Friends immediately called to congratulate me on my incredible business savvy. With Disney in the neighborhood and the land rush of commercial development that was bound to follow, property values were expected to soar out of sight. Contrary to their belief, I was really depressed as blazes by the news, heartsick that I would soon have Disney as a neighbor. Gone forever would be my quiet little corner of Florida, my private practice Eden of birds and birdies.
Eventually, though, I calmed down. I even was among the first to go out and take a ride on our new neighbor’s impressive monorail system when it became fully operational. I met Disney officials and looked over the ambitious blueprints for the immense theme park. The people at Disney couldn’t have been more gracious, and the experience brought home to me what an unprecedented impact the park’s presence was going to have on Orlando and the surrounding environment. I suppose I still privately despaired a bit for little Bay Hill. On the other hand, nature herself had given us an ace of sorts. Thanks to those freshwater lakes to the west and north, access to our little sanctuary would remain fairly limited. With no through traffic and only small residential streets connecting something like six hundred residential lots, I figured that with luck we would become an oasis of calm in the midst of it all.
I’m happy to say that’s exactly the picture that evolved; however, Bay Hill almost slipped through our fingers because of circumstances beyond our control. By 1974, owing to some business setbacks of our own, Arnold Palmer Enterprises was just about to ask Bay Hill’s owners for an extension of our lease-option agreement when we were thunderstruck to learn that they’d made their own deal to sell Bay Hill to somebody else—in fact, it was pretty much a done deal. The new owner was George Powell, president and CEO of Yellow Freight transport lines out of Kansas City, a man who turned out to be a real gentleman. When I approached George, he graciously agreed to renegotiate our deal, and we eventually purchased the golf club and course from him. The final price we paid was a bit higher than we had hoped it would be, but at least Bay Hill was finally ours.
Pap loved Bay Hill dearly. He could come there and do the things he loved most: play golf with friends, see his grandchildren, and enjoy a few adult beverages in the locker room after a round of golf. For a while, until I talked him out of it, he was even dead set on purchasing one of the club’s original cottages, which, as I recall, was up for sale for $17,000. After a life of hard work and taking care of everybody else’s needs, Pap was about to officially “retire” (although he never really retired), and I for one was pleased that he would finally be able to enjoy some of life’s finer things, which Bay Hill offered in spades. On the other hand, my mother, already beginning to show the effects of the crippling rheumatoid arthritis that she dealt with bravely until her death, wasn’t terribly fond of Florida. She always found her time there a little boring, to say the least. I suspect she needed the unfolding drama of the northern seasons, the comfort of her Latrobe friends, and the social traditions of western Pennsylvania to keep her happy. At any rate, they didn’t purchase the bungalow—which, incidentally, recently sold for about a quarter of a million dollars. So much for my real-estate business savvy.
It is a bit ironic that Pap was so keen about Bay Hill—on our owning and operating the club and lodge, I mean to say.
A few years before, he had nearly lost his mind when I informed him that I was thinking about purchasing Latrobe Country Club. I’ll never forget the look he gave me.
“Are you crazy? Why on earth do you want to do that, Arn?” he growled.
“Well, Pap,” I reasoned, “you’ve been here your whole life. That’s a good enough reason for me.”
I waited a second or two before adding, “Besides, it means you’d have to work for me.”
He didn’t find that particularly amusing. But the deal was all but signed and sealed at that point. The fact is, owing to cheap imports and the steep decline in the high-grade specialty steel market, Latrobe’s economy was suffering, the effects of which were visible even at the club. The watering system was antiquated, greens and fairways sorely needed rebuilding, and the clubhouse and pool area could have done with a serious face-lift.
This was exactly Pap’s logic for not buying the country club. He knew what it took to run the place, what a drain on capital resources owning the club outright would be. The figures simply didn’t add up in his mind.
