A Life Well Played

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A Life Well Played Page 9

by Arnold Palmer


  On May 3, 2006, I joined leaders from University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to announce a $2 million gift from the Arnold D. Palmer Charitable Trust to the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. I don’t share this for any reason except to highlight how determined I have become in finding treatments for cancer, which is a widespread threat. At the time the National Cancer Institute estimated that more than 10 million people in the U.S. either have had cancer or are being treated for it. The burden of cancer reaches far into our communities and exacts an enormous toll—not just on the patients, but also on families, loved ones, friends, and co-workers.

  I am lucky to have survived cancer, but not so lucky to have not felt the sting of tremendous loss in my life due to the disease. This is a fight that I will wage until my last breath, for Winnie, for my family, for everyone who must confront this awful disease.

  CIVILITY

  THE FIRST TEE, which strives to introduce young people to golf, is one of my favorite initiatives for growing the game. But to me it’s so important because it’s about more than golf.

  I have been personally interested in The First Tee from its inception, and I have been excited about its growth. I was delighted to provide the services of my course design company to design one of the early First Tee facilities, appropriately at Augusta, Georgia. I also provided sets of clubs from my golf club company.

  The greatest part of The First Tee I learned was its promotion of nine core values: honesty, integrity, respect, sportsmanship, confidence, responsibility, perseverance, courtesy, and judgment. This is how meaningful and positive each of these words are—both their definitions and their golf definitions. To be able to promote these values through golf fits in quite nicely with things I have thought about the game all of my life, and that is that golf can be used to better society.

  I would like to restore a kinder, more gentle atmosphere to this world of ours. We will self-destruct if we continue to tolerate such things as greed and arrogance. I can’t tell you how supportive I am of one particular aspect of The First Tee. Nothing has gotten me on my soapbox more often in recent years than the erosion of civility and respect in our society. It thrills me to realize that The First Tee is working to correct that.

  The breakdown of civility, common decency, and family values is very troubling to me. These are important things. These are the fabric of our country and our civilization.

  Whether or not you are a golfer or love golf the way I do, I think we can all agree that promoting what we used to call “good American values” is something we can and should support. As I have gotten older, I feel this is increasingly important. I’m not saying that The First Tee can solve all our problems, but we have to start somewhere, and golf and its lessons are a decent way to go.

  THE PRESS

  ONE OF THE CONSTANTS in my life that has brought me a fair bit of enjoyment—through all the years of golf, the major championship victories, and the satisfying wins around the world and at home, both amateur and professional—has been the press coverage that I have received. I’ve enjoyed many of the folks in the press. Some were my friends. I understood their business. They were guys I could talk to and learn things from.

  I didn’t really pay much attention to the things written about me when I was a young amateur golfer, but I sure noticed a few things after I won the U.S. Amateur in Detroit. I’ll never forget that the press was writing some head-turning things, including that my come-from-behind, intense style of play seemed to stimulate the galleries. They noticed how I spoke to spectators and joked with little kids in the crowd, my changing facial expressions as I seemed to react strongly and with great emotion to nearly every shot I struck, the way I hitched my pants as I walked up a fairway.

  The truth is I loved these stories, mostly because they confirmed what I dearly hoped was true—that for all my rough edges and lack of refinement I belonged among golf’s elite. Jack Clowser of the Cleveland Press wrote that “Arnold Palmer was born to be a great golf champion.” Not to be outdone, the Plain Dealer’s John Dietrich wrote that golf had witnessed the birth of “a new super champion.” I still get chills thinking about these stories.

  Now, I had enjoyed a fair amount of press since I was a teenager, with my crusty old friend Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Press covering some of my early successes.

  I was lucky that newspaper writers took a liking to my style and reported things about me that were quite flattering. Over the years, I enjoyed favorable coverage whether or not I was the winner of this or that particular tournament, perhaps partly because I made myself accessible as much as I could with the media. In the heyday of my professional career, after I’d started to win majors, it was not unusual that I would be summoned to the press center for interviews regardless of my standing in the tournament. I tried to oblige as much as possible.

  Of course, there were times when I might have frowned on a particular story here and there, mostly if some particular part of it was inaccurate. But negative press does come with the territory, and there were some stories over the years that were, shall we say, less than complimentary. But I took those in stride. I felt I always was treated fairly, and in return I felt like the press had a job to do and if I could help them at all, I would.

  Only a few episodes have ever made me truly angry. When I decided to promote Callaway’s ERC II driver, which was nonconforming to the USGA equipment standards, I was hit pretty hard in some circles. The driver was meant to be used only by amateurs who play casual rounds of golf. I have always respected and dutifully abided by all the Rules of Golf and I have enjoyed a long association with the USGA, including being chairman of its membership program even to this day. I awarded President Gerald Ford the first membership when the program started in 1975. But I also recognized that many amateur golfers didn’t necessarily play by the strict rules of golf. They went out and played simply for enjoyment. They took mulligans and gave themselves generous gimmes and didn’t count lost balls. A driver that didn’t conform to the USGA standards wasn’t going to ruin the game, by my way of thinking.

