Un-Bear-able Loss for ‘Army’

Jack Nicklaus first saw Arnold Palmer play golf in 1954, first played against him in 1958 and first challenged him for a major title in 1960.

But it was in the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club outside Pittsburgh, 40 years ago this month, in Palmer’s backyard and on his back nine, that the 22-year-old rookie Nicklaus began nudging Palmer off golf’s throne.

Imagine the gall of that kid Jack, wielding his crooked stick against Arnie’s Army.

Palmer’s bond with western Pennsylvania had been forged almost as tungsten steel. He grew up in Latrobe, 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. Palmer’s father, Pap, tended the grounds at Latrobe Country Club, and it was there that Arnie swatted buckets of balls with a swing so cork-screwy it would later give teaching pros the willies.

Oakmont ’62 was a homecoming, and Palmer swaggered like John Wayne toward it. Palmer was a driver in a bag of tour-playing wedges, an icon with Grand Slam notions in the wake of his third Masters title in April.

There was not a more transcendent figure in sports than Palmer--talented, tan, taut and only 32--no one who better capitalized on his charisma at a time when 90% of American households received the gift of television; all those electromagnetic waves god-knows-how reconvening into our Kennedy-presidency living rooms.

“It’s hard for me to capture in words the magnitude of Arnold Palmer in golf at that time,” Nicklaus writes in “Jack Nicklaus: My Story.” “He was not only the game’s undisputed king, but the emperor-in-chief of contemporary American sports heroes.”

The Open at Oakmont was supposed to be a coronation, not a coup d’etat. Palmer fans were rabid to the point of salivation and different, maybe the first in golf who didn’t applaud politely during play and extend pinkies at clubhouse tea socials.

Palmer followers were beer and bratwurst types--Cleveland Brown fans minus the dog biscuits--and in no mood to accommodate an unkempt kid from Columbus.

Arnie’s Army was out in force at Oakmont and in for a shock.

Jack Nicklaus?

He was a crew-cut blond who could have benefited from charm school and sunscreen. His body type leaned toward early Bob’s Big Boy and he dressed as if Ray Charles had picked out his clothes--hit the road like that, Jack?

“Always friendly,” author Dan Jenkins, who covered the 1962 Open, recalls of Nicklaus, “but my god he was unsightly.”

A black hat to Palmer’s white?

“Not among the press,” Jenkins says, “but he was among fans. They wanted Arnold to win every damn week.”

Palmer knew Nicklaus was rising, sure as the sun. He even made a mental notation when the two first played together in a 1958 exhibition--take flier on this guy.

As a 20-year-old amateur, Nicklaus had nearly toppled Palmer at Cherry Hills in 1960, before Palmer staged his famous charge to salvage what turned out to be his only U.S. Open title.

Yet few thought Palmer was susceptible at Oakmont, although one man had a hunch: Arnold Palmer.

“You’d better watch the fat boy,” Palmer told reporters.

Fat chance, right?

Nicklaus turned pro in late 1961 and went winless in his first 16 PGA Tour events. In his debut at the Los Angeles Open, Nicklaus finished 50th and took home a whopping $33.33. A few months into his career, Nicklaus wondered if he would ever win, asking himself, “When, oh when, is it going to happen?”

Oakmont was the happening.

Jack rode in on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and knocked golf on its grass, stunning Palmer in a playoff and changing golf’s face from chiseled to cherubic.

“That tournament was a turning point for both men,” John Feinstein writes in his book, “The Majors.” “It was a launching pad for Nicklaus and the beginning of the end for Palmer as a dominant player.”

Or so went the myth.

Actually, the truth has more nuances.

Ken Bowden, who has written 11 books about Nicklaus, knows better than most.

“The baton wasn’t passed in ‘62, but there was a sign it was going to be,” Bowden says. “It was the beginning of the rivalry. It certainly wasn’t the end of Arnold.”

In fact, Palmer won two of his seven major titles after that 1962 defeat by Nicklaus. Palmer rebounded from Oakmont to take the 1962 British Open at Troon by six shots and earned his fourth Masters’ green jacket in 1964, another six-shot victory.

Palmer, not Nicklaus, was named PGA player of the year in 1962, and Palmer won the money title in ’62 and 1963.

Palmer’s two post-Oakmont major victories rank as his most dominating and satisfying accomplishments. He remained a factor in major events through 1970. Palmer lost heart-wrenching U.S. Open playoffs to Julius Boros in 1963 and Billy Casper in 1966--who would ever forget Palmer’s final-round collapse at San Francisco’s Olympic Club?--and finished second to Nicklaus at Baltusrol in 1967.

Palmer also finished second in the PGA Championship three times, in 1964, ’68 and 1970.

“I think 1962 is too soon to have him past his peak,” Doc Giffin, the PGA’s publicity director in 1962 who later went to work for Palmer, says. “Nicklaus was a clear challenger to him and it became evident that year, no question, but Arnold didn’t just fade out of the picture.”

In his autobiography, “A Golfer’s Life,” Palmer sensed his crown slipping as he was helping Nicklaus into the green jacket after the 1963 Masters.

