Prologue
Athens
THE ELDERS AT the Athens Country Club had cobbled together a big day to
honor one of their own, Dow Finsterwald, and needed to fill the last slot on
their VIP list. They wanted a man and settled for a boy instead.
Fred Swearingen, club president, had been struck by a sudden
thought. He would call up this hot-shot kid in Columbus and ask him if he
would care to play eighteen holes of golf with Finsterwald, the brand-new
winner of the PGA Championship, and Dow's good friend Arnold Palmer,
brand-new winner of the Masters.
Swearingen found a listing for Charlie Nicklaus's drugstore.
Charlie answered the phone.
"Is your boy interested in playing with the PGA champ and the
Masters champ?" Swearingen asked.
"I'm sure he is," Charlie said. "He's right here. I'll put him on."
Without blinking, Jack Nicklaus told Swearingen he'd be happy to
bring his game to the southeast corner of the state. "I'll get my dad to take
me," Jack said.
He was eighteen years old in September of 1958, and his father
would drive him to his first face-to-face encounter with Palmer, who was just
days removed from his twenty-ninth birthday and just months removed from
his first victory at Augusta National, the one that hinted at the dawn of a new
era in professional golf.
This wouldn't be the first time young Nicklaus had seen Palmer in
the flesh. At the 1954 Ohio amateur championship outside Toledo, Jackie
was a fourteen-year-old qualifier who stumbled upon a dark, solitary figure on
the Sylvania Country Club driving range, raging at ball after ball in a biblical
rain.
Nicklaus didn't know the man's identity; he was mesmerized all
the same. Under cover, from about forty yards away, Nicklaus stared at the
stranger in the rain suit for forty-five minutes.
Palmer was western Pennsylvania born and bred, made eligible for
the Ohio event by his time in Cleveland as a member of the coast guard and,
of all things, the fraternity of frustrated paint salesmen. He was pounding his
nine-irons, making them turn right to left, commanding them with a
musculature that belonged to a middleweight fighter. In his mind's eye
Nicklaus saw a relentless series of angry line drives that never rose more
than six feet off the ground.
This was two days before the start of the state championship, and
Nicklaus was the only other competitor on the course. The storms hadn't let
up. Jackie was soaked, but he couldn't tear himself away from a scene that
could've been cut right out of a Tiger Woods credit-card ad nearly half a
century later.
There are no rainy days.
Palmer didn't even know young Nicklaus was there. Arnold was
unwittingly giving the heir to his future throne a lesson in hard-earned royalty.
Nicklaus loved the raw commitment, the brute strength. He had never seen
anyone attack a golf ball quite like this.
Finally, Jackie stepped inside the clubhouse. "Who is that guy out
on the driving range?" he asked. "Man, is he strong."
A voice identified Palmer as the defending state champ.
Palmer would make it two in a row long after Nicklaus lost to
someone named Dale Bittner on the nineteenth hole. Bittner was a fleeting
thought, gone just like that. Nicklaus went home to tell friends and neighbors
all about the golfer swinging in the rain, the carnival strongman who crushed
opponents with his frighteningly large hands.
Four years later, when Charlie Nicklaus made the seventy-five-
mile drive with his growing boy for the date with Palmer, Jack had left his awe
back at home, left it there in a closet cluttered with everything else he'd
outgrown.
"The guy had basically just started winning majors," Nicklaus
said. "Did I know Arnold Palmer was a good player? You're darn right. But
was I ever in awe of what he did? Probably not."
No, the teenage Nicklaus wasn't short on confidence. He had built
himself a remarkable youth record.
He'd won the Ohio State Open as a sixteen-year-old competing
against pros. He'd already played in two U.S. Opens, making the cut at
Southern Hills in Tulsa. He'd won a national Jaycees championship, and he'd
contended in his first pro tour event, standing one shot off the lead after two
rounds of the 1958 Rubber City Open before placing twelfth.
Jack wasn't about to make any fuss over Palmer, who had "only"
one major professional championship to his name to go with the one U.S.
Amateur title he captured in 1954. Nicklaus would let the people of Athens do
the fussin' for him.
