A Life Well Played

by Arnold Palmer

  I leave this subject with this thought: the harder you work at anything, the more it will relax you. Just make sure the work is productive.

  PRESSURE

  BOBBY JONES SAID that there is golf and tournament golf, and they are not at all the same. The reason they are not the same is because of the inordinate amount of pressure a player endures in a tournament round. And that pressure is ratcheted up to indescribable levels on the final day when you’re in contention.

  Everyone has a different way of dealing with the tension that can build up as a round progresses and a tournament progresses. For me, I developed a system early in my career, and I played to it. And when I was in trouble or when I was coming down the stretch, I relied on my system. And while I’m not going to get into all the details of the system I used, it all started with the basic fundamentals of the game. And my system dwelled on the basic fundamentals. I relied on my system and I practiced my system all the time. I didn’t just go hit balls on the range; I actually worked that system into the scheme of practice so it became a little bit of second nature to me.

  Some people might call that a pre-shot routine, which all good players use today, but it wasn’t a routine for me in which I had to waggle the club the exact same number of times before every shot. It was more mental approach, a checklist of things I needed to think about before trying to execute.

  When you run into a tight spot, a situation so complicated that you’re not sure of the way out, that’s when you fall back on your system to take you where you want to go. I used my system in each and every game of golf I played.

  That doesn’t mean that my system left me immune to feeling pressure. Everyone feels pressure, and that’s a good thing. I’ve talked to my grandson Sam about his game after he’s played in a tour event, and I have asked him what he might be thinking at a certain time. I’ll say, “Sam, what happened? What did you do out there?”

  He has said to me, “I got nervous.” He was honest about it. He got nervous, and it affected him. Heck, I hope he was nervous, because that’s what it’s all about. So I have tried to drill in him that you should have a system, but it has to be your system. Play your system, practice your system, and then use that system for every golf shot. I was nervous plenty of times, and I knew that if I weren’t nervous I wouldn’t be there in the heat of it all with a chance to win. So controlling your nerves is crucial; it is the essence of tournament golf.

  Now, I wasn’t always able to hit the shots to win. But my system allowed me to be ready to hit the shots. On many occasions, that’s what helped me accomplish the things that I wanted to accomplish.

  THE DEBUTANTE

  I ANNOUNCED THAT I was turning professional on November 15, 1954, and three days later I drove myself to Chicago and met with the marketing people at Wilson Sporting Goods Company to sign a contract to represent them that made it official. It was a standard endorsement contract that amounted to $5,000 per year over three years plus a $2,000 signing bonus. Not bad for a paint salesman.

  I didn’t waste any time going about my business of playing golf. Let me fill you in on my first few weeks after relinquishing my amateur status. Record keepers have me starting at the Brawley Open in Brawley, California, in January 1955, but I got busy much earlier than that.

  Three days after I signed with Wilson I played in my first event as a “pro” in Norfolk, Virginia, at Sewells Point Golf Club. I was paired with the club’s head professional, John O’Donnell, against former PGA Championship winner Chandler Harper, a Virginian who played out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and an amateur from Chattanooga named Ira Templeton. John and I lost the exhibition better-ball match, 2–1, but I shot 68, which was pleasing.

  The headlines really blared my name in my first four-day tournament as a professional the following month. Mind you, this wasn’t the first time I competed with the professionals. While I was in high school I had a chance to play in the 1948 Dapper Dan Open at Alcoma Country Club in Pittsburgh. Vic Ghezzi was the winner at 17-under 271. I shot a less-than-stellar 306 on rounds of 79-73-76-78.

  But now I was a professional, and not some unknown, untested kid from Latrobe but the National Amateur champion. So this is how the national wire report on December 9 from Miami began:

  “It’s ‘Slammin’ Sammy Snead against the field today as the $10,000 Miami Open golf tournament gets under way on the palm-lined Miami Springs Course.” Later the story informed readers that “top contenders included 13 former winners and most of 1954’s major title winners.” But there was no mention of Arnold Daniel Palmer there.