“I was suddenly staring at the future and my greatest rival in the game,” Palmer recounts. “It was an emotional moment, admittedly bittersweet for me. Jack Nicklaus had come of age, and professional golf would never be the same. You could almost feel that in the air.”

Nicklaus would become golf’s greatest champion, winning 18 major championships to Palmer’s seven.

Arnie’s Retreat

Oakmont ’62 was more of a harbinger, a dead-solid-perfect warning shot across Palmer’s bow.

It was a magnificent first professional victory for Nicklaus.

“He beat the king,” Bowden says. “What more can you say?”

Palmer, though, might have chalked it up as just another opportunity lost.

Oakmont provided the backdrop and played host to men of equal skill but vastly disparate personalities and playing styles.

Palmer was emotive and entertaining and played as though he had a plane to catch. He thrilled and incensed fans with his risk-taking. Nicklaus was introspective and methodical, a Jack who jacked the ball a mile, yet a man who preferred the paleontologist’s approach of fine-tooth combing.

Nicklaus was reprimanded at times for slow play; Palmer had less complicated swing thoughts--hit ball hard, find ball, hit ball hard again.

That Palmer and Nicklaus were paired together for the first two rounds of the 1962 Open only added to the drama.

Arnie’s Army was especially unruly that week, heckling Nicklaus the way American galleries today needle Colin Montgomerie.

“They were hometown fans,” Giffin remembers. “It was like going to a football game at Ohio State. There was some unfair rooting against Jack, and Arnold always admired Jack for being able to handle it.”

Handle it?

Nicklaus claims to have never heard any of it.

“A lot of people don’t believe him when he says that, but I do,” Bowden says. “He has an ability to focus that I’ve never seen in any player. Ben Hogan was the same, but I didn’t see that much of Hogan’s career. But I saw a lot of Jack. He could bear down and wipe everything else aside. He thinks about one thing at a time.”

Until 1965, the U.S. Open concluded with two Saturday rounds.

After the morning 18 in 1962, Palmer shared the lead at 212 with Bobby Nichols. Phil Rodgers had 213, and Nicklaus was two shots behind at 214.

Between rounds, Palmer ate a sandwich and gulped down a Coke, then swigged a pint of chocolate milk before making his way to the first tee.

Graciously, in the afternoon round, Rodgers and Nichols would fall off pace and defer to the main characters.

Palmer held a three-shot lead over Nicklaus as he approached the short, uphill par-five at No. 9. Thinking he could close out Nicklaus with an eagle or even a birdie, Palmer went for broke, as usual, and slightly pushed his second shot into the fringe, about 20 feet from the pin.

“All I still needed to do was make a solid little flip chip and a putt for birdie, that just might be enough,” Palmer recounts in his book. “The unimaginable happened.”

Palmer chili-dipped his chip, the ball moving only inches. The gallery groaned, Palmer remembering it was so quiet, “I swear you could hear the blood pumping angrily through my veins.”

Palmer made a bogey six.

Nicklaus, playing two groups ahead, birdied 11, cutting Palmer’s lead to one, and the match was soon tied when Palmer bogeyed the par-three 13th.

Palmer still could have closed Nicklaus out in regulation, but missed makable putts on No. 17 and No. 18 to force a Sunday playoff.

In the end, typical of their styles, Palmer finished with 13 three putts to Nicklaus’ one.

Still, he was Arnold Palmer, right? On to the playoff!

On Sunday, Nicklaus, almost eerily calm and confident, opened a four-shot lead after six holes. Yet, anyone who had seen Palmer erase a seven-shot deficit to win the 1960 U.S. Open in Denver knew he was going to make a charge.

“In fact,” Nicklaus would say, “I expected it to begin at any moment.”

In fact, Palmer cut the lead to one shot after making a birdie on No. 12.

Then, Palmer found out why Nicklaus was different.

“In the past, whenever I mounted a charge I could almost feel that the player I was chasing was going to collapse and give ground,” Palmer writes. “It sounds a bit odd, but it was almost as if I could will the leader to move over and permit me to pass.”

Yet, Palmer says, Nicklaus was “a different animal altogether, completely unlike anybody I’d ever chased.”

Nicklaus held off the charge.

Palmer bogeyed No. 13 and fell two shots back.

Nicklaus, still two shots ahead at No. 18, gave the gallery a last-gasp hope when he pulled his tee shot. But after Palmer had hit his second shot fat, Nicklaus safely played his second shot to the fat of the fairway and hit a nine-iron 12 feet from the cup.

Game over.

Palmer needed a cold shower.

“He was really mad at himself,” Jenkins recalls. “He thought he should have won the tournament. [Writer] Bob Drum and I went to the parking lot with him and watched him throw his clubs into the trunk. He thought he should have won by six shots.”

From then on, writers would have someone else to follow into parking lots.

“For us, it was like, ‘Now we got another guy,’ ” he says of Nicklaus’ arrival. “It was fun. Unlike today, with Tiger, who has nobody.”

Years later, in his autobiography, Nicklaus confessed to what everyone knew: He respected Palmer but never feared him.

“In a nutshell, once the whistle had blown, Arnold Palmer was just another player, another guy trying to go my way on a track only wide enough for one. I wanted to win, and then win and win and win again--every time I teed it up, now and forever.”