As I presented it to Pap, though, it not only seemed an opportune moment for me to step in and spruce up the place—but also, given our family’s long identification with the place, it was the right thing to do. Harry Saxman had first raised the intriguing possibility with me. With Harry’s help, over a series of months, we tracked down and purchased all of the outstanding shares of stock in Latrobe Country Club. That proved to be a bit of a paper chase in and of itself that I do not wish to repeat anytime soon, because, since the club was founded in the 1920s, much of the stock was scattered far and wide, squirreled away in people’s strong boxes and attics. Some of the certificates ultimately had to be revised before they could be sold.
But, eventually, Latrobe was ours. Winnie and I became the sole stockholders in September of 1971. The club became, in effect, a true mom-and-pop operation. Over the years, we rebuilt the course and upgraded the club’s amenities, adding a new cart barn, halfway house, and tennis courts. We refurbished the locker rooms and the pool area and expanded the clubhouse to include a new grill and dining facility, which opened in the nick of time for the wedding of a close friend’s daughter. A few years later, we built a special covered patio off the club ballroom facing the 18th green, and we named it “Peggy’s Porch,” inaugurating it at my eldest daughter’s wedding to Doug Reintgen in June 1978.
For the record, I tried to convince Peggy that she and Doug were far too young to get married, but Peg is a strong-willed lass who takes after her mother and completely shrugged off my concerns in this regard. I liked Doug quite a lot. He was a local boy from a good family and he used to caddie at the club. At that time Doug was still in medical school but clearly had a promising future. Peg was undecided about her career and unsure of what she really wanted to do with her life, save marry Doug. My principal fear, however, was that their lives were just too unsettled to jump into a lifetime commitment. In this respect, I guess, my concerns did prove a bit prophetic, because a few years later they separated and eventually divorced. All families have their ups and downs, but I am pleased to say we all remain good friends with Doug and his family, and true to form Doug has gone on to become one of the country’s top cancer surgeons, based in nearby Tampa, Florida.
Back to the country club. Following his stint in the U.S. Air Force, my younger brother, Jerry, returned to Latrobe and tried his hand at inside jobs for a few years, until he decided it was more fun to be outside working on the grounds as Pap’s assistant. He completed agronomy studies at Penn State and was a logical successor to the club’s superintendent job, which I gave him when Pap passed away in 1976. A decade after that we named him general manager of the club, the title he holds today. It pleases me no end that his son Deken attended Wake Forest University and has gone on to work for the USGA in Colorado Springs, and that his daughter Amanda is studying agronomy at Penn State and is seriously considering either following her old man into the golf course business or maybe even joining her uncle Arnie in the course design field.
Whatever happens in the future, and with all due respect to Pap, I feel confident in saying that buying the club from the members twenty years ago is one of the smartest moves I ever made. It enabled me to preserve a facility I care deeply about and to give something back to the people of Latrobe. It pleases me in ways you can’t imagine when members stop me to say how fine the golf course looks or how terrific the food in the dining room has been these past few years. It seems like almost every Saturday afternoon when I’m at the club during the summer months, a big wedding reception or anniversary party is going on in the ballroom or out on Peggy’s Porch—a sight that n
ever fails to make me a bit reflective. While much has changed around here, the spirit of the place, the most important part, remains the same.
In a word, I couldn’t be happier with the way things have turned out in Latrobe. And I’ll wager, wherever he is looking on from (though you can sure bet he won’t admit it), so is Pap.
Someone asked me a surprising question the other day.
Was I afraid of dying?
I suppose my answer might have surprised him a bit. No, I replied. I’m not particularly afraid of dying—as long as I go the way my father did.
In February of 1976, Winnie and I flew back to the West Coast from Hawaii and said goodbye to each other and headed our separate ways. She went on home to Bay Hill, where Pap and Doc Giffin had just arrived for their winter golf getaway, and I flew on with great anticipation to the Bob Hope Desert Classic in Palm Springs. The Hope, simply put, was one of my favorite tournaments, and the week it was held was one of the finest of the year. That’s due in part, I’m sure, to my long and close friendship with the host, Bwana Bob, but also because I always seemed to find my game there and won the tournament a record five times. The expanded five-day format, the colorful mingling of entertainment-industry folk and golf pros, the large and responsive galleries, the relaxed atmosphere, and the opportunity to catch up with old friends and fans—all of it combined to make the Hope tournament a very special event in my heart, despite what I would have to inevitably think of every time the calendar turned to February.
