Sure, he had not gotten to his Seattle hotel until 3 a.m.

Sure, he was up early yesterday to meet the media, give a talk to Merrill Lynch Invitational sponsors and do a clinic behind the 18th green at Snoqualmie Ridge.

Then he'd play nine holes with those who would pay the most to play with him, and then nine more with John Daly, Nancy Lopez and Juli Inkster.

Hard but glorious work.

This wasn't Pete Rose sitting behind a card table at the fair signing autographs.

This was history's greatest golfer still hitting 270-yard drives, still savoring Monday night's win with Tiger Woods in the Battle at Bighorn TV match against Lee Trevino and Sergio Garcia.

"Can you imagine,'' he said, "I made $350,000 more for winning there than I ever did on the tour.''

Golf treats its elderly well.

In other sports, people don't pay money anymore to see Kareem Abdul-Jabbar drop in sky hooks or Duke Snider swing for the fences. Dick Butkus doesn't go around trying to tackle Marshall Faulk.

While Woods made nine birdies in the prime-time match against Trevino and Garcia, Nicklaus made two that were particularly ill-timed for their opponents.

He and Woods split $1.2 million for their 16 holes of work against Garcia and Trevino, winning 3 and 2. They each gave $100,000 to charity and kept the remaining $500,000.

Officials of yesterday's Merrill Lynch Invitational wouldn't say how much they had paid Nicklaus to spend the day at the Snoqualmie Ridge course he designed for $1 million.

But in 1997, they paid $100,000 to get him in their tournament.

Nicklaus, 62, does it all. Imagine a baseball player who in his later years designed stadiums, manufactured equipment and did clinics, not to mention played in a legitimate league for old guys.

Nicklaus has always been willing to be the spokesman for the game he dominated. He doesn't shy away from giving his opinions -- "I think I was the best player, and Tiger Woods thinks he is the best player, and that's the way it should be.''

But he doesn't take himself too seriously.

On a par 5 at Bighorn, he said he walked up to Woods' caddie and asked, facetiously, if Woods had chosen a 6-iron for his second shot, a 209-yard carry to the hole.

"No, a 7-iron,'' answered Steve Williams.

"It was unbelievable to me how far those two guys hit the ball,'' Nicklaus said of Woods and Garcia. "The club-head speed ... I'd hit a 7-iron 30 yards short of the 200-yard marker, and they'd hit it halfway to the 250-yard marker.''

Despite his place in golf's history, Nicklaus doesn't hide his vulnerability as an aging athlete.

As he hit balls that seemed to fly to the feet of the Cascades, he talked about his back problems, about replacing his hip, about getting old.

"For years my hip was bone on bone,'' he said of a condition that was treated with massive doses of cortisone in the '60s and never got better.

But after his hip was replaced, everything else began to ache. He said he does an exercise routine daily to keep his back functioning, and has since 1989.

In some ways, the theme of the Merrill Lynch Invitational was vulnerability. Daly talked about two years without alcohol, and then, after a very entertaining clinic, said he was off "for a smoke and a Diet Coke.''

Lopez and Inkster talked about trying to be mothers and athletes. Lopez, in fact, will cut way back next year to spend more time with her three daughters.

"I'm not going to miss any more recitals,'' she said.

They all agreed, despite their successes, that kids shouldn't be pushed into sports, not even golf.

"Let kids play,'' said Nicklaus. "People ask me when kids are ready to play on a golf course and I say when they can play three holes without chasing a frog.''

Nicklaus said he didn't accept a golf scholarship to Ohio State because he wanted to be there as a regular student.

"Making kids concentrate and focus on a sport is for the birds,'' he said. "Let them play all the sports. You can't tell them what to do; they'll tell you what they want to do.''

The man who teaches Nicklaus, Jim Flick, talked about our obsession with the perfect swing at the expense of "feeling what is happening.'' The swing, said Flick, makes the shoulders turn and the weight shift, and not the other way around.

It made sense to the audience of golfers perched on a hillside. At times, they looked like a chorus line trying to mimic the instruction they were getting.

Golfers still think they can play when baseball players have long ago given it up. All of which has made an extended and happy life for golf's greatest player of the last century, as well as enabling him to play with the greatest of this one.

Blaine Newnham: 206-464-2364 or bnewnham@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.