  Final paragraph: “Snead’s strongest competition was expected to come from National Open champion Ed Furgol of St. Louis, defending champion Doug Ford of Yonkers N.Y., PGA titleist Chick Harbert of Northville, Mich., and National Amateur champ Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pa., who is now a professional.”

  Okay, there I was. But it turns out I deserved to be mentioned only in passing because I wasn’t very good.

  There were 160 players in the field, including ten amateurs. The course had been “stretched” to 6,700 yards. I see these numbers and just shake my head. How times have changed. And then note the purse that year—a whopping $10,000. Bob Rosburg, another rookie, ended up winning top prize of $2,000.

  Julius Boros led the first round with a 66. Palmer shot a 69. But that was JOHNNY Palmer. Yours truly, well, his only highlight for two days was getting a ball stuck in a tree and missing just about every fairway for 36 holes to miss the cut.

  My official tour debut as a pro in early 1955 went much better. First, though, I played in two unofficial tournaments to try to gather some traveling money for my trip to the West Coast, and it was a good thing I did.

  Just nine days after Winnie and I eloped, I competed in the one-day McNaughton Pro-Amateur in Miami. I finished five shots behind Snead, but I still pocketed $520 by tying for second at 2-under-par 70 with Lew Worsham, Claude Harmon, Eldon Briggs, and Joe Lopez Jr. Straight from there I traveled to the Panama Open and picked up another $1,000 for finishing second to Argentina’s Tony Cerda. The cash came in handy, because I couldn’t earn any money for six months because of the PGA’s rules of apprenticeship. Nevertheless, after Monday qualifying at the Brawley Open, I finished 17th with scores of 72, 68, 67, 70.

  My tour career had begun. And my lifelong dream had begun to come true.

  PUTTING

  I’M NOT WRITING this book to fill anyone’s head with a lot of technical advice. I’ve written lessons for Golf Digest and books on how to play the game. I even wrote an entire book on putting, which is something I’d like to touch on briefly here. Putting is such a crucial aspect of the game because it’s the area where scoring largely is determined. I had written earlier about the importance of driving to help set up the ability to score, but putting is where it happens. So if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to share with you one tip that really helped me throughout my career. This is a tip I received early in my career from George Low.

  George, who was a fine tour player but made his mark as a putting instructor and designer of putters, was good for me because he used to watch me putt, and he would say to me, “Arnie, you’re the greatest putter in the world.” Well, as silly as that might sound, that was probably what I needed to hear. We all need to hear a little pep talk from time to time, and I will be honest: that gave me confidence that I could putt pretty well.

  You couldn’t have a better friend or bigger supporter than George, and, unfortunately, his enthusiasm got the better of him—and me—in the 1961 Masters. I was on my way to my second straight Masters win and third overall as I marched up the 18th fairway when George, standing by the ropes, called me over to congratulate me. We shook hands. I knew he was excited for me, but the exchange ended up distracting me from the task at hand. I lost my concentration and ended up making double-bogey on the hole to hand the Green Jacket over to my friend Gary Player. As the 1960 winner, that was a tough assignment having to stick around and do the honors
for Gary. The kicker was that he won using a George Low–designed putter.

  But let’s get to the advice you may want to try yourself. I went through a little stretch in 1963 where I was having trouble with some of the shorter putts. Without mentioning my struggles, George said to me, “When you’re a little nervous and you’re having trouble with your putting, just put your nail of your left thumb in the grip.” He wanted me to dig my nail in there and set it in there.

  Not too long after that I was playing in the Western Open, and I had about a four-foot putt to win in a playoff against Julius Boros (to whom I had lost in a playoff in the U.S. Open a few weeks prior) and Jack Nicklaus, and I felt kind of shaky. I was trying to get myself in order, and I was going through my fundamentals when I remembered George’s advice. I thought, “Well, what the heck, I’ll try that.” And I put that thumb up and squeezed my nail into the grip and took a few strokes. Then I walked over, eyed the putt carefully, and knocked it in the hole to win the tournament.