I’d just walked off the course in 1976, buoyant after shooting 64 in the opening round, when my old friend Ernie Dunlevie, the tournament’s president, pulled me aside and said he needed to speak with me privately on a matter of grave urgency.
I didn’t like the way his face looked one bit.
We went into a room and he told me my father had suffered a massive heart attack and died. I was devastated. I sat down in a chair, feeling completely drained. That I was numb is the best way I can describe it. I thanked Ernie and immediately called home. Pap had played nine holes that morning on the Charger Course at Bay Hill, grabbed a quick bowl of soup, and headed out for another full eighteen on the big course with Doc Giffin. Afterward, they’d had a drink and Pap had said he felt tired and decided to go take a nap before he and Doc had dinner and played a hand or two of gin rummy. He went to his room in the lodge and stretched out on the bed. A short while later, Doc returned to his adjoining room and found the door between their bedrooms ajar. He stepped into Pap’s room to investigate and discovered him lying on the floor. Pap apparently got up when the massive coronary struck—and died before he reached the floor.
To say the least, I was stunned beyond belief. This was the news I’d feared hearing, in some way or another, all my life. It simply didn’t seem possible that my father could be gone. He was the man I most admired in the world. He was the man whose hard rules and painful lessons had made me everything I’d become, everything I stood for, everything I was. And now he was gone.
That’s when I lost it.
I won’t even attempt to describe to you what those next few hours and days were like for me. I sleepwalked through them, living in a blur of sorrow and anger and sadness. Pap was such a dominant presence in our lives, and he’d worked so hard for so long with so little material reward. It just seemed cruelly unfair that just as he was able to finally relax and enjoy the fruits of his labors, he would simply stretch out on a bed and pass away. That’s enough to test any man’s faith—in himself, in the fates.
It was Pap’s wish that his body be cremated.
A week or so later, we held a small memorial service at the Lutheran church in Youngstown, where Pap never felt comfortable darkening the doorway. Afterward, the family went to a spot that would have pleased him far more, the place where I think he performed the Lord’s work in his own quiet, dignified, bullheaded way: a small knoll just above the 18th green at Latrobe Country Club.
There, keeping it short and sweet and simple as he would have liked it, with only a handful of friends and family members gathered around, we scattered his ashes near a small red bush above the putting surface, where he could easily keep a wary eye out for anyone who failed to properly repair their ball marks.
A few years later, we scattered my mother’s ashes near the same spot. After that, the little red bush seemed to grow like crazy. My mother, always the life giver and nurturer. I’m convinced that the two of them are happy there, and I know that I can feel their presence every time I’m on that course—or anywhere else, for that matter. They say that to those who have been given much there is much that is expected. That little truism goes a long way toward explaining why I’ve lived my life the way I have. I don’t care how old you are, you still want to earn your parents’ approval and live up to the example they’ve set. That’s a tall order in my case, but a worthwhile goal.
The ebb and flow of life, like a golf match, never ceases to amaze me.
A short time after my father’s death, I got a phone call from Orlando businessman Frank Hubbard. Frank was concerned that the Citrus Open was dying on the vine at Rio Pinar, and he wondered if moving the tournament to Bay Hill and attaching my name to the event might somehow revive what had once been a very popular and prosperous stop on the PGA Tour.