Palmer was quite a catch for a community in the Appalachian
foothills, a college town of fifteen thousand residents, about half of them
students at Ohio University. To the coal miners and farmers of the depressed
pockets surrounding the sanctuary of higher education, Palmer's arrival,
according to George Strode, sports editor of the Athens Messenger, "was
like the second coming of Christ."
The son of an Athens attorney, Finsterwald was the one who
booked the main attraction. His friendship with Palmer was born of the
matches they played as college rivals, Dow a star at Ohio U., Arnold a star
at Wake Forest.
Palmer shot 29 across the first nine holes they shared. In one
Ohio-Wake match, with Arnold and Dow tied at the turn, Palmer declared, "I'll
bet you a tub of beer I shoot 32 or better on the back side."
Palmer shot 31. The pecking order in their relationship established
forevermore, Palmer and Finsterwald became what one pro described
as "asshole buddies."
Dow told everyone to count Arnold in. "Give him a call,"
Swearingen said.
"Hell, give him a call yourself," Finsterwald responded. "Here's his
number. He's there right now."
Sure enough, Arnold was home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and
eager to participate in a day to honor Athens's favorite son. Swearingen told
Palmer he'd send him a plane ticket, fly him into Columbus, and pick him up
at the airport for the drive into town.
"You've got an airport in Athens, don't you?" Palmer asked.
"Well, we've got a landing strip at the university," Swearingen
answered.
"I don't need a ticket then. I'll fly right in."
If Palmer hadn't chosen golf as his vocation, he likely would've
become a commercial pilot. At first he was scared to death to fly. He was an
amateur golfer en route to Chattanooga on a DC-3 once when he was startled
by a ball of fire rolling up and down the aisle. "I immediately found out it was
static electricity," Palmer said, "and that's when I decided I would learn to fly
and learn to understand what was happening."
He overcame his fear of flying out of necessity—he wanted to
spend as much time at home with his family as he could, and driving from
tour stop to tour stop was no way to accomplish that.
So he earned his pilot's license. Over time the only thing Palmer
loved as much as the sight of his ball soaring toward the green was the sight
of a plane streaking through the sky.
He flew into Athens with his wife, Winnie, and Swearingen picked
them up in his station wagon and tossed Palmer's Wilson bag into the back
of the car. He drove Arnold and Winnie to the home of Jean Sprague,
Finsterwald's cousin, where they would spend the night and then rise early
on the morning of September 25, 1958, so Arnold could pay tribute to his
best friend and play golf with Jack Nicklaus for the very first time.
Swearingen would plan the day around a parade and a match
involving two-man teams. The fourth competitor was a local amateur, Howard
Baker Saunders, a six-time Southeastern Ohio Golfing Association champ
out of Gallipolis and a lead player on the Ohio State team fifteen years before
Nicklaus filled the same role. Saunders would've turned pro if he hadn't
suffered from osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone that left him with a bad
limp. With one leg shorter than the other, Saunders wore one shoe with a five-
inch heel to level his playing field.
He would ride along in the Finsterwald parade. Court Street was
packed for the morning festivities, as Swearingen celebrated his own birthday
with a gift to Dow: a July Fourth supply of marching bands. The route was
less than a mile long and yet stamped by so many monuments to
Americana—a family department store, a courthouse, an armory, a car
dealership, a bookstore, Swearingen's sporting goods store, and the bars
forever kept busy by hard-partying Ohio U. boys and girls.
This could've been a homecoming football parade. Finsterwald,
Palmer, Nicklaus, and Saunders rode in their own convertibles, tops down,
waving like returning war heroes at a delirious crowd of twelve hundred. The
mayor presented Finsterwald with a key to the city. Speeches were given,
autographs were signed, pictures were taken. Michael DiSalle, busy running
a successful campaign for the governorship of Ohio, joked that he had picked
the wrong day to be in Athens.
No politician could match the golfers' star power. And nobody
cared that more people had come to see Arnold than to see Dow.
When the hourlong ceremony was complete, Swearingen had the
golfers go fishing before it was time to head to the club. He grabbed some
rods out of his store; gave them to Finsterwald, Palmer, and Nicklaus; and
steered them to a pond full of catfish.
Finsterwald and Palmer knew their way around the hills and
streams of Appalachia, "but Jack was a city boy," Swearingen said.