In hindsight, Nicklaus wishes he could have been more expressive with his feelings instead of being so consumed with his aims and ambitions.

Truth was, and he knew it, many didn’t appreciate Nicklaus’ taking the U.S. Open title from Palmer at Oakmont.

It would take time for fans to cozy up to Nicklaus.

“He had to take off that rain hat, fluff-dry his hair and have [wife] Barbara dress him before he was beloved,” Jenkins jokes.

Nicklaus said the breakthrough event was his shattering Ben Hogan’s course record in winning the 1965 Masters. That was the week fans rooted for him, the way they had for Palmer.

No more black hat.

“I was at last beginning to emerge from the shadow of Arnold,” Nicklaus writes, “and was becoming a golfer people could enjoyably follow and yell and holler and whoop for.”

Foes and Friends

Palmer and Nicklaus became fierce rivals after Oakmont. They tried to out-do and one-up each other until Nicklaus eventually separated himself in the race. Even as they grew older and played together less, each player would check the other’s scores in the morning newspaper.

When Palmer won the 1962 British Open, Nicklaus answered by winning two majors in 1963, the Masters and PGA. Palmer countered by defeating Nicklaus in the 1964 Masters--amazingly, the king’s last major victory.

In 1963, Time magazine noted, “Whatever Arnie wants, Jack gets,” and that was pretty much the case.

Palmer, though, did not surrender without a fight.

In 1964, before the last PGA Tour event, the Cajun Classic, Palmer led Nicklaus in earnings by $318.87.

Neither player really wanted to play the last event, but neither was going to let the other walk away with the money title.

Miller Barber ended up winning the tournament, but the final-day drama almost approached that of Oakmont in 1962. To win the earnings title, Palmer needed Gay Brewer to sink an 18-foot putt on No. 18 to finish second and knock Nicklaus to third. A miss by Brewer would leave Nicklaus in a tie for second and give Jack the money title.

Brewer missed the putt, and Palmer described his disappointment as “immense.”

More than 35 years after losing to Nicklaus at Oakmont, Palmer would write, “On the course, there was--and still is--nobody I ever wanted to beat more.”

Their relationship is best described as cordial and complex.

You might have expected Nicklaus vs. Palmer to turn nasty as Palmer grew increasingly envious of the man who dethroned him as golf’s greatest player.

But it never really evolved into that.

Part of it was Palmer, a man who was almost impossible not to like.

Nicklaus could never get over how gracious Palmer was in those early years. It was Palmer, 10 years older, who helped Nicklaus learn the ropes on the PGA Tour, Palmer who encouraged Nicklaus to become a pilot, Palmer who introduced Nicklaus to his agent, Mark McCormack, at International Management Group.

Part of it was Nicklaus, who never turned his personal quest to eclipse the feats of his boyhood hero, Bobby Jones, into a personal crusade.

“Arnold wasn’t a guy he wanted to knock off the pedestal,” Bowden says of Nicklaus. “Jack wanted to put himself on it, and if Arnold fell off in the meantime, OK. That’s the way it is in sport.”

Part of it was the sport. Golfers are paired together in competition but not pitted against each other. Palmer never had to box Nicklaus out for a rebound, or put a 90-mph fastball under his chin.

Golf is a monologue, played against oneself and the course. It wasn’t Nicklaus’ fault Palmer three-putted 13 times at the 1962 U.S. Open.

“Hard as I sometimes had to fight Arnold’s galleries,” Nicklaus reflects in his book, “the only way I ever had to fight him was with my golf clubs.”

Part of it was logistics. Palmer and Nicklaus were together a lot on the PGA Tour. They played exhibitions and traveled the world in each other’s company. The players’ wives, Barbara Nicklaus and the late Winnie Palmer, became close friends.

Part of it was common sense.

Nicklaus and Palmer were good for each other, no, great for each other.

“Palmer and Nicklaus will always be inseparable the same way that are Mantle and Mays, Evert and Navratilova, and Ali and Frazier are inseparable in baseball, tennis and boxing,” Feinstein writes in “The Majors.” “In truth, Palmer and Nicklaus may go beyond that.”

That’s because, unlike other sports, their rivalry has spanned four decades.

Palmer and Nicklaus, along with Gary Player, the other cog who made up “the Big Three,” took golf off sports’ back burner.

The Palmer-Nicklaus rivalry spiked interest in golf and drove up gate receipts and tournament purses.

“We were natural adversaries, to be sure,” Palmer writes, “but also clearly a good fit.”

It would be a stretch to suggest that Nicklaus over Palmer at Oakmont, 40 years ago this month, in Palmer’s backyard and on his back nine, had a profound impact in golf history.

It’s hard to fathom how a victory by Palmer would have staved off Nicklaus’ mounting call to greatness.

Yet, Oakmont did offer a snapshot at what golf was and what it was going to become.

Bottom line, with Jack on attack, golf was never the same for Arnold Palmer.

He would remark of Nicklaus after Oakmont, “Now that the big guy is out of the cage, everybody better run for cover.”

Everybody ran.