  SPORT

  GOLF IS A SPORT—and a darned hard one. And anyone who thinks or says otherwise hasn’t competed at the game at the championship level and hasn’t been paying attention to the direction of the game today, with many of the best golfers bigger and stronger and more apt to be in the kind of physical condition equal to that of most other athletes.

  Periodically, people have tried to make the argument that golf is only a game and not a sport, and, therefore, golfers are not athletes. But for those who play the sport, they have learned that golf might be one of the hardest sports ever invented. The dictionary defines “sport” as: “An activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules and often undertaken competitively.” Yep, that sounds like golf. Now, is it a sport as demanding as football or hockey? Well, no. But neither is tennis or baseball.

  Many years back Jimmy Cannon, the great New York sportswriter, contested the fact that golf should be considered a sport. I contended that golfers have to be fit to play the game and play it well. Being in good shape is an edge for sure. Not long ago Boris Becker, the former top-ranked tennis player, thought golf wasn’t very demanding. Then he said he walked for four straight days in a tournament hosted by NBA great Michael Jordan, and that changed his mind: he was exhausted.

  But it’s more than just being in good shape to handle the rigors of walking 72 holes of championship golf. It’s about coordinated strength as well. I certainly played the game with as much athleticism as I could muster because I wanted to hit the ball hard and yet control its trajectory and direction. Jack Nicklaus really brought power to the modern game. Tiger Woods was the best player of his era because he was the best athlete in golf. He could muster incredible power to hit the ball a long way and yet he could be in control of his body and his golf swing, and thus was able to shoot low scores.

  Tiger has gone on to inspire a whole new generation of golfers, and just about all of them are bigger and stronger and in better shape. They generate tremendous club head speed, and it’s changing the game.

  But back to my day. I was incredibly honored to have won the Hickock Belt in 1960 as the top male professional athlete in the United States. The S. Rae Hickok Professional Athlete of the Year Award was created in honor of the founder of the Hickok Manufacturing Company of Rochester, New York, which made belts, hence the choice of a belt as a trophy. It was first awarded in 1950. Ben Hogan won it in 1953, one of three golfers to win the alligator skin belt with the solid gold buckle and decorated with twenty-seven gems, including a four-carat diamond. I was the second, and Lee Trevino in 1972 was the third. Athletes who had won the Hickock Belt include the likes of Jim Brown, Sandy Koufax, Joe Namath, Muhammad Ali, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Bob Cousy, and Rocky Marciano.

  I won nine tournaments in 1960, including the Masters and the U.S. Open, and I came within a stroke of adding a third major in a row and having a chance for what I had identified as the modern Grand Slam when I fell a stroke shy of Kel Nagle in the British Open at St. Andrews. I had a good year, but I had never given much thought to how my year of accomplishments compared with other athletes of other sports. I only cared about how much success I had against my golfing peers.

  As it was since its inception, the award was announced in Rochester at the annual Children’s Charity Dinner of the Rochester Press-Radio Club. I was on my way up to the floor where the dinner was being held and shared an elevator with New York Yankees slugger Roger Maris. After a few seconds, Maris turned to me and asked a little sarcastically, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I knew what he was getting at. Golf isn’t really a sport and golfers aren’t really athletes. Well, there were eleven of us at that dinner, the finalists who qualified by winning the monthly award as chosen by a group of panelists. The only guy who had won the monthly award twice that year was in that elevator, and it wasn’t Maris.

  When it was time to reveal the winner, all of the candidates stood up. When they announced my name, I just couldn’t help myself. I turned to Maris and said with a smile, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I’d like to think I was standing up for all golfers, not just myself. Later that year I was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year. The defense rests.

