In 1960 Palmer enjoyed his best year on Tour, winning eight times,
including the Masters and the U.S. Open. He shot rounds of 70-66-69—
205, eleven under par and a two-shot lead going into the final round. But
he quickly gave that advantage away with a front nine of three-over-par
thirty-nine on Sunday and stood on the sixteenth tee two behind Gary
Player and Dow Finsterwald. Palmer faced a treacherous forty-five-foot chip
that announcer Jimmy Demaret said he’d be lucky to get down in two.
In signature Palmer style, he holed the chip at the par-three hole and
then made a twenty-footer for birdie at the seventeenth to draw even. A
par at the eighteenth put him into a play-off with Player and Finsterwald.
Palmer’s 69 the next day beat Player by two and Finsterwald by eight.
Palmer had made it two straight majors by winning the 1960 Open at
Cherry Hills with his own brand of Sunday drama.
Typically, Palmer is also quite as well known for his colossal failures as
he is for his sensational victories. At the 1961 Masters he squandered an
opportunity to be the first player in history to win back-to-back Masters.
He overcame a four-shot lead by Player to stand on the final tee with a oneshot lead of his own. All he needed was a par to win his second straight
Masters.
As he walked down the last fairway, his tee shot on the left side, all he
had was a seven-iron second shot to the green. On his way to his ball
Palmer was stopped by legendary putting guru, George Low, who said,
“Nice going, boy. You won it.” At that moment Palmer’s brain shut down.
He hit his second shot into the right greenside bunker. The bunker shot
was sent flying across the green. He needed to get the ball up and down
from a side slope just to get into a play-off with Player. Instead he left the
pitch fifteen feet from the hole and missed the bogey putt. He doublebogeyed the final hole to lose the Masters by a shot, perhaps the most ignominious loss of his career.
That same summer, Palmer made his second trip to the British Open,
this time at Royal Birkdale, where he found conditions to be quite brutal.
He shot rounds of 70-73-69—212, a shot ahead of Welshman Dai Rees,
who had come close to winning the Open Championship many times.
Palmer turned the front nine of the final round in thirty-six and led by four
shots as he and Rees made their way home. He heroically saved a par four
at the fifteenth after his drive found deep rough. He slashed a six-iron from
King of Kings • Arnold Palmer 135
the heavy stuff to within fifteen feet of the hole, a shot that probably saved
the tournament. (To commemorate this remarkable recovery, the Royal
Birkdale Club marked the spot with a permanent plaque.) Rees made a
last-minute charge to get within a shot, but in the end Palmer became the
first American to hoist the Claret Jug since Ben Hogan won at Carnoustie
in 1953.
More important, Palmer’s victory put the British Open back on the international map and established it as part of a modern Grand Slam—the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship. Until Palmer’s
trek, many American pros were unwilling to make the trip overseas for such
a championship, one in which they would likely lose money after paying
the high price for overseas travel. In fact Palmer himself said that the £1,400
he won at Birkdale just about covered his expenses. Not only that, there
were no exemptions in those days, and Palmer had to go through the qualifying process just like everyone else. As a result Palmer was able to convince the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews to extend some
exemptions to top American pros in an effort to entice them into making
the trip.
In 1962 Palmer traveled to Scotland’s Royal Troon, just weeks removed
from an emotional play-off loss to Nicklaus in front of Palmer’s hometown
fans at Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Troon is
long, narrow, and a difficult Open test. And when the wind kicks up, as
was the case in 1962, the examination becomes even more demanding.
Palmer was in third place after a first-round 71, a day when Nicklaus
turned in an 80. Palmer followed with a 69 that put him three clear of
the field. A third-round 67 gave him a five-shot lead, and 69 on the final
day put him six ahead of his closest competitor. He broke the British Open
scoring record by two shots and was the first American since Walter Hagen
to successfully defend the Open Championship. At age thirty-two Palmer
demonstrated the best golf of his career and was indisputably the top player
in the world. He continued his Masters domination in 1964, which served
to further fuel the Palmer-Nicklaus rivalry after Jack had won his first Masters the previous year. Palmer came to Augusta determined to win, and
win he did. He took the lead with rounds of 69-68—137, seven under
par—and after fifty-four holes he led by five with a third-round 69. After
winning three Masters green jackets with high drama, his ambition was
136 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
to be able to walk up the final fairway knowing there was no way he could
lose.
Palmer got his wish and became the first four-time winner of the Masters in history. Commemorating Palmer’s singular achievement, Masters
officials erected a plaque on a water fountain behind the sixteenth green,
a lasting monument to a monumental feat.
Palmer’s dominance of the game came in an eight-year span, from 1957
to 1964. In that time he amassed thirty-nine of his sixty-one wins and all
of his major championships. Not only had he captured the hearts and
minds of America’s golfers in a way no one had before, Arnold Palmer had
taken the game to the people and connected with them on a level that had
previously been reserved for team-sports athletes.
When he turned 50, his star power helped create the early success of the
Senior PGA Tour. He won a major, the 1980 PGA Seniors, in his first
attempt as a senior. He had actually made his debut in the unofficial World
Seniors Invitational, an event conducted by his management company that
would shortly find its way onto the Senior Tour schedule. He finished second to Gene Littler in the inaugural match.
Palmer won his second senior major in 1981 at Oakland Hills Country
Club near Detroit when he beat Billy Casper and Bob Stone in a playoff.
That victory legitimized the Senior PGA Tour as a viable entity. If Arnold
Palmer would play—and become a star—on this fledgling circuit, then it
was more than just an annuity for washed up players. It was its own tour
with its own stars. And Palmer was the showcase, at least for the next 10
years when a chap named Nicklaus would join their ranks.
In 1984, Palmer won two senior majors, winning his second PGA
Seniors title by two over Don January. He also won the Senior Players
Championship, outrunning Peter Thomson by three strokes. He came
within a whisker of sweeping all three senior majors that year, finishing second at the U.S. Senior Open, two shots behind Miller Barber. The next
year, he defended his Senior Players Championship title, winning by a
record 11 shots.
Five majors in six years made Palmer one of the stars of the Senior Tour,
as if his stature didn’t already. They were the halcyon days for the Senior
Tour, times when you just knew that Arnold Palmer was going to be in the
hunt most every week he played. The Senior Tour was billed as a nostalgia
King of Kings • Arnold Palmer 137
tour and no one could make us long for the old days more than Palmer
could. Although he wasn’t competing against the world’s best anymore, he
was still playing head-to-head against the players of his era. And he was still
Arnie and that was good enough
