The greatest rivalry in golf began on a nine-hole course in the Ohio countryside

The elders at Athens Country Club in Ohio 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.

Fred Swearwingen, club president, had been struck by a sudden thought. He would call up this hotshot kid in Columbus and ask him if he would care to play 18 holes with Finsterwald, fresh off his victory in the PGA Championship, and Dow's good friend Arnold Palmer, that year's winner of the Masters.

Swearingen found a listing for Charlie Nicklaus's drugstore.

"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 that he'd be happy to bring his game to the southeast corner of Ohio.

"I'll get my dad to take me," Jack said.

He was 18 years old in September 1958, and his father would drive him to his first face-to-face encounter with Palmer, who was only days removed from his 29th 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, outside Toledo, Jackie was a 14-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 but was mesmerized.

Under cover, from about 40 yards away, Nicklaus stared at the stranger in the rain suit for 45 minutes.

Palmer was from Latrobe, in western Pennsylvania, but he was eligible for the Ohio Amateur because of his time in Cleveland, where he was a member of the U.S. Coast Guard and, of all things, a frustrated paint salesman.

He was pounding 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 amateur, and Nicklaus was the only other competitor on the course. The storms wouldn'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 hardearned royalty. Nicklaus loved the raw commitment, the brute strength. He had never seen anyone attack a golf ball quite like that.

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, the defending state champ. Palmer would make it two in a row long after Nicklaus lost to someone named Dale Bittner on the 19th hole. Bittner would be 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 75-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 says. "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. Having recently entered his sophomore year at Ohio State, he had built himself a remarkable record on the junior circuit. He had won the Ohio State Open as a 16-year-old competing against pros. He'd already played in two U.S. Opens, making the cut earlier that year at Southern Hills. He'd won a national Jaycees championship, and he had contended in his first Tour event, standing a shot off the lead after two rounds of the 1958 Rubber City Open before finishing 12th.

Jack wasn't about to make a fuss over Palmer, who had only one major championship to his name to go with the 1954 U.S. Amateur title.

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 15,000, 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 lawyer, Finsterwald was the one who had booked the main attraction. His friendship with Palmer was born of the matches they played as college rivals, Dow as a star at Ohio, Arnold at Wake Forest. Palmer had shot a 29 on the first nine they played together.

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."

Palmer shot 31.

The pecking order in their relationship established forevermore, Palmer and Finsterwald became what one pro described as "ass---- 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 and eager to participate in a day to honor Athens's favorite son. Swearingen told Palmer that he would send him a plane ticket to Columbus and drive him to town.

"You've got an airport in Athens, don't you?" Palmer asked.

"Well, we've got a landing strip at the university," Swearingen said.

"I don't need a ticket then. I'll fly right in."

If Palmer hadn't chosen golf as his vocation, he most likely would have become a commercial pilot. At first he was scared to death to fly. Once, when he was an amateur golfer en route to Chattanooga on a DC-3, he was startled by a ball of fire rolling up and down the aisle.

"I immediately found out that it was static electricity," Palmer says, "and that's when I decided I would learn to fly and understand what was happening."

He overcame his fear out of necessity — he wanted to spend as much time with his family as possible 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 that Palmer loved as much as the sight of his ball soaring toward the green was the sight of a plane streaking through the sky.

Palmer flew into Athens with his wife, Winnie. Swearingen picked them up and drove the Palmers to the home of Finsterwald's cousin Jean Sprague, where they would spend the night and then rise early on the morning of Thursday, Sept. 25, 1958, when Arnold would pay tribute to his good friend and play golf with Jack Nicklaus for the first time.

Swearingen would plan the day around a parade and a match involving two two-man teams. The fourth competitor was an amateur, Howard Baker Saunders, a six-time Southeastern Ohio Golf Association champ out of nearby Gallipolis and a top player on the Ohio State team 15 years before Nicklaus would fill 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.

Court Street was packed for the morning parade, as Swearingen, a sporting-goods retailer and local football referee, celebrated his own birthday with a gift to Dow: a July Fourth-worthy 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 store and the bars that were forever kept busy by hard-partying Ohio U students.

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 1,200. 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 come to 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 says.

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 might be waiting for him.

