From "one of the best sportswriters in America" (The Washington
Times)--the New York Times bestselling story of the friendship and
rivalry between golf legends Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus, whose
sparring matches defined the sport for more than a decade.
The first time they met, at an exhibition match in 1967, Tom Watson was
a seventeen-year-old high school student and Jack Nicklaus, at
twenty-seven, was already the greatest golfer in the world. Though they
shared some similarities--they were both Midwestern boys who had learned
how to play golf at their fathers' country clubs--they differed in many
ways. Nicklaus played a game of consummate control and precision. Watson
hit the ball all over the place. Nicklaus lacked charm and theatrics,
and he was thoroughly despised by most golf fans because he had
displaced Arnold Palmer as king of the golf world. Watson was one of
those Arnold Palmer fans. Yet over the next twenty years their seemingly
divergent paths collided as they battled against each other again and
again for a place at the top of the sport and drove each other to
ever-soaring heights of accomplishment.
Spanning from that first match through the "Duel in the Sun" at
Turnberry in 1977 to Watson's miraculous near-victory at Turnberry as he
approached sixty, and informed by interviews with both players over many
years, The Secret of Golf is Joe Posnanski's intimate account of the
most remarkable rivalry and (eventual) friendship in modern golf.
