THEY'VE LEFT INDELIBLE SPIKE MARKS; NICKLAUS AND PALMER RIVALRY CHANGED COURSE OF PRO GOLF.

Byline: Karen Crouse Daily News Staff Writer

Let St. Louis slugger Mark McGwire grouse all he wants about the all-out assault waged by the media as he challenges Roger Maris' single-season home run record. But the athlete today who best understands the pressures that prompted Maris' hair to fall out in clumps in the summer of 1961 swings a club, not a bat. Like Maris, Jack Nicklaus knows what it's like chasing a legend the fans didn't want him to catch.

The Jack of Hearts, hated in spades? It's impossible to imagine now, when Nicklaus is bathed in so much adulation his skin ought to be a permanent shade of beet red. No question he is the top drawing card at this week's U.S. Senior Open at Riviera Country Club, where it is commonly held that the lower Nicklaus' scores are, the higher the attendance will be.

'Twas not always so. In January of 1962, Nicklaus made his pro debut at the L.A. Open and was roundly booed by crowds that worshiped Arnold Palmer, the most telegenic golfer of his or arguably any other era. Nicklaus would escape Rancho Park Golf Course with a 50th-place check for $33.34, but it would take him years longer to shake the jeers that followed him on that and every other tour stop.

His crime, in the eyes of some, was unforgivable; Nicklaus was raiding the PGA Tour vault, his liquid-gold swing (ever notice how you can't spell Nicklaus without Au?) and two U.S. Amateur championships presaging a bull run on the market Palmer had cornered in the late 1950s.

The thing is, a dynasty is not an old building that can be toppled with a few sticks of dynamite and a minimum of mess. Stones are thrown, feelings hurt and egos invariably bruised in the process. Nicklaus eventually did catch and overtake Palmer and it wasn't easy on either player.

As the crown was changing heads, Palmer would call Nicklaus ``Fat Boy'' (Nicklaus' wife Barbara, did, too, but the context was wholly different); Nicklaus would find reasons to pass up Palmer's tournament in Bay Hill, Fla.; Palmer would file a complaint with the USGA about Nicklaus' slow play during one U.S. Open; and Nicklaus would gripe - good naturedly, he insisted at the time - that the victory-less Palmer shouldn't have been invited to an event open only to the year's winners.

They were two self-confident men with transcendent games and the very human penchant for wanting to commandeer their destinies. Toward that end, each got in the other's way. But behind the occasional niggling was a deep mutual respect that in time grew into a friendship.

The U.S. Senior Open might be the last time Los Angeles is blessed to have both men in good gawking range. After this week, Angelenos wanting a window into the world Nicklaus and Palmer have come to comfortably cohabit might have to content themselves with copies of ``And Then Jack Said to Arnie.''

DIFFERENT BUT EQUALS

Of his relationship with Palmer, Nicklaus has said, ``Over the years, we've been as good a friends as two guys could be who've tried as hard and as often as we have to beat each other, and who are as different as we are in nongolfing tastes and interests.''

Gary Player, who along with Palmer and Nicklaus formed professional golf's triumvirate in the 1960s, was in the company of Nicklaus and Palmer in those years more than their respective wives. Player said recently by telephone from his homeland of South Africa that Nicklaus' observation, like so many of the golfer's approach shots over the years, was right on the mark.

``Arnold and Jack are complete opposites in every way,'' Player said, save for one: ``Both are wonderful human beings.''

Palmer is the gregarious one. Crowds work on him like caffeine, giving him energy to sign autographs and make small talk long after most people would have dropped from exhaustion. He is an instant showman. Just add people.

He reaches out to more people than the United Way. At a tournament in Texas in 1962, Palmer was in a two-man playoff and faced a tricky chip shot. As he addressed the ball, a small boy standing directly behind Palmer started talking to his mother. Palmer turned around, saw it was a child and laughed. Turning his attention back to the task at hand, Palmer was distracted again by the sound of the same boy crying after being sternly reprimanded.

Palmer turned around again and laughed. The third time he addressed the shot, he heard a muffled scream and turned around in time to see the exasperated mother holding her hand over the boy's mouth.

Most touring pros today would have scowled and summoned security long before it came to that, but Palmer simply laughed, knelt down, gave the boy a paternal pat and told the mother, ``Hey, don't choke him. This isn't all that important.''

He then got up and down for par and went on to win the playoff.

WINS NOT GRINS

Palmer's shot can split the fairway and you're still apt to find him over in the higher cut of grass, exchanging eye contact or pleasantries with his fans behind the ropes. Nicklaus, in his early days, didn't stroll the fairways so much as he stalked them.

``I seemed cold and Teutonic and too darn sure of myself,'' Nicklaus once acknowledged of his first few years as a professional.

On the course he'd stare straight ahead as if in a deep trance, which he sort of was. He'd be so busy playing his next shot over and over in his mind, he wouldn't notice raindrops falling on his head much less the signs in the crowd that read ``Miss it, Fat Gut.''

In those early years Nicklaus did carry the added burden of a few extra pounds. That, along with his high-pitched voice and hair trimmed as flat on top as most greens, made him no match for Palmer's Marlboro Man handsomeness.

``I'm aware I'm not the matinee-idol type,'' Nicklaus was quoted as saying at the time. ``Rooms don't light up when I enter.''

Away from the course, a different side of Nicklaus often emerged. Player recalled spending a night with Nicklaus and Palmer in a three-bedroom hotel suite in Canada before filming a television golf special.

