A Golfer's Life (40 page)

Or this tidbit:

Making several appearances over the years on Perry Como’s show was a little more serious in nature but also great fun. Maybe the major highlight of my dubious television career was being asked to serve as guest host on
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
. We had Vic Damone and Buddy Hackett on as guests for that particular show, and even today, more than thirty years later, I get a bit nervous remembering how anxious I was on that hot seat. As a result, most of the show remains a mental blur to me and I’m hesitant to even go back and view the old tapes of the show. Let’s face it, when it came to acting or being a stand-up comedian, I was really the one who was a bit short off the tee.

Nevertheless, it was thanks to those shows—all arranged by Mark and his people—that a boy from a small western Pennsylvania steel town got to rub elbows with some of the biggest stars in the entertainment field. Only in America could such a thing happen. Through these encounters, Winnie and I made some deep and lasting friendships with people like Bob and Dolores Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Lemmon, James Garner, and dear sweet Dinah Shore.

Gary Player would agree with me, I think, that the most fun we had filming golf shows was when Jack joined us for
Big Three Golf
, another production I had a large financial stake in thanks to Mark. It ran on NBC for eight episodes in 1964. The format brought the three of us together in a series of golf matches staged at spectacular locales ranging from Los Angeles Country Club to Firestone Country Club to Carnoustie and the Old Course at St. Andrews. At stake was $50,000 for the winner. A problem arose when it became obvious that by the sixth match, Jack had the series clinched. We decided to
extend the series two more matches, hoping the drama of Gary and me competing for second place would sustain the earlier ratings—which reportedly rivaled the average daily viewing audience of
Captain Kangaroo
—but it didn’t quite work out that way.

The playing highlight for me, I suppose, came when I had an opportunity late in the series to beat Gary and Jack at St. Andrews but missed a short putt, leaving the match in a tie that would be settled when we moved on to Dorado Beach in Puerto Rico, where I finally beat Jack in a playoff.

The competition was fierce, I must say, but so was the horsing around after the cameras finished shooting. I forget who started the friendly fracas the night after we finished shooting in Montreal, but you have it on good authority from me that Gary and Jack were always ganging up to try to beat me—even in a food fight! Someone spilled a little ginger ale or champagne on somebody else, and soon corks were popping and bottles were fizzing and food of one kind or another was flying through the air. Poor Mark McCormack, who tried to hold the leash on all three of us, was none too pleased to receive the substantial cleaning bill from the hotel’s management.

Filming
Big Three Golf
was really when I got to know Jack Nicklaus on a more personal basis, and I liked him even more than before. Given his relentless German stare and his seemingly unshakable emotional composure, it might have surprised golf fans at the time to learn that off the course Jack was just one big fun-loving kid who not only had an instinct for keeping his fame in proper perspective but was even known to let his hair down (what little he had in those days, thanks to his famous buzz-cut hairstyle) when the cameras were off.

My relationship with Jack has been the source of endless speculation and reporting, scholarly analysis, and even the
stuff of mythmaking for almost forty years. Some of what you’ve read is true; some of it is pure bunk.

Let’s start with a tale that is true—though a bit foggy for me—from the early moments of Jack’s stardom. The scene was Oakmont Country Club, the event the U.S. Open of 1962. Prior to our Sunday playoff Jack and I were talking in the locker room, and according to him and others who overheard the conversation, I casually offered to split the purse with him and he politely declined, apparently noting that he didn’t think that would be fair to either of us.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember having made this suggestion, though I certainly may well have done so. In any event, neither of us would have considered anything particularly wrong with such a suggestion. Purse splitting—wherein two players make an agreement before the tournament to combine their winnings and equally divide the pot afterward—was a common practice on the PGA Tour in those days. Though I hadn’t done it much it was a staple of life for some marginal players, desperate to make ends meet to keep their income levels up.