Jack cast his line over the hillside and got it caught in some
rocks. He refused to go down and loosen it: he was afraid a snake or two
might be waiting for him.
"No, Jack wasn't roaming any hills in Columbus," Swearingen
said. "The only hills he ever roamed were at Scioto Country Club in that real
nice suburb of his, Upper Arlington."
Over time Nicklaus would grow sensitive to any talk that he was a
rich little daddy's boy, especially when the talk was inspired by Palmer's
past. Arnold was the son of a greenskeeper, the sod-stained child on the
other side of the country club glass. People adored his Horatio Alger tale and
assumed Nicklaus never spent a day of his youth with any tool in his hands
that didn't come out of a shiny new golf bag.
But as an eighteen-year-old prodigy driven by blind ambition,
Nicklaus carried something of a pauper's chip on his shoulder. Remarkably
enough, the kid refused to treat his first meeting with Palmer as a brush with
uncommon skill and fame. He merely saw the reigning king of Augusta
National as just another hurdle to clear, just another guy to beat.
"I don't think he was so excited to play [Palmer]," Swearingen
said.
Nestled atop a sun-splashed hill, five miles from the parade route,
Athens Country Club was a playground for the university professors and
administrators, and for the doctors, dentists, and businessmen who had
them as patients and clients. Theirs was a simple nine-hole Donald Ross
course, with alternate tees used for scoring on the second nine. When the
layout was doubled up, the test measured 6,382 yards and a par of 72.
The course was lined with pine trees and graced by the acoustic
charm of chirping birds. With a single dirt road running into the club, barely
wide enough for two cars passing in opposite directions, Athens hardly
looked like the center of the golf universe.
But with the heart of the tour season already accounted for, this
was the biggest game on the schedule. The skies were benign and the
temperatures were in the upper sixties. Somehow, some way, a gallery of
about fifteen hundred fans poured onto the scene. Fans parked along the
seventh fairway. In fact, they parked in the yards of everyone who lived just off
the golf course.
The sides were picked, and Palmer—considered the strongest
player—was paired with Nicklaus—considered the weakest, if only because
of his age. The four participants were warming up when the mischievous
forces of fate intervened.
Nicklaus and Palmer would go head-to-head after all.
As Palmer and Finsterwald were swatting practice drives from the
elevated tee on the 321-yard first hole, Nicklaus and Saunders were sent to
the nearby ninth green to hit balls toward the ninth tee. Jack swung away
with all his teenage might and immediately caused a stir.
A witness approached Kermit Blosser, the Ohio U. golf coach and
de facto master of ceremonies. "Hey," the man told Blosser, "you ought to
get that Nicklaus kid to hit against Arnold on number one. He's really moving
it down there."
Blosser knew all about Jack; he'd tried and failed to sign him to
play for Ohio U. Charlie Nicklaus had already locked in on a vision for his
son's future. Jack was attending Ohio State, Charlie told Blosser, because
he wanted his boy in OSU's pharmacology program.
Blosser figured he'd send Jack to the school of hard knocks
instead. He summoned Nicklaus to the first tee, where Palmer was flexing
his comic book arms. The golf coach had a microphone, and he was about to
become a play-by-play man. A short, precise driver known for his cautious,
anti-Arnold game, Finsterwald stepped to the side as Palmer accepted the
good-natured challenge. This was a heavyweights-only fight, and Finsterwald
didn't make the cut.
The fairways were dry and running hard, allowing the mad
bombers to add an extra fifteen or twenty yards to their prodigious drives.
Palmer and Nicklaus took a few warm-up swings. Jack's technically sound
form appeared torn from the pages of a manual, with one exception: his right
elbow flew away from his side, like that of a free-throw shooter gone awry,
and Palmer couldn't help but notice the flaw.
Arnold wasn't in any position to mock another player's
mechanics. His swing was punctuated by the least aesthetically pleasing
follow-through in golf. In the immediate wake of impact, Palmer abruptly
jerked his club above his head and appeared to begin wrestling with a
rattlesnake, a gushing water hose, or both.
Nicklaus, meanwhile, enjoyed a full follow-through that featured
none of Palmer's gyrations. Their games were as different as their
backgrounds and body types. Nicklaus came from German stock, Palmer
from Scotch, Irish, and English. Nicklaus had thighs that looked like redwood
trunks; Palmer had hands that could crush a watermelon.
