Jack Nicklaus from Masters: Covers LIV Golf, Winston Churchill, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy & more

Before hitting his ceremonial shot at Augusta National Thursday, Jack Nicklaus had a warning.

"Watch out on the left and right," said Nicklaus, who has won 18 major championships, including six green jackets.

Tom Watson followed Nicklaus.

"Jack, you never hit a hook off this tee in your life," Watson, 74, said.

One tradition like none other when it comes to the Masters is the ceremonial tee shot and news conference that follows. Nicklaus, at 84, continues in his role as an Honorary Starter, even if it is one of the few times he swings a club each year.

Nicklaus, the North Palm Beach resident, then covered a variety of subjects during a new conference with Watson and Jupiter Island's Gary Player.

On what Nicklaus would like to see when it comes to PGA Tour, LIV Golf

"The best outcome is the best players play against each other all the time. That's what I feel about it. And how it's going, I don't know … I don't want to be privy to it. I talked to (PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan) not very long ago, and I said, 'Jay, 'don't tell me what's going on because I don't want to have to lie to the press and people that ask me questions.' I said, 'How are you doing?' He said, 'We're doing fine.' I said, 'Okay, that's all I want to know.'

"If Jay thinks we're doing fine, we'll get there, I think we'll get there. And I certainly hope that happens, the sooner the better."

On if he believes Tiger Woods can win another major

"Tiger is quite capable of winning. I said in here 20 years ago, Tiger had a chance to win more than Arnold (Palmer) and I had put together, and that would have been 10. And you know, he probably did if he had not been injured.

"I think he's got a tough way to go to win. I think he'll certainly hit the ball well enough to do so. Whether he physically can handle what has to happen with it, and he's also got to be able to score better than everybody else, too. That's part of the deal. But anyway, he's a very special, talented athlete, and I wish him well."

On Winston Churchill after Player said the British PM was one of his heroes

"Gary mentioned Churchill. Churchill was a golfer. He played golf on a vacation one time, and he got back to Parliament and they said, 'Mr. Churchill, you played golf on your vacation? Tell us about the game of golf?' He says, 'Golf is a game in which one plays and takes a very small ball and tries to put it into an even smaller hole with an implement singularly ill-designed for the purpose.'

"I always loved that quote. It is exactly basically to most people what the game of golf is."

On what he learned from his 19 runner-up finishes in majors

"You try to learn from what you do. You know, I think that Tom got me on a few occasions, and probably more than I probably got him as we came head-to-head down to the bottom. But you know, each one of those occasions, it was generally one of us made a mistake of some kind.

"(1977) here, Tom birdied 17 and I had a shot, 6-iron into 18. I had 163 yards to where the pin was, and I had a 6-iron in my hand and wanted to hit it to the right of the hole, and all of a sudden he hit it in. And I changed my mind, and I shouldn't have. So I made a mistake, put it in the bunker and lost the tournament, or lost a chance to tie. Tom just had to bogey the last hole to win.

"At Pebble Beach, Tom took it away from me. I remember … Jack Whitaker was interviewing me on the 18th green. He says, 'Well, it's great to be in the company of somebody who won five U.S. Opens.' And all of a sudden there's this roar at the 17th green and the impossible chip that he hit that went in the hole.

"What did I learn? Probably not enough."

On what he would do after he shanked a shot, like his 8-iron at the 1964 Masters

"Go play the next one. What can you do? You hit it. You've got to go chase it. There isn't anything you can do. It's a little embarrassing."

On his 'other' embarrassing moment in golf

"It was my birthday, I don't know what year it was, but we were at Pebble Beach. We were having a little group together down at the room. And a friend of mine calls, 'Hey, Jack, somebody wants to say happy birthday to you.' And a guy got on the phone and sang 'Happy Birthday' all the way through, and I could barely hear. He said, 'Happy birthday, Jack.'

"And I gave it real businesslike, as I might in those days, 'Who am I speaking with, please?'

'It's Bing Crosby, Jack. Happy Birthday.'

"I'm sitting there listening to Bing Crosby sing Happy Birthday and I don't even know it."

On how many times he completely whiffed on a shot

"I did it in the British Open at the 17th hole at Muirfield. I went under that one. I did one at, I think it was the 15th hole at Sandwich. It was (I) love the left side of the green, in the high grass, took a wedge shot and ball dropped into my divot."

On if he thinks Rory McIlroy will win a Masters for his career Grand Slam

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"The answer to that I think is yes. … As he gets older, it gets tougher because all of a sudden it's a conversation. (Is) Rory McIlroy good enough to win the Grand Slam, absolutely. But they have got to do it, and they all know that, and do I think Rory will win here? Yeah. He could win this year. He could win next year. He's just too talented not to. But then again … you just never know."

On whether he'll ever visit St. Andrews again

"I frankly don't have any plans to be at St Andrews again. When I retired in 2005, I had no plans to go back. I said, 'You know, I finished, I retired from St Andrews, I don't want to go back. I've had enough.'

And then they made me an honorary citizen, and there's no way I'm going to say no to that. So I went back two years ago for that. And it was a wonderful honor, I love St Andrews. I've had great memories. I don't want to go back at my age and tarnish memories. The only thing I can do is do something worse. So I want to leave it .. it was very special. I want to leave it very special."

On the game of golf

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"I think that we all … (tried) to play as much around the world as we could. We tried to promote the game wherever we could to grow the game. It's all about growing and bringing people into the game in the right fashion. Golf is a great teacher, and Tom is absolutely dead right. You're responsible for your own mistakes, and you can absolutely be proud of the accomplishments that you make.

"The game is a great game. It's the only game that I knew. It's how I ended up playing golf. I played all sports, and the one that I found that I could put as much effort as I wanted to put in, I would be rewarded from the effort that I put. And I don't think there's any other game that is as great as golf in that way.

"And that's why I love it. That's why I played it. That's why I played it all my life. That's why I'm still involved with it."

Tom D'Angelo is a senior sports columnist and golf writer for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Masters: Jack Nicklaus talks about LIV Golf, Winston Churchill, Tiger Woods