If I made such an offer to Jack—and I have no reason to think I didn’t—I honestly believe I made it out of simple consideration for him, a Tour rookie who had yet to win on the circuit. The fact that he remembers it so clearly and I don’t means that the offer simply didn’t matter that much to me. It has bothered me, however, that over the years some accounts of the event have given the incident a shadowy overlay, as if some major code of conduct or sportsmanship were being breached. Jack, I feel safe in saying, didn’t regard it as such, and neither did I. Later that year, in fact, we did split a purse at a tournament, and for the record we agreed to split the gate proceeds of the playoff with the USGA of that same Open at Oakmont. That practice was common, too.

At any rate, the ethics of purse splitting got a thorough
public airing when
Sports Illustrated
stated in a special report on the issue that purse splitting went on in 50 percent of all playoffs and a vast majority of Tour players saw nothing improper with the practice. That same week, I think, a rumor circulated around the World Series of Golf in Akron that that season’s major champions (whose names happened to be Palmer, Nicklaus, and Player—all clients of the same business manager, Mark McCormack) agreed beforehand to pool their winnings and divide them equally. There is no truth to that whatsoever.

The
Sports Illustrated
piece quoted prominent Tour players as saying that a tournament’s title was far more important than the money, but the public’s reaction was swift and unambiguous on the subject: They felt cheated. After a bit of soul-searching, since the annual money title was decided by a player’s winnings, the PGA decided to place a ban on the practice. In retrospect, I’m glad they did—it kept everything out in the open where it belongs.

Much has been made of The Rivalry. Arnie versus Jack. Volumes have been written, verdicts given. My own personal take on the subject is a fairly simple and I think true reading. Jack Nicklaus was and is my greatest competition in golf, both on the course during my peak years and off it years later as our separate interests evolved in the business world.

Honest competition is a wonderful thing, as central to the American way of thinking as anything. The Arnie-Jack connection may have started at Oakmont in ’62, but I believe it reached fever pitch in November of 1964 when we both flew to Lafayette, Louisiana, to compete in the season-ending Cajun Classic. It was an event so low on the scale of importance to either of us, I must say, with all due respect to the fans and sponsors there, that neither of us would have been in the tournament’s field unless something big was at stake.
In this instance, it was the Tour’s yearly money title hanging in the balance.

Entering this last tournament of the year, I was leading Jack in the money race by a mere $318.87. I was also still mentally kicking myself because I’d had a chance just a few weeks before to sew up the title at the Sahara Invitational at Las Vegas, leading by two going into the final round, before my game fell apart and I wound up nineteenth to Jack’s third place—throwing the money title into a real horse race. To compound matters, Mark had scheduled ambitious separate exhibition tours for both of us to Australia and New Zealand, which meant we had to make up our minds to play in Lafayette weeks in advance. I told Jack that I doubted I would be able to fit the Cajun event into my crazy schedule, and he nodded and pretty much agreed he probably couldn’t either. I planned to go on to Japan, and it was almost hunting season back home in Pennsylvania. As I said to Jack, I needed and wanted the time off to be with the girls and to look after a few business matters. He told me he had plenty of things he needed to do and wanted to get home to Barbara and the kids.

As someone later said, it was pretty much an Academy Award–winning performance on both parts.

“I knew if I entered,” Jack slyly admitted to a reporter later, “Arnie would, too. We were just trying to outpsych each other.”

Thus our rather unenthusiastic trips to Louisiana. Suffice it to say, neither of us wanted to be there, but neither could abide the possibility of skipping the tournament and effectively presenting the money title to the other on a silver platter. I had been the Tour’s leading money winner in 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1963, and I really wanted that fifth title very badly to salvage an otherwise disappointing year. Despite my runaway Masters victory in April, I’d managed to win only
one other tournament, the Oklahoma City Open, and I was beginning to feel great frustration with my game, particularly my putting.