On this day in Athens, Palmer showed up tan and fit. As always,
he was distracting the ladies with his rugged, man-of-the-earth looks.
Palmer carried himself with a John Wayne swagger and an Errol
Flynn flair. He didn't walk to his tee shots; he marched. After surveying his
target and flicking his cigarette to the grass, Palmer approached his ball as if
he were a cowboy loading up at the O.K. Corral.
He'd hitch up his pants, puff out his chest, and defy the smooth
and effortless strokes of the greats before him. Palmer wasn't interested in
the sweet science of Sam Snead's swing, nor was he hoping to match Ben
Hogan's relentless quest for technical perfection.
He was just trying to land his ball on the moon.
Nicklaus? He looked like an extra on Palmer's movie set. "A little
plump kid with real short hair," Swearingen said. The blond Nicklaus walked
around with a God-awful buzz cut, and his pale skin could blotch up in the
summertime; it would never accommodate Palmer's even tan.
Arnold and Jack both stood about five feet ten, so they looked
each other squarely in the eye when they shook hands on a tee box for the
first time. For all of Palmer's smoky, leading-man looks, Nicklaus might've
had an advantage here: even as a kid his piercing blue eyes had already cut
through many a foe on the first tee.
Blosser had arranged for four of his Ohio U. players to serve as
caddies, and he had Dow Reichley, Bill Santor, Larry Snyder, and Charlie
Vandlik make their way down to the first green to shag the driving-contest
balls. "I know they had a bet," Reichley said of Palmer and Nicklaus. "I don't
know how much it was for."
Something more important than a few bucks was on the line here.
Palmer was a pro, Nicklaus an amateur. Palmer was a man, Nicklaus a boy.
Hundreds of fans closed in around the first tee box, giving it the
feel of a boxing ring. The golfers and fans looked out from their elevated perch
at a hole that turned slightly left to right. On the right side of the fairway, rows
of pine trees stretched out toward the green. Two bunkers were lurking to the
left of the putting surface, one about thirty yards short of the fringe.
The third green sat thirty-five downhill yards behind the first green.
Nobody in his right mind believed either competitor could drive his ball there,
not with the equipment in play—persimmon clubs and balata balls.
Nicklaus took the honors, and his first drive was a monster. "He
hit it so high," Santor said, "you could barely see it up in the sky."
The ball cleared the first green and stopped rolling only after it had
traveled 356 yards. Santor picked up Nicklaus's ball on the third green.
The caddie knew a thing or two about Jack's tape-measure power.
As an entering high school senior in 1955, Santor had played in the same
field with Nicklaus, an underclassman, in the state Jaycees tournament.
Santor placed second. Nicklaus only beat him by twelve strokes.
Palmer had no such intimate knowledge of Nicklaus and his
game. He'd heard a few vague tales of the boy wonder from the Columbus
area, sweeping through the amateur ranks, but Palmer had enough to worry
about with his own generation to lose any sleep over the next one.
Only in Athens the future was suddenly now. Palmer teed up his
ball, knowing he had almost no chance of matching the kid's first drive. He
lashed at it with vile intentions, hoping against hope to power his ball down to
the third green.
It stayed low, like most Palmer drives. Much lower than
Nicklaus's ball.
"Arnold hit a big hook," Swearingen said. "It hit short of the first
green and bounced downhill to the left."
Nicklaus ripped off his second drive. As he stood near the first
green, Santor squinted to track the ball's high, majestic flight. Again,
Nicklaus had placed his drive on the third green, some 356 yards away.
Again, Palmer failed to match it, unleashing another low,
screaming hook shot into oblivion.
"Jack was out-hitting Arnold by thirty-five, forty yards," Santor
said. "I could hear the crowd yelling around the first tee."
His face three different shades of red, Palmer shot an incredulous
look at Nicklaus. "My God," he said. "No man hits it that far. It's men like you
who make problems for us."
Blosser was dumbfounded. He had never seen a player of any age
put a drive from the first tee onto the third green, never mind two drives. The
de facto master of ceremonies decided to make a show of it.