``Arnold was talking to his wife (Winnie) on the telephone,'' Player said, ``and I shook this big bottle of beer, then took the top off and started squirting him. Then I started letting Jack have it and he took a big pitcher of iced tea and threw it at me. We had a great time. We were giggling like schoolboys.''

When the laughter finally subsided, they informed the front desk that there had been a little accident and that they would cover the costs of having the curtains dry cleaned, the carpets steamed and whatever else was necessary.

MAN OF THE YEAR(S)

Nicklaus would leave his mark on more than a Montreal hotel room. He took a driver to the old golfing order, starting at the 1962 U.S. Open. The second of golf's four majors was held at Oakmont Country Club, 30 miles from Palmer's hometown and, predictably, Arnie's Army was out in force.

Nicklaus and Palmer, who had won his third Masters title earlier in the year, were paired for the first two rounds. For Nicklaus, the legions of Palmer fans were like a moving hazard. They held up signs that read ``Jack's a Pig'' and stomped and hollered as the 22-year-old rookie stood over putts.

After 36 holes Palmer was tied for first and Nicklaus was three shots off the pace. Nicklaus, playing directly ahead of Palmer for the final two rounds Saturday, made up one shot on Palmer in the morning round and outscored Palmer, 69-71 in the afternoon to force an 18-hole playoff.

Nicklaus shot a 71 to Palmer's 74 the next day, much to the disappointment of a crowd so hostile one writer later said he thought he was at a wrestling match. It was Nicklaus' first major title and his first win in 18 events as a pro.

Nicklaus' breakthrough landed him on the cover of Time magazine and launched him to six more major titles in his first six years as a pro. Palmer won the British Open later in the year but would claim only one more major (the 1964 Masters) and record seven other top-three finishes in the Big Four after that.

Among his near misses was a playoff loss to Billy Casper at the 1966 U.S. Open at San Francisco's Olympic Club after Palmer blew a five-shot lead with four holes to play in the final round. Instead of playing it safe on the par-3 15th, Palmer aimed for the flagstick and ended up in a bunker to the right of the green. He hit out and two-putted for a bogey, fueling his collapse.

That was Palmer, aggressive to the end - aggressive to a fault, his critics would say. What no one could argue was Palmer's go-for-broke style was tailor-made for television.

Palmer and TV formed the perfect union, the good-looking son of humble origins who wielded his putter like a pirate did his cutlass. The new medium needed 3D personalities to grab and keep a mass audience.

Palmer was the magnetic force behind seven-figure tournament purses and ungodly ancillary income. No endorsement market existed before Palmer came along; he created it while tearing down the longstanding notion of golf as the domain of the country-club set. He opened the game to the masses in the same way Tiger Woods would make the sport safe for minorities four decades later.

Palmer was Apple to Nicklaus' Microsoft, creating the market that the Golden Bear would come along and further expand and improve.

Player is an unabashed fan of his countryman, Ernie Els, and also of Woods. That said, there was no hitch in his voice when he declared, ``There's not a young guy around who could come close to beating Jack Nicklaus at the same age. He had all the tools and a mind supreme.''

PRET-A-PAR

In the 1970s, Nicklaus addressed his physical appearance. He slimmed down, let his hair grow out and started dressing more stylishly.

``I take my hat off to him,'' Player said. ``I think Arnold gave more of himself to the public initially, but as the years went on Jack really went out of his way to make (a connection) with people.''

In this, too, Nicklaus succeeded, as is borne out by the way courses now tilt toward him. Just as Palmer's always have.

``I always had Arnold's gallery to fight, but I never had to fight Arnold,'' Nicklaus once said. He would also say of his leapfrogging over Palmer, ``I am not sure that in a similar situation I could be quite as gracious as he was at the time.''

He not only could be, he has. All those years of enduring coughs and change-jiggling by fans in Arnie's Army during his backswing and Nicklaus never once complained. If he was aggrieved by the public's behavior, he never showed it.

``He behaved so well,'' Player said, ``and the common sense of the public prevailed in the end.''

Nicklaus, 58, remained gracious even when a public he eventually had won over eagerly crowned his replacement after Woods won the 1997 Masters by 12 strokes.

Someone asked Nicklaus how it felt to be compared to the then 21-year-old Woods. Nicklaus didn't point out that until Woods won 17 more majors, the question should be posed to the younger golfer. He didn't walk off in a huff. Rather, he replied, ``It's certainly a compliment.''

Nicklaus announced last week he plans to stop competing against the young guns on the PGA Tour in 2000. The man who once looked upon the Senior PGA Tour with ambivalence bypassed last week's British Open in favor of the U.S. Senior Open because, as he explained, winning the latter has become more important at this stage of his life than competing in the former.

Palmer, 68, hasn't won a Seniors event since 1988 and cut back his tournament schedule after a bout with prostate cancer. Eventually they'll both be gone from the competitive arena. But their rivalry will live on.

``Arnold and I butt heads no matter what we do, whether it's designing golf courses, playing, endorsement work, whatever,'' Nicklaus once said. ``We are friendly competitors in everything we do and I think that's good for us.''

Without question, it has been a godsend for the game.

CAPTION(S):

Drawing, 3 Photos, Box

Drawing: (Color) U.S. SENIOR OPEN

(Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer)

Jorge Irribarren/Daily News

Photo: (1) Arnold Palmer, left, and Jack Nicklaus stroll together at Masters.

Amy Sancetta/Associated Press

(2) NICKLAUS

(3) PALMER

Box: HEAD-TO-HEAD