  TEMPER

  I’VE ALWAYS HAD A FAIRLY easygoing disposition. But in my younger days you wouldn’t have known it if you’d seen me on the golf course. Something significant happened to me in 1946 that really changed how I went about my business on the golf course.

  My mother and father were on hand to watch my match in the West Penn Junior finals. At one juncture I missed a short putt, something that infuriated me. (It still does.) In frustration, I flung my putter in disgust over the gallery and some small trees. I won the title, but you wouldn’t have known it on the car ride home. I was met by stone silence. Finally, my father spoke up. “If you ever throw a club like that again, you’ll never play in another golf tournament.”

  I knew he was serious. To Pap, there was nothing worse than a poor loser—except being an ungracious winner.

  I learned that day the value of never publicly displaying my anger or frustration—and we all know how frustrating golf can be. The last thing I wanted was to be prevented from playing tournament golf. I gave a lot of thought to what my father said. And for me, the way I decided to deal with some of those frustrations was by talking to people and making conversation out of bad shot.

  Was this an act? Not at all. I merely made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to let golf change who I am. It didn’t take a lot of effort to simply remember to be myself on the golf course as much as possible. I also took the lessons Pap gave me about good sportsmanship and applied them throughout my career. That way, win or lose, I knew that I was going to do the right thing.

  But I still played with emotion. And I let my emotions out on the golf course, but in a much more controlled manner. The gallery still knew I was frustrated if a shot didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. In any event, as I became more successful, particularly as a professional, galleries reacted as much to my friendly demeanor as they did to my penchant for wearing my heart on my sleeve. Still, I was adhering to that lesson Pap taught me.

  I never threw another club again.

  THE CHARGE

  THE PALMER CHARGE was a phenomenon that many say was the hallmark of my career, and I would be hard-pressed to disagree. Even if I didn’t necessarily pull off as many wins with the charge as people might think, I forged a reputation for comeback wins and late scoring flourishes. Many times I put on a charge that came up just short, but I think that even some near misses furthered my reputation for making a tournament interesting down to the last hole. I know, win or lose, I enjoyed giving it my all.

  Ken Venturi once said that we are all chargers out there. He might have been right to a certain degree. Even Jack Nicklaus, as careful and calculating as he was in his approach to the game, knew that there came a time in a golf tournament when you had to try to mak
e something happen if you had any intention of winning.

  I explained the mentality of the charge rather succinctly following my playoff win over Gary Player and Dow Finsterwald in the 1962 Masters Tournament. Trailing Gary by three strokes after nine holes after an outward 37, I got a much needed lift with a birdie at the par-4 10th when I rifled a 5-iron to 20 feet and sank the putt. When Gary’s approach sailed long and he missed a six-foot par putt, suddenly I was behind by just one. I proceeded to birdie four more holes, coming in with a 68 for a three-shot win and my third Green Jacket. I also erased that horrible memory from the year before when I double-bogeyed the 72nd hole and lost to Gary by a stroke.

  “If I get a birdie at the proper moment just when I need a psychological lift, then I figure I can birdie them all from there on,” I told the press. “If it doesn’t come, you just keep plowing.”

  Mark McCormack kept track of my final rounds from 1956 and 1966, and what he found was that when I was in contention my scoring average was 69.88, while in the same period my average score per round was 70.57. Somehow I was able to harness my intense desire to win. The magic year, of course, was 1960, when I shot 70 or better in the final round to win seven times, including the Masters (70) and U.S. Open (65). In the following three years I added another 15 wins with scores of 70 or lower in the final round. Overall from 1960 to 1963 I won 33 times.

  I should point out that I didn’t necessarily plan on these charges. And it wasn’t something I necessarily always relished—unless, of course, I pulled it off. In 1961 I tried to explain in one golf publication that I would rather not be known for charging because it’s just too hectic. I said that I would rather start off really well. And Winnie even told me she relaxed more when I would start off a round or a tournament with a birdie or a par and get a good start under my belt. But many times I couldn’t seem to get my concentration together until the closing moments.