Customer Reviews
How Arnie and Jack Liked to Defeat Each Other . . . in Detail - By: Donald Mitchell, 01 Jul 2008 
If you want the long & short of this book, it's easy to summarize: Arnold Palmer & Jack Nicklaus loved nothing better than to one-up each other; Arnold wanted to win more on the golf course, & Jack wanted to be more popular with the fans; their wives kept the rivalry from getting out of hand; & they are more at peace with one another now than before.
If you want to read about the various times they played each other, the off-course competition, slights to one another, & what bugged each one about the other, then you'll want to read every page of this detailed dual biography. If you would rather read just about one or the other . . . & their whole career in perspective, another book will undoubtedly be more pleasing.
I had never read anything about the backgrounds of either golfer so I learned a lot. As soon as the book got into the years where I was well aware of both men, the book didn't add very much to what I knew already. In fact, Mr. O'Connor left out material that I would have included.
Because the two men are ten years apart in age, they aren't the kind of playing rivals that some of the earlier champions were who competed against each other in their prime years. In the process, the astonishing rise of golf as a spectator sport isn't given as much attention as it should.
But if you want to get an overview of both men, magnified by their feelings about one another, this book will serve you alll right. But don't expect the book to be compelling reading. It's more like those long-winded stories you hear at the country club in the bar that are shared by the oldest member after quite a few libations.