"No, Jack wasn't roaming any hills in Columbus," Swearingen continues. "The only hills he ever roamed were at Scioto Country Club or in that real nice suburb of his, Upper Arlington."

Over time Nicklaus would grow sensitive to any talk that he was a rich daddy's boy, especially when the talk was inspired by Palmer's past. Arnold was the son of a greenkeeper, the sod-stained child on the other side of the country-club grass. People adored his Horatio Alger tale and assumed that Nicklaus had 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 18-year-old prodigy driven by 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 another hurdle to clear, another guy to beat. "I don't think he was so excited to play [Palmer]," Swearingen says.

Nestled atop a hill five miles from the parade route, Athens Country Club was a playground for 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 for the second nine. Put together, the nines measured 6,382 yards and played to a par 72. With a single dirt road (barely wide enough for two cars passing in opposite directions) leading into the club, Athens hardly looked like the center of the golf universe. But with the Tour season largely complete, this was the biggest game on the schedule.

The sky was clear, and the temperature was in the upper 60s. A gallery of about 1,500 poured onto the grounds. Fans parked cars along the 7th fairway. In fact, fans parked in the yards of everyone who lived just off the course. The sides were chosen, and Palmer, considered the strongest player, was paired with Nicklaus, considered the weakest because of his age. The four participants were warming up when the 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 1st hole, Nicklaus and Saunders were sent to the nearby 9th green to hit balls back toward the 9th tee. Jack swung 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 1. He's really moving it down there."

Blosser summoned Nicklaus to the 1st tee, where Palmer was flexing his comic-book biceps. 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 aside as Palmer accepted the challenge.

The fairways were dry and fast, allowing the mad bombers to add an extra 15 or 20 yards to their prodigious drives. Palmer and Nicklaus took a few warmup 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. Palmer couldn't help but notice the flaw, but he 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 the club above his head and appeared to begin wrestling with a rattlesnake, a gushing water hose, or both.

Nicklaus, meanwhile, had a full follow-through and 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. Palmer was simply 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 says.

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 an even tan like Palmer's.

Arnold and Jack both stood about 5' 10", 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, leadingman 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 1st tee.

Blosser had arranged for four of his Ohio players to serve as caddies, and he had Dow Reichley, Bill Santor, Larry Snyder and Charlie Vandlik make their way down to the 1st green to shag the driving-contest balls.

"I know they had a bet," Reichley says 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 1st tee, 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 pines stretched toward the green. Two bunkers were lurking to the left of the putting surface, one about 30 yards short of the fringe.

The 3rd green sat 35 downhill yards behind the 1st green. Nobody in his right mind believed that either competitor could drive his ball there — not in the age of persimmon clubs and balata balls.

Nicklaus took the honors, and his first drive was a monster.

"He hit it so high," Santor says, "you could barely see it up in the sky."

The ball cleared the 1st green and stopped rolling only after it had traveled 356 yards. Santor picked up Nicklaus's ball on the 3rd green.

The caddie knew a thing or two about Jack's tape-measure power. As a 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 beat him by only 12 strokes.

Palmer had no such intimate knowledge of Nicklaus and his game. He had 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 to power his ball down to the 3rd green, but it stayed low, like most Palmer drives. Much lower than Nicklaus's ball.

"Arnold hit a big hook," Swearingen says. "It hit short of the 1st green and bounced downhill to the left."

Nicklaus then ripped his second drive. As Santor stood near the 1st green, he squinted to track the ball's high, majestic flight. Again, Nicklaus put his drive on the 3rd green, more than 350 yards away.

Again, Palmer failed to match it, unleashing another low, screaming hook.

"Jack was outhitting Arnold by 35, 40 yards," Santor says. "I could hear the crowd yelling around the 1st tee."

His face three 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 1st tee onto the 3rd 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 everyone to hear, "can you tell me why you're hooking that ball so violently?"

"Because I'm trying to hit it too damn hard just to keep up with this kid," Palmer responded, flustered.

It was a lost cause. Palmer would later claim that he had won this long-ball contest, but witnesses reported that the players hit about 15 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 upset that Blosser called extra attention to it. But Palmer still had the better-ball match coming up, and even though 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 were the favorites, as most assumed that young Nicklaus would be a drag on Palmer.

