Accolades flow for "Golden Bear" Nicklaus on 70th birthday

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jack Nicklaus was the recipient of glowing tributes and sentimental greetings on Thursday while he celebrated his 70th birthday on a fishing trip to Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.

Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, members of the so-called Big Three with Nicklaus, were among the first to shower their long-time rival with accolades.

"Jack Nicklaus and I have been very good friends for 50 years, from the time he arrived on the national tournament scene in the early 1960s," American Palmer said in a statement released by the PGA Tour.

"If anything has distinguished our association over that half century, it has been our competitiveness.

"It was not just our desire to be the winner every time we faced each other in a golf tournament in our golden years. We often were rivals in business endeavors, golf and otherwise.

"Through it all, Jack and I have been of one mind and pursuit with regard to expanding and protecting the integrity, the dignity and the traditions of our great game," added the 80-year-old Palmer, a seven-times major champion.

South African Player, like Nicklaus a winner of all four major titles, said of his lifelong friend: "He has been one of the greatest ambassadors for golf, not only in the U.S. but worldwide.

"He understood the true value of internationalism. We are a global society, and he continued to play around the world and promote the game of golf.

"While doing that, he has been a family man and he''s got a wonderful wife in Barbara. He has been the epitome of golf''s necessity."

MEMORABLE DUELS

Eight-times major winner Tom Watson, who featured in several memorable duels with Nicklaus in the 1970s, also praised his fellow American.