  Well, there was a backlash in the media. I was seldom hurt more than when I saw a few headlines calling me “Benedict Arnold.” It was unfair and over the line—mean-spirited. It’s one thing to disagree on an issue; it’s quite another to use your bully pulpit to belittle someone. I don’t like that kind of journalism, whether it’s being done to me or someone else. That’s just one example, and I’ll leave it at that.

  It would be inaccurate to say my relationship with the media hasn’t changed over the years. I used to have great personal relationships with the likes of Drum or Dan Jenkins (now with Golf Digest) or some of the other beat writers. We would sit around and BS about things, and we were friends—professional friends. We respected one another and kept many conversations amongst ourselves. But I really can’t do that anymore, and I regret having to say that.

  Has any of this changed my attitude about the press? Not really. It does, however, change my mind about how I go about dealing with writers today. I still try to accommodate as many people as I can. Doc Giffin, my executive assistant, I think, gets a little more protective of me, and I am more hesitant when he asks me about a prospective interview, but I still want to help the media as much as I can. All in all, they have been pretty good to me over the years.

  LIFE JACKET

  IN 2009, I PENNED an article for the U.S. Naval Institute magazine, Answering the Call, which advocated that every person born in the United States should serve his country for at least one year in some fashion—if they are physically able to do so. I feel it should be compulsory. “Such a requirement would benefit both the nation and the individual,” I wrote.

  There is no doubt in my mind that I benefited from my three years serving in the United States Coast Guard. I became a better person, a better man, and a better citizen. It matured me and allowed me to grow up. I felt like I could handle myself much better emotionally.

  I enlisted in the Coast Guard i
n January of 1951. The country already was engulfed in the Korean War, and joining the Guard was not necessarily a way to avoid danger; the Coast Guard lost a higher percentage of its people in the conflict than any of the other branches of service because its role in escorting ships made Coast Guard vessels primary targets.

  I chose the Coast Guard over the other branches because it required only a three-year commitment. It was not a direction I would have ever anticipated going in my life were it not for one of the most tragic things that ever happened to me—the death of my best friend Marvin “Bud” Worsham. It was because of Bud, whose older brother, Lew, won the 1947 U.S. Open, that I had attended Wake Forest University. (At the time, it was Wake Forest College in Wake Forest, North Carolina.) We had met in 1946 at the Hearst Juniors at Oakland Hills Country Club in suburban Detroit, and it’s safe to say that we hit it off right away and we became as close as two friends could be. We enjoyed each other’s company immensely. Until I met Bud, I hadn’t given college much consideration. My family wasn’t in the kind of financial position to pay for school. Part of me was thinking I might join the Army rather than wait to be drafted.

  Because of Bud’s recommendation on my behalf to Wake Forest athletic director Jim Weaver, I was offered the same full ride that Bud had received, and I can tell you that attending college was a fantastic experience, not only because of all the golf that we were able to play year-round in North Carolina, but also because of Bud. But college became torture for me after the events of October 22, 1950.

  Wake Forest had defeated Southeastern Conference rival George Washington, 13–0, in the Homecoming Game to remain unbeaten, and after the game we all went back to the Community Club, as the athletic dormitory was called. I decided to take a nap, but was shaken awake a short time later. Bud said he and Gene Scheer, our neighbor in the room next door, were going to dinner and then a Homecoming dance in Durham, about twenty minutes away. I told Bud that I was planning on going to a movie later with Jim Flick, Gene’s roommate.

  “Come on, Bud,” I said to him, “stay with me. Go with us to the movie.” I wish I had been more forceful or convincing, because the next morning I awoke and saw that Bud’s bed hadn’t been slept in. I went next door and found that Gene had not been back, either.

  About an hour later Jim and I were on our way to Durham in coach Johnny Johnston’s car. Johnny feared the worst, and to our horror those fears were confirmed when we learned that Bud’s Buick had run off the road, hit an abutment on a narrow bridge, and then landed overturned on the rocky streambed, crushing both boys. They were taken to Raleigh, and it was left up to me to identify the bodies when we found the funeral home where they had been taken. It was the worst thing I had ever seen.

  Without Bud, being at Wake Forest ceased to have the same meaning for me. He was the whole reason I went there. Jim Flick moved his things into my room, and I finished out the semester, but I realized I couldn’t stay there. Of course, Wake Forest has come to mean a great deal to me in the intervening years, but at that time I couldn’t stand the thought of being there without my best friend. In 1960, following up on an idea I had not long after Buddy died, I started the Bud Worsham Memorial Scholarship in his honor at Wake Forest. Among those who attended Wake Forest on that scholarship were Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, and, more recently, Webb Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open winner.

  Against the wishes of my father, I decided that I couldn’t return to Wake Forest at the start of 1951 for my last semester. That’s when I decided to enlist in the Coast Guard, and I was shipped to boot camp at Cape May in the southern tip of New Jersey. While it was true that I was largely in the Coast Guard to fulfill my military obligation, I took my training and responsibilities seriously. Fortunately, thanks to Pap, the workload, constant discipline, and being chewed out regularly never fazed me in the least. And, as luck would have it, I did get a chance to pursue golf. Well, sort of.

