The great sports columnist Jim Murray once wrote, “God whispered into
Jack Nicklaus’s ear, ‘You’ll be the greatest player who ever lived.’ Then he
whispered to Arnold Palmer, ‘But they’ll love you more.’
No other person in golf has been so universally loved, admired, and
adored as has Arnold Daniel Palmer. The depth of his popularity cannot
be measured except by the millions of golfers who devoutly worship at his
feet every time he appears between the ropes and who yearn for his return
every time he leaves.
Palmer is affectionately called the “king” and with good reason: he is
treated like royalty everywhere he goes. And he rules over golf as a benevolent monarch who treats his subjects with equal parts fairness and affection. More important, Palmer ushered in golf’s modern era, and many say
he is single-handedly responsible for the millions of dollars those who followed him play for today. He had good looks, was raised among the working class, and was eerily unafraid of any shot in any situation. In other
words he was perfect for the new medium that was beginning to bring the
game to fans’ homes: television.
Palmer had the biceps and the forearms of a man twice his size and drove
the ball prodigious distances with that funny finish to his swing, kind of
like a man about to sling a cat by the tail but who decided at the last minute
to hang on to it. However, Palmer didn’t always drive the ball straight, and he was often left with problematic shots over, under, around—or through—
trees. He never met a trouble shot he didn’t like. In fact it’s suspected that
he took a twisted pleasure in such dilemmas, which is probably why he was
able to pull them off with such frightening regularity. That’s one of the reasons we believe we can reach out and touch him and he won’t even mind.
Certainly he must be one of us. He smokes, sweats, and has trouble keeping his shirttail in. (All right, he doesn’t smoke anymore. Neither do most
of the rest of us.) He swears, stomps, and beseeches the sky. He hooks, yips,
and lips out. Palmer is Every Golfer—only he has won major championships, and we live vicariously through his exploits.
He signs every autograph that is humanly possible—and then he signs
some more. He submits to almost every interview request that his schedule allows—and then he bends over backward to accommodate. He plays
in nearly every tournament that wants him—and then enters still more.
It is his unbridled enthusiasm for golf that endears him to everyone from
the greatest to the least skilled of us. He simply loves to play golf, and it
shows, even when his game is not up to his standards. In an era when the
game’s best players stow their clubs in a corner when they are away from
the Tour, Palmer arranges his schedule so that when he is at his second
home at the Bay Hill Club in Orlando, he plays every day with a regular
group of pros and amateurs in a game lovingly called “the Shootout.” And
he plays those rounds with just as many equal parts seriousness and laughter as he does when he plays on Tour.
In other words, Palmer plays the game just like we do. More than that,
he looks people in the eye—and smiles. For every person in the gallery, any
contact with Palmer means that he has made him feel as if he or she is the
only fan on the golf course.
What attracts us to him most is that he is perhaps the most human of
all our famous athletes. He loves his job and his family and is modest almost
to a fault. Yet he walks with a swagger that says he is a man’s man, while
also having the twinkle in his eyes that more than suggests he is a favorite
of the opposite sex.
When he found himself in some trouble with the press and the USGA
over some comments he made about nonconforming equipment, the fans
remained loyal. For them it would take a lot more than a silly flap over the
coefficient of restitution to lose faith in their king.At age seventy-two, when his playing career was coming to an end, he
puzzled the golf community when he gave his tacit endorsement to amateurs who wanted to play drivers that didn’t conform to the Rules of Golf.
He was the target of criticism from those who thought he was encouraging the use of illegal equipment. For his part, he simply wanted as many
people as possible to enjoy the game he so loves.
Perhaps the seminal event of Palmer’s career came in 1960 at age thirty
at the U.S. Open. He began the final round seven shots behind fifty-fourhole leader Mike Souchak at Cherry Hills Country Club outside Denver.
