairways utterly hidden from view by the bushes.

Nicklaus's course designs tend to feature well-defined greens, sometimes tending toward the smallish, heavily guarded by hazards. At St. Andrews, most greens arise almost unobtrusively from the fairways, but sprawl to relatively massive proportions.

So St. Andrews doesn't seem like a favored playground for Nicklaus. Yet to hear him tell it, it was love at first sight: "The first time I went around the golf course, I said, 'Man, this is great.' I loved it."

So this man known for his directness loves a course known for quirkiness. This golfer known for brute strength loves a course requiring artistry. This conservative middle-American, apparently open and uncomplicated, loves a course full of diabolically hidden bunkers where flinty Scotsmen ply their trade.

But Jack Nicklaus always was perceptive. He recognized that this place, this old course, is a proving ground that rewards intelligence and excellence, nerves and talent. The townspeople who walk the narrow street by the 18th fairway — and stop to applaud a good shot pulled off by anyone who happens to be finishing an ordinary round — appreciate the game for the game's own sake, respect good character, and will warm to anybody willing to endure uncomplainingly the rub of the green.

They took to Jack Nicklaus immediately, even when American fans still resented his challenge to King Arnold Palmer. They cheered and admired his sportsmanship when he lost and his graciousness when he won. And he in turn took immediately to them. He won two British Opens at St. Andrews. The university there granted him a rare honorary degree. And the Royal Bank of Scotland has put Nicklaus this week on its five-pound note, an honor bestowed on no other living person except the Queen and Queen Mother.

So it's no wonder that Nicklaus chose St. Andrews for his farewell to major tournament golf. Great champions love great stages.