"Mr. Palmer," Blosser barked loudly enough for the masses to
hear, "can you tell me why you're hooking that ball so violently?"
"Because I'm trying to hit it too goddamn hard just to keep up with
this kid," Palmer responded.
It was a lost cause. Palmer would later claim he won this long-ball
contest, but witnesses reported the players hit about fifteen drives each, and
with the aid of some friendly bounces Arnold kept up with Jack maybe three
or four times.
Palmer was embarrassed, and a little pissed that Blosser called
extra attention to that embarrassment. But he still had the regulation best-
ball match coming up, and even if Nicklaus would be his teammate, he could
still outplay him. Still show the boy what was what.
Blosser's players drew straws to see who would caddie for whom.
Snyder got Palmer, Vandlik got Nicklaus, Santor got Finsterwald, and
Reichley got Saunders.
Finsterwald and Saunders represented the favorites, as most
assumed that young Nicklaus would amount to a handicap for Palmer. Dow
knew every blade of grass and grain of sand on the Ross design; he owned
the course record of 63. Palmer had never seen the place, but he caught a
major break in the form of his caddie, Snyder, the Athens member who had
just won his fifth consecutive club championship. Snyder was in command of
whatever local knowledge Palmer might need.
All but emasculated by Nicklaus in the game before the game,
Palmer opened the team match with a fury, hitting his first approach shot to
within a foot of the hole, tapping in for the easy three while the others made
par. Palmer then added birdies on two of the next three holes.
He chipped his third shot to within two feet for birdie at the par-five
second, then birdied the par-four fourth after driving his ball 290 yards into the
fairway and then landing his approach three feet from the hole.
If Palmer couldn't beat Nicklaus in the driving contest, he would
make damn sure everyone saw him carry Nicklaus during this match.
Snyder held the nine-hole record of 29 at Athens, and he was
certain that would go down in flames. Palmer would solicit his advice on
strategy. Sometimes he listened to Snyder; sometimes he didn't. "He'd
say, 'Larry, what would you hit here?'" Snyder said. "I'd tell him it was 175
yards and I'd probably hit the five-iron. And he'd hit the four-iron and almost
knock it in the hole for a gimme birdie.
"On the sixth hole, par five, he hooked his tee shot over into the
rough. He says, 'How far away?' I say, 'Probably two hundred yards. I'd hit
the four-wood.' And he hit the three-iron or four-iron and knocked it on the
green."
Palmer dropped a twenty-five-foot putt on the 476-yard hole to get
his eagle three. He was already playing a game the kid on his bag could
hardly believe.
Snyder had been caddying for ten years. He used to shag balls for
Finsterwald for eight hours a day, fifty cents an hour, and he would try to
mimic Dow's beautiful swing.
"But Dow didn't have the personality that Arnold had," Snyder
said. "Not very many people did."
Palmer nearly aced the par-three eighth with a four-iron after
Snyder advised him to clear the pond with a five-iron. Another birdie. On the
next hole Palmer had a twelve-foot putt to tie Snyder's record of 29; he
missed it, much to his caddie's relief.
Palmer settled for a six-under 30 on the front side; his teammate,
Nicklaus, made the turn at 35. Saunders kept his team in the match with a
33, while Finsterwald struggled to a 36. At the break Palmer-Nicklaus held a
three-hole lead.
Not that the team competition was the be-all, end-all. The crowd
was buzzing over the possibility that Palmer could shoot 59, or that he could
at least break Finsterwald's course record. Among the caddies Nicklaus was
also a prime subject of conversation.
Like Santor, Snyder had seen Jack up close in tournament play.
In 1952 a fourteen-year-old Snyder went up against a twelve-year-old
Nicklaus in the district juniors, and the older player prevailed on the
nineteenth hole. "And I bet he outweighed me by forty pounds," Snyder
recalled. "By the time Jack was eighteen, his power was phenomenal."
That power moved the earth in Athens, and the older Ohio U.
players serving as caddies couldn't fathom the noise made when Nicklaus's
club face made contact with the ball. "The crack, the boom," Reichley
said. "It was a supersonic sound."
Nicklaus drove the 330-yard tenth hole, landing his tee shot pin-
high and six feet from the cup. He missed the eagle putt and settled for a
three. Palmer also birdied the hole, turning the gallery on its ear.