To make matters worse, I caught a nasty cold en route to Louisiana and opened the first round with a dreary two-over 74. Jack was four under after eight holes. Fortunately for me, that’s when the Gulf squalls came up and washed the round off the boards. The next two days were dry but the temperature plunged steadily, forcing players into knitted ski caps and padded rain jackets to try to keep warm. I posted a 68 in the new first round and had to rally on Saturday from five straight bogeys to finish with 74. Jack’s rounds of 68-71 left me three strokes behind him as we faced what promised to be a painful final thirty-six-hole finish on Sunday.

We were forced to start at dawn’s early light, and the weather, as someone remarked, would have been great for an Army–Navy football game but was hardly the setting for great golf. With temperatures just at or slightly above freezing, Jack looked more like a polar bear than the Golden Bear, dressed as he was in a couple sweaters, a knitted dickey, and a rain suit. I wore my own layers and managed to complete the third round of the Frostbite Open with a 71, leaving me tied for fourth, two behind Jack. He stretched that lead to four in the final round before I mounted a respectable little charge only to fall short with a poor effort on a short par putt that stopped inches shy at 15, pretty much sinking my hopes.

By that point, Miller Barber had effectively won the tournament by five strokes over the field, but the drama wasn’t quite over for me. Gay Brewer had a lengthy putt on 18 that could give him second place—and me the money title. If he made it, Jack would finish third and I would be the season’s leading money winner. If he missed, Jack would tie for second and take the money title. It came down to that.

I watched intently but Jack didn’t, later telling someone
that it was the first putt he’d turned away from since the Oakmont Open in ’62, when I missed a six-footer that would have beaten him.

Brewer missed the putt and Jack got the money title. Even as we shook hands and I congratulated him, the disappointment I felt was immense. “This is the eighth time I have finished second this year,” Jack told reporters, “but the first time in my life I have felt happy about it.”

I’m glad
he
was happy.

That pretty well summarizes the intensely competitive relationship that has always existed between Jack and me. On the course, there was—and still is—nobody I ever wanted to beat more, and as I’ve said, if I was at the top or anywhere near the leader board on Sunday, his was the name I watched for and feared most, especially if he had the lead. This was just as true at Oakmont in ’62 as it was at our first Skins Game in 1983. And I’m certain Jack feels exactly the same way.

On a more philosophical note, I must say I think Jack and I were very good for each other and very good for the game of golf in general. Our rivalry—especially when you add Gary Player to the mix—happened at a time when golf was just beginning to take deep root in the broader American sports psyche, and the intensity of our competition, as well as the distinct differences in our personalities, created tremendous natural drama and a fan interest in the professional game that had never been seen before. I needed Jack to remind me what my Pap had warned me from the beginning—there was always going to be some talented young guy out there who could beat you ten ways to Sunday, so you’d better never let your guard down. I think Jack needed me to serve as the high standard he was aiming for. If he could beat me, which he ultimately did, he could beat anybody and become the greatest player in the game.

The fans and sponsors, I’m happy to say, were the
beneficiaries of our fierce but gentlemanly thirty-five-year competition on the links. Tournament gates doubled, even tripled, I’m told, when it was announced that Jack and I would be playing in the same field. Both of us were keenly aware of our unique positions and responsibilities in this respect. We knew we were good theater—and we enjoyed it at least as much as the fans and reporters did. Believe me when I say, despite the pain of losing major tournaments to each other and the wild swings in fortune that defined our relationship, we had a lot of fun being the center of all that attention. But most of all, we wanted to beat each other to a pulp. That’s the nature of healthy sportsmanship and the spirit of tournament golf. That’s just the way it should be, too.

Behind the scenes of those celebrated Arnie-versus-Jack years we traveled together quite a lot, dined together, privately discussed at great depth issues of the Tour and family life, agreed philosophically on far more things than we disagreed on, and ruthlessly pounced on any opportunity to needle each other in private about beating the other at his own game. Our wives became good friends early on and remain even closer today. It reveals something nice about the nature of our complex friendship, I think, that, given the right project, Jack and I could still work together, as our four Canada/World Cups and three national team championships demonstrate. We were natural adversaries, to be sure, but also clearly a good fit.