A couple of interesting articles on very good golfers at different stages of their careers came across my desk yesterday.

Jaime Diaz – consistently one of Golf Digest’s best writers – wrote this Golf Digest article on his conversation with Jack Nicklaus in connection with the Golden Bear’s 70 birthday (H/T Geoff Shackelford). Although Nicklaus still holds the record for major championship victories at 18, he tells Diaz that he now thinks he could have accomplished substantially more if he had really applied himself (he believes he left about one third of his effort on the table). Nicklaus goes on to note that his failure to learn proper pitching technique until relatively late in his career cost him several major victories.

The other insightful article is this Sean Martin/GolfWeek piece on the hottest golfer on the PGA Tour this year – the relatively unheralded Matt Kuchar, who lost his Tour card earlier in the decade and appeared to fall off the golf map after a stellar amateur and collegiate career.

Martin does a good job of explaining the swing change that saved Kuchar’s career. And as with many things in golf, there is a Houston connection to Kuchar’s conversion.

When his golf game was bottoming out five years ago, Kuchar came to Houston to see Jim Hardy, who sort of specializes in golf swing reclamation projects.

Kuchar initially worked with Hardy, who then introduced him to his acolyte, Chris O’Connell. From there, as Martin explains in the article, O’Connell helped Kuchar change his swing to one that rotates much more around his body rather than up and down along the target line. As Jeff Ritter pointed out here awhile back, the swing changes that Tiger Woods is now making with his new swing coach (Sean Foley) are quite similar to the ones that Kuchar made.

It took a couple of years, but Kuchar has now fully embraced the swing change and the results have been amazing. With his win last weekend at the Barclay’s, Kuchar is now first in money earned this season on the Tour, has now finished in the top 20 in 11 of his last 13 tournaments and has the most top 10 finishes this season on the Tour. Not surprisingly, Kuchar will be one of the members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team next month.

Good thing he came to Houston, don’t you think?