All week, he had been trying to drive the green at the 345-yard first hole,
and all week he had been unsuccessful. Prior to the final round a conversation took place, a chat that has gone down in the myth and legend of
golf. Not even the participants agree on exactly what took place, but it went
down something like this:
In the Cherry Hills locker room, Palmer was eating a hamburger and
passing the time with Dan Jenkins of Sports Illustrated and hometown
writer Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“If I drive the first green, I could shoot something good,” Palmer said.
“You couldn’t drive that green if you were George Bayer in a Cadillac,”
Drum shot back, making reference to the longest hitter of the day.
“If I shoot 65, what’ll that bring me?” Palmer wondered.
“About seventh place,” Jenkins replied. “You’re too far back.”
“But that gives me 280, and doesn’t 280 always win the Open?” Palmer
asked.
“Only when Hogan shoots it,” Jenkins quipped.
Jenkins said Palmer laughed when he left the locker room. Drum said
Arnold was a little miffed. However he reacted, he burned a low hook over
the corner of the dogleg at the first hole, and the ball bounded through the
high rough and onto the green. He birdied the first four holes on his way
to an outward thirty. He shot his 65 and won his only U.S. Open, setting
a record in the bargain for largest eighteen-hole comeback.
He had won five other events in 1960, including his second Masters
title. He would win two more that year for his best year as a professional.
More than anything, the Open victory established Palmer as a hero. He
won with his heart exposed to the elements, slashing, thrashing, and holing putts from impossible distances. He was daring and dashing, even othKing of Kings • Arnold Palmer 131
erworldly in his exploits. He was capable of immense heroics and just as
enormous blunders. Yet there he stood, a cigarette dangling from his lips,
hair devilishly tousled, shirttail out in back—all seemingly within arm’s
length, even if you were watching on television.
That’s why we pulled for Arnie, because he was us—our next-door
neighbor, the plant foreman, the usher at church. Yet he was who we
couldn’t be—the star, the legend, the idol of millions. All the while, he
looked every one of us straight in the eyes and smiled that genuine, heartfelt, killer smile. We swooned, even the guys.
Arnold Daniel Palmer was born on September 10, 1929, in the steel mill
town of Youngstown in western Pennsylvania. He was the son of Doris and
Deacon Palmer, who was the greenkeeper and de facto pro at Latrobe
Country Club. Young Arnold learned the rudiments of the game from his
father, who was demanding and stern. He placed the lad’s hands on the
club and demanded that he “Get the right grip. Hit the ball hard, boy. Go
find it and hit it hard again.”
Not much changed in the nearly seventy years that followed. Palmer’s
trademark would become his massive, gnarled hands, described often as
belonging to a blacksmith. Those hands whipped the club through the ball
at amazing speed, lashing drives long, straight, and true. Palmer for years
was one of the longest, straightest drivers of the ball who ever lived.
When he did miss a fairway, however, it was a gargantuan error, and he
often found himself with trees between him and the flag. That dilemma
did not prevent him from seeking the shortest distance to the hole. There
was no pin that Palmer couldn’t shoot at, whether from the middle of the
fairway or in the deep darkness of the woods. No one knows for certain
when Arnold learned this swashbuckling style, but it is suspected that the
genesis was from his pap, who taught him to hit the ball hard and worry
about finding it later.
While at what was then Wake Forest College, Palmer blossomed into
one of the best collegiate players in the country. He won the Southern Conference title his freshman year, beating Harvie Ward and Art Wall. He
would go on to win another conference title and make the semifinals of
two straight North and South Amateur championships, thus forging his
growing reputation.
But the event that shaped Palmer the most during his college years was
a tragedy. Palmer’s Wake Forest roommate was Buddy Worsham, brother
132 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
of PGA Tour star Lew Worsham. Buddy was killed in a weekend automobile accident, an event that tore at Palmer for years. Some speculate that
was one of the reasons he left Wake Forest to join the Coast Guard.
Palmer won sixty-one times on the PGA Tour, including seven major
championships. But perhaps the one title for which he feels the most pride
is the 1954 U.S. Amateur Championship. It is certainly the most hardfought big tournament he has ever won. The Amateur requires that its
champion play eight matches in a week’s time, including thirty-six-hole
semifinal and final matches.
