A Golfer's Life by Arnold Palmer

Author:Arnold Palmer [Palmer, Arnold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77572-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

Some would say the arrival of Jack Nicklaus in my “backyard” at Oakmont in Pittsburgh, two years later, was almost the match of Cherry Hills for sheer quality of drama. Though I didn’t care for the outcome, I can’t disagree. The Open that year had all of the classic elements: a hometown favorite son at the peak of his form, a brilliant tour rookie everyone feared, highly partisan crowds, and the intensity of a National Open on the line.

I’d had a great year, my best start ever, leading up to Oakmont—including back-to-back wins at Palm Springs and Phoenix (where I enjoyed a 12-shot margin of victory, the largest of my career), followed by my third win at the Masters in April, then those three consecutive wins at the Texas Open, the Tournament of Champions, and the Colonial.

The pre-tournament consensus had me as the man to beat, and the home-field advantage of Oakmont, a course I knew intimately, seemed like a storybook setting for a second Open championship. Frankly, after playing poorly and finishing twelfth at Oakland Hills in Detroit the previous year, I was determined to do well in front of the homefolks in Pittsburgh. But as I was careful to warn the writers and anybody else who would listen to me prior to that week, “Everybody says I’m the favorite, but you’d better watch the fat boy.”

I wasn’t trying to insult Jack. In fact, as I think back on that comment, I realize I was mimicking much of what was being written about Jack’s weight and appearance, and his apparent threat to my dominance of the Tour. Since joining the Tour at Los Angeles the first week of the year and winning $33.33, Jack had steadily climbed the leader board, and it was clear to anybody who’d witnessed his power and finesse and almost unearthly ability to focus on his game that Jack Nicklaus’s moment had arrived. Whatever image problems he had early on regarding his weight or appearance or personality were, in my mind, completely irrelevant. I knew he was perfectly capable of taking the Open at Oakmont, because golf courses play no favorites and young Mr. Nicklaus simply had the look of a champion about him. I could see it, and so could anybody else who cared to look beyond the image baloney. As I privately expressed to Winnie and a few others from Latrobe, I really did view him as the one man I feared could snatch away the second Open title, one I dearly wanted to win in front of my hometown fans—a prophetic hunch, as it turned out.

I suppose if I had an ace in the hole where Jack was concerned, it was simply that Oakmont was a dangerously narrow golf course, with punishing rough that could turn errant tee shots into major disasters. Jack had something of a “flying elbow” in those days, a tendency to get wild off the tee with those huge, high-power fades of his. U.S. Open rough, of course, is the great equalizer of the championship.

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