"Watching Jack and Arnie," Reichley said, "we were awestruck."
Finsterwald went on a birdie binge to make up for his lackluster
front nine, but Saunders faded to negate the effect. Palmer and Nicklaus
were in the clear. Both were out-muscling the course, though Palmer was the
one making more putts.
The caddies were watching Palmer's every purposeful step. He
was the leading money winner on the tour at that point, having banked more
than forty-four grand for the season, and yet he didn't walk with an air of
superiority.
"So down-to-earth," Snyder said. "He never said an unkind word to
me, never frowned, never acted like I should've known better to do this or
that."
The Ohio U. boys also watched the body language between
Palmer and Nicklaus. No one could imagine then that these two figures—
separated by more than ten years of age—would someday make for the
greatest rivalry the game has ever known. But there was no extra effort on
either player's part that day to bridge their generation gap.
"Arnold and Jack were cordial," Reichley said, "but Nicklaus
wasn't much of a talker .º.º. He kind of stuck to the business of the day."
That business was drumming every available player on the course.
Nicklaus wasn't nearly as interested in winning the team competition as he
was in posting the lowest score.
He didn't want to defeat Finsterwald and Saunders. He wanted to
defeat Finsterwald and Saunders and Palmer.
Nicklaus would win only low amateur honors, his 68 beating
Saunders's 71. Finsterwald saved face in his own backyard, edging Nicklaus
by a single shot. Palmer sank a fifty-footer at the sixteenth and managed an
easy two-putt par on the eighteenth for a 62, celebrating Finsterwald's day by
breaking his Athens record by one.
Palmer said a few kind words about Nicklaus afterward but wasn't
effusive in his praise. Over the decades, whenever asked about this day,
Palmer would inevitably talk about that flying Nicklaus elbow, the one
conspicuous flaw.
"I thought he was potentially good," Palmer said. "I noticed he had
his right elbow, it was unattached. Let's say it swung out .º.º. Until he got
that elbow under control or kept that elbow closer, he might have had some
problems with his game.
"He had some problems [with accuracy] at the time. He drove it
long and he was good; I mean, it was obvious he was very good. But the
consistency was something at the time I thought might have been of some
concern."
The exhibition wasn't about Nicklaus anyway. "I think the whole
thing was just the fact that I was there to appease a good friend," Palmer
said, "and that was Dow Finsterwald. It had nothing to do with Jack Nicklaus,
other than the fact that I was happy to see him and make his acquaintance,
and to understand he was an upcoming player to be reckoned with at some
point. And that was it."
After the exhibition Palmer gave a dozen Wilson balls to Snyder
and three apiece to the other caddies. The Ohio U. boys were paid ten
dollars for their priceless experience, and the golfers were off to a dinner held
in Dow's honor.
Palmer and Finsterwald helped themselves to a few cocktails
while Charlie Nicklaus kept close watch over his boy. "I don't think either
Arnold or I realized how great Jack was going to be," Finsterwald would
say. "We didn't appreciate the significance of what was taking place."
Finsterwald did make a speech at the dinner, and in it he
predicted Nicklaus would have a "wonderful future" in golf. The other players
spoke as well, and Nicklaus handled himself with surprising ease at the
podium.
Palmer told the audience he liked Jack's putting stroke. At the
close of the evening, the man and the boy shared their final handshake and
went their separate ways, Arnold back to the tour, Jack back to Ohio State.
Swearingen, the event organizer, would go on to become an NFL
referee, the one who would make the most controversial call in league
history: the "Immaculate Reception" call that decided the Oakland Raiders–
Pittsburgh Steelers playoff game in 1972.
But first he officiated golf's Immaculate Conception, the birth of a
rivalry that would fuel the surging popularity of the sport in the 1960s.
A driving contest in Appalachia. A meaningless exhibition on a
middling nine-hole course.
"That was the start of the whole Palmer and Nicklaus thing,"
Swearingen said.
That was the start of a lifelong clash of titans that would play out
in fairways and boardrooms across the globe.
Continues...
Excerpted from Arnie and Jack by Ian O'Connor Copyright © 2008 by Ian O'Connor. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.