Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer are intertwined as legends in golf. Palmer came first, taking the golf world by storm with his power and charisma, before Nicklaus came next with his precision and unrelenting game.
While Palmer is no longer with us, and this year marks 10 years since his passing, Nicklaus very much still is. The 18-time major champion, now 86 years old, still has fond memories of the King. In fact, he still remembers the first time he saw Palmer in person, and he told that story ahead of the Memorial Tournament this week.
"I was a 15-year-old playing at Sylvania in the Ohio Amateur, and I came off the practice tee on Tuesday afternoon," he started. "It was pouring down rain. I was the only person on the golf course, and I was walking into the into the clubhouse. There's only one person on the practice range, and here was this guy who looked like Popeye hitting 9-irons and hitting 'em about quail high.
"And I said, 'Man, is that guy strong.' I walked to the clubhouse and I said, 'Who in the world is that on the practice tee out there hitting balls?' They said, 'Well, that's our defending champion, Arnold Palmer.' And that was my first sighting of Arnold.
"I didn't meet Arnold until I was 18, three years later."
Looking back on his life in golf and his impact on the game, Nicklaus later on brought Palmer back into his story.
"Arnold and I, we had as much of a competition as any two guys could ever have. And we walked off the 18th green, shook hands and shook hands and, you know, it's, 'Where are you going to dinner tonight? Well, go grab Winnie, I'll grab Barbara, we'll go to dinner,'" Nicklaus said.
"That's the kind of thing that you make the friendships through the game those are the kind of influences I have. I don't like to see confrontation. I don't like to see bad blood. I don't like to see those kind of things happen. I don't think you have a lot of that in golf. I think we're very blessed by the nature that the game has is a civil game."