When I thought about it, I realized that this indeed was a way I could give something valuable back to the PGA Tour, which has been so very good to me and my family. A year later, in the spring of 1979, with me playing the host role, the new Bay Hill golf tournament debuted with a strong field of PGA players on hand, including Jack Nicklaus. I don’t remember much about the 70 I shot in the opening round; what I do recall is being incredibly nervous about having the entire golf world, my old friends, and several million network television viewers come to Bay Hill. Needless to say, I hoped to get their stamp of approval on the premises and the new tournament. No Broadway producer ever sweated bullets any larger on opening night of his theatrical baby.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried quite so much. Among other things, we got rave reviews from the golf press, and appropriately enough, that first Bay Hill event was won in a thrilling playoff by a Wake Forest lad, Bob Byman.
Over the next twenty-odd years, I’m happy to say, even as the names of the tournament’s title sponsors shifted from Hertz to Nestlé to Office Depot to Cooper Tires, the list of Bay Hill champions included the best and brightest of the PGA Tour: Andy Bean, Tom Kite, Gary Koch, Fuzzy Zoeller, Payne Stewart, Paul Azinger, Robert Gamez, Dan Forsman, Andrew Magee, Fred Couples, Ben Crenshaw, Loren Roberts, Phil Mickelson, and Ernie Els. Not a bad collection of trophy winners.
Best of all, the players themselves made it abundantly clear to me how much they looked forward to coming to Bay Hill each spring, sometimes bringing their families along and making “working vacations” out of the festive week. Orlando is a great place for family fun. Amid all the drama of golf, there were some great parties and a lot of laughs and deepening friendships with younger guys like Curtis Strange, Peter Jacobsen, and Mark O’Meara, to name just a few. I’m especially pleased that all this has taken place at a spot my family, Pap included, has always been so fond of.
Since I’m being a little sentimental about it, I should point out that it was the same Frank Hubbard who asked me to get involved in the tournament who, a few years later, approached me with another proposition. This time he wanted me to lend my name and financial support to something he and many others believed was greatly needed in the Orlando area—a first-rate children’s hospital. In the beginning, all Frank wanted was to use my name and maybe get a financial donation from me toward the announced fund-raising goal of $10 million.
I was more than happy to do that. Children are my soft spot, and the idea that I might be able to do something to help a lot of sick children, well, that was essentially a “no-brainer,” as my own grandchildren would say today. Winnie and I enthusiastically signed on.
Then, after we toured the cramped, outdated
children’s wing of Orlando Regional Medical Center, meeting brave little kids battling cancer and other illnesses, seeing all those shockingly frail and tiny premature babies on life support, by golly, the floodgates in me opened. I used whatever clout I had to get that new hospital project up and flying. Pretty quickly, the campaign target had swelled from $10 million to $30 million, and a bit further along the line, I was pleased that other prominent tour stars like Greg Norman and Scott Hoch gave their time and financial support to the institution. Upon winning the Las Vegas Invitational in 1989, Hoch presented the entire first-place winner’s check to the hospital, a gesture that touched thousands of lives and a guy named Arnold Palmer very deeply.
It was Winnie’s idea to make the children’s hospital the principal beneficiary of the charity monies created by the Bay Hill tournament, a tie-in that has been a perpetual source of income to a project near and dear to our hearts. Eventually, I signed over all of my stock in the tournament to my two daughters, Peggy and Amy, and their families, and today my primary function with respect to the tournament is to serve as host, make sure things get done right and everybody has a good time, and do whatever I can to lobby on behalf of the charitable beneficiaries.
August 23, 1989, is a day I’ll never forget. Thousands were on hand for the opening and dedication of the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women. There was a host of young entertainers and singing characters from Disney World, a marching band, various area dignitaries and friends, and the press.
It was just days before my sixtieth birthday, and I guess I was in a pretty reflective mood. The hospital project had grown to mean so much to both Winnie and me and our family—the ultimate pet project in some ways. As speeches were made and thousands of balloons were released, I was feeling fine and in control. That is, until six-year-old Billy Gillespie, a new patient at the facility, held the microphone and spoke to the gathering—and to me personally. Billy thanked me for making a “dream come true.”
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