In 1954 two of his first three matches went to the eighteenth hole, and
his fourth-round opponent, Walter Andzel, fell five and three. In the fifth
round Palmer faced an old friend and foe, Frank Stranahan, one of the
country’s finest amateurs. Stranahan had defeated Harvie Ward, perhaps
the best amateur in the nation, one up the previous round, a match that
had been the talk of the tournament. Stranahan also had some experience
with young Palmer, dusting him off eleven and ten in a thirty-six-hole
North and South Amateur semifinal match and four and three in the 1950
U.S. Amateur. This time, however, Palmer played flawlessly, dispatching
Stranahan three and one.
Don Cherry was the quarterfinal opponent, and Palmer was again taken
to the final hole before emerging victorious. Palmer and Ed Meister locked
in a pitched battle in their thirty-six-hole semifinal match and would wind
up making history. Palmer, for his part, provided his share of drama to
extend the match.
On the thirty-sixth hole Palmer’s drive found heavy rough, and his second landed in high grass behind the green. His pitch finished five feet above
the hole on a slick green. He holed the putt, in what would become typical Palmer style, to move to sudden death, which he would win on the third
extra hole, making it the longest semifinal match in amateur history.
Palmer met Bob Sweeny, a forty-three-year-old investment banker from
New York, in the final. Sweeny was the 1937 British Amateur champion
and was said to give Ben Hogan strokes when they met in winter matches
at Seminole Golf Club in Florida. The pair was a study in contrasts.
Sweeny was wealthy, refined, and well dressed. His swing was silky and
classic. Palmer, on the other hand, came from working-class roots. He was
a twenty-four-year-old ex–Coast Guardsman who was working at the time
as a paint salesman. His swing was anything but refined.
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But pretty swings don’t win golf tournaments, and Palmer’s action was
always effective. Palmer didn’t take the lead for good against Sweeny until
the thirty-second hole, and he was extended to the thirty-sixth hole before
the outcome was secured.
A major title in hand, Palmer headed out the next year for the insecure
world of the PGA Tour. Armed with $5,000 per year and a $2,000 signing bonus from Wilson Sporting Goods, Palmer won the 1955 Canadian
Open on his first full year on Tour. Three years later he made his way onto
golf’s grand stage at the 1958 Masters.
In the days leading up to the event, Palmer and Dow Finsterwald played
a practice-round match against Hogan and Jackie Burke, Jr. Palmer played
so badly that Hogan wondered aloud in the locker room how Palmer had
managed an invitation to the Masters.
Perhaps Hogan’s doubts fueled Palmer’s desire to win the tournament,
but Hogan had a point. Who was Arnold Palmer, and what had he done
to make anyone think he could win a major championship?
He won twice in 1956 and four times in 1957, more wins than anyone
else that year. Prior to the Masters he won in St. Petersburg and lost the
Azalea Open in a play-off. At Augusta he shot rounds of 70-73-68 and
found himself at the twelfth hole on Sunday with a one-shot lead. His tee
shot at the par three carried over the green and embedded into the turf wet
with heavy rains that soaked the course. He informed the officials that he
intended to lift, clean, and replace the embedded ball without penalty
under the rules of the day. The official told Palmer he couldn’t proceed in
that manner, and a rather heated discussion ensued.
He then told the official that he would play two balls, one as it lay and
the other replaced under the rules that he insisted were in effect. He made
a double-bogey five with the embedded ball and a par with the replaced
ball. At the next hole Bobby Jones and the tournament rules committee
chairman came out to inform Palmer that the par three would stand and
that he would retain the tournament lead. Palmer finished with a one-over
73 and the tournament victory.
The win moved Palmer up a notch in the eyes of his peers and in the
esteem of the golf world. Hogan proved to be wrong; Palmer did, indeed,
deserve an invitation, and the Masters would prove to be the one major
that Palmer owned over the next six years.
