It's really pretty simple: If you are going to enter a tournament, finish it. If you are not going to finish a tournament, don't enter it. And if Mahan had earlier decided that he would withdraw from a tournament in this situation, he shouldn't have entered any tournament where this was a possibility...even if it meant skipping 3 tournaments before the due date. You just don't enter a tournament then drop out of it....short of a death in the immediate family.
Also, regardless of what Mahan's caddy says, I find it hard to believe that doctors who are monitoring women constantly in this situation would totally miss a delivery date by three weeks that late in the cycle. Certainly, they had to have informed Mahan & his wife that this delivery date had some reasonable possibility of happening within five days by the day before that tournament began. I'm not saying that the doctor would have known exactly when the delivery date would be....only that I don't believe this happened as something the Mahans felt was completely impossible when he made the decision the Wednesday before that tournament begin to play the next day. By that Wednesday, their doctor would surely have detected movement and alerted them that there was a possibility that this baby could come during the next five days.
And, in any event, neither Bob Knight nor Hunter Mahan has anything to do with the comparison of Jack Nicklaus & Tiger Woods.
Bringing up these two men only serves as a convenient diversion.