  After basic training, the officers at Cape May offered me “permanent party” status. That meant I would stay and train other recruits. I also got another assignment: building a nine-hole golf course on the base in a weed-choked grassy patch of ground located between two airstrips. That was the first golf course I ever designed, and it gave me a real appreciation for the art of golf course architecture. With a rake and shovel I did all of the “design” work myself, single-handedly, and when it was finished I was pleased to see that the officers enjoyed the little pitch-and-putt layout. And I learned a few things that really helped me later when I started designing championship layouts, because I understood not only shot values but also the importance of its care and maintenance.

  I was fortunate that I never saw combat in the Coast Guard. After a year I was given an opportunity to transfer to a base of my choice, and I opted for the 9th Coast Guard District Headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. In the midst of my last year, as I got a chance to play a little more golf, I won the first of two straight Ohio Amateur titles.

  I still keep ties with the Coast Guard, and it’s a part of my life for which I am grateful because of the impact it had on me, and that it helped me get through a very difficult time in my life. I think that experience was invaluable, and it prepared me for what lay ahead. That’s why I recommend it so highly.

  COOLNESS

  HERE’S A CONFESSION: I never thought of myself as cool, even when people were saying I was cool. How could a kid from simple means who grew up in the foothills of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania possibly do anything that was cool? My idea of cool was the hero in a western movie.

  I never had a sense of myself as blazing any trails in style or fashion or popular culture. And I never did anything intentionally to seem cool. My mother and father taught me from the beginning that there is no point in being anything other than yourself. People will find you out eventually, and discover who you really are, if you are putting on an act. So I didn’t. Now, of course, I always found it fascinating that things that came naturally to me were evidence of my alleged coolness.

  Take, for instance, the hitching of the pants. Oh, yeah, that was cool all right. It was much more cool than letting my pants fall down around my ankles. That’s why I did it. I had narrow hips, and so I always hitched my pants to make sure they stayed up. I don’t think I caused a revolution in men hitching their pants, though. So how cool was that really? Somehow, people thought it was cool, that it was part of my mannerisms as I was making one of my charges. Honestly, though, because of my experience when I was younger, wearing ill-fitting pants, the hitching became an unconscious nervous habit. Again, I was just being myself.

  In 2011, GQ magazine included me in a list of the “25 Coolest Athletes of All Time.” I’m not sure who was in charge of putting that list together, but it was really quite flattering. GQ set the tone of “cool” by beginning the article: “The icons we remember and revere are not always the guys with the best stats or the slickest end-zone dance. They’re the ones who played the game like it was an expression of who they were and taught us how to be big-time with grace, style, and swagger. They’re the guys we never got tired of watching. And never will.”

  That was awfully nice. I’d only admit that some of that is accurate as it pertains to me. I’ve definitely played golf like it was an extension of who I am, that it was part of my identity. It was natural when you’re the son of a greenskeeper. And I thought that was cool.

  PAP’S AWARD

  FROM THE ARNOLD PALMER Regional Airport to the Arnold Palmer Award that goes to the leading money winner each year on the PGA Tour, there are plenty of things out there that, I am honored to say, bear my name. It’s all very nice, very flattering, and something that, when I stop to think about it, is very meaningful because of the genuine nature of the gesture behind it.

  I can recall one of the best birthday presents I ever received was in 1999 when the Westmoreland County Airport in Latrobe—located about a mile from my home—was renamed in my honor. Talk about feeling overwhelmed.

  I was over
come with a similar feeling a few years later when Fred Ridley and some other members of the United States Golf Association informed me that they wanted to rename their museum at Golf House in Far Hills, New Jersey, in my honor. It was a very emotional thing, especially given my long and close relationship with the USGA starting even before I won the 1954 U.S. Amateur. When the Associates Program (since renamed the Members Program) started in 1975, I had the honor, as volunteer national chairman, of giving President Gerald R. Ford the first Associates bag tag in an Oval Office ceremony, which made the president the first official USGA member.

  So when the USGA told me about their intention of renaming their historical complex the USGA Museum and Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History, I responded by saying that I had felt like I had won another U.S. Open. It felt that good.

  But as special as these things are to me, none of these courtesies even remotely compares—as a matter of emotional effect—to the gesture extended by the PGA of America. That’s because it wasn’t for me, mind you, but rather for my late father.

  In 2014, the PGA created the Deacon Palmer Award to recognize a PGA professional who had to overcome a serious personal obstacle in his or her career to serve the game and the community. My father had polio as a child that left him with a pronounced limp. He wore a brace for as long as I could remember on his left leg. He compensated for this handicap by building up his upper body. He could do several one-handed pull-ups at a time with either hand. My father was tough, and he was smart. That’s why, despite his physical limitations, he became not only the golf course greenskeeper at Latrobe, but also, eventually, the head professional.

 

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