Dow knew every blade of grass and grain of sand on the Ross design; he also owned the course record (63). Palmer had never seen the place, but he caught a major break in the form of his caddie, Snyder, an Athens member who had recently won his fifth consecutive club championship. Snyder could provide 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 3 while the others made par. Palmer added birdies on two of the next three holes. If Palmer couldn't beat Nicklaus in the driving contest, he would make darn sure that everyone saw him carry Nicklaus during this match.

Snyder held the nine-hole record (29) at Athens and was certain it would be broken. Palmer would solicit Snyder's advice, but not always take it.

"He'd say, 'Larry, what would you hit here?' " Snyder says. "I'd tell him it was 175 yards, and I'd probably hit a five-iron. He'd hit a four-iron and almost knock it in the hole for a gimme birdie.

On the 6th hole, a par-5, he hooked his tee shot into the rough. He says, 'How far away?' I say, 'Probably 200 yards. I'd hit the four-wood.' He hit a three- or four-iron and knocked it onto the green."

Palmer dropped a 25-foot putt on the 476-yard hole to get his eagle. He was already playing a game the kid on his bag could hardly believe.

Snyder had been caddying for 10 years. He used to shag balls for Finsterwald for eight hours a day, 50 cents an hour, and he would try to mimic Dow's beautiful swing.

"But Dow didn't have the personality that Arnold had," Snyder says. "Not very many people did."

Palmer nearly aced the par-3 8th 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 12-foot putt to tie Snyder's record. Palmer missed, 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 3-up lead.

Not that the team competition was the be-all and 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 14-year-old Snyder went up against a 12-year-old Nicklaus in the district juniors, and the older player prevailed in 19 holes.

"And I bet he outweighed me by 40 pounds," Snyder recalls. "By the time Jack was 18 his power was phenomenal."

That power moved the earth in Athens, and the Ohio U players serving as caddies couldn't fathom the noise made when Nicklaus's clubface made contact with the ball.

"The crack, the boom," Reichley says. "It was a supersonic sound."

Nicklaus drove the green on the 330-yard 10th hole, landing his tee shot pin high and six feet from the cup. He missed the eagle putt and settled for a 3. Palmer also birdied the hole, turning the gallery on its ear.

"Watching Jack and Arnie," Reichley says, "we were awestruck."

Finsterwald went on a birdie binge to make up for his lackluster front nine, but Saunders faded. Palmer and Nicklaus were in the clear. Both were outmuscling the course, though Palmer was making more putts.

The caddies were watching Palmer's every purposeful step. He was the leading money winner on the Tour at that point, banking more than $42,000 for the season, yet he didn't walk with an air of superiority.

"So down-to-earth," Snyder says. "He never said an unkind word to me, never frowned, never acted as if 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 10 years — would someday make up the greatest rivalry the game has ever known. But there was no extra effort on either player's part to bridge their generation gap.

"Arnold and Jack were cordial," Reichley says, "but Nicklaus wasn't much of a talker. . . . He kind of stuck to the business of the day."

That business was drumming every player on the course.

Nicklaus wasn't nearly as interested in winning the team competition as he was in shooting the lowest score. He didn't want to defeat Finsterwald and Saunders. He wanted to defeat Finsterwald, 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 shot. Palmer sank a 50-footer at the 16th and made an easy two-putt par on the 18th for a 62, celebrating Finsterwald's day by breaking his friend's 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 Nicklaus's flying elbow, the one conspicuous flaw.

"I thought he was potentially good," Palmer says. "I noticed he had his right elbow, it was unattached. Let's say it swung out. . . . Until he got that elbow under control or kept that elbow closer, he might've had some problems with his game."

The exhibition wasn't about Nicklaus, anyway.

"I think the whole thing was just the fact that I was there to [honor]a good friend," Palmer says, "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 up-and-coming player to be reckoned with at some point. And that was it."

After the exhibition 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 on 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 would go on to become an NFL referee and make one of the most controversial calls in league history: the Immaculate Reception ruling that decided the 1972 Oakland Raiders-Pittsburgh Steelers playoff game. But first he officiated at golf's Immaculate Conception, the birth of a rivalry that would fuel the surging popularity of golf 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 says.

That was the start of a lifelong clash of titans that would play out in fairways and boardrooms across the globe.