by Tom Callahan
“I think of the young guys on tour who never had the privilege of playing golf with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, or of going to dinner with Byron Nelson at his home the week of Byron’s tournament. I’m so grateful for all of that.”
(Palmer made up games in the Latrobe rough, like Phil Mickelson in his backyard in San Diego, concocting unplayable lies and then playing them. “I’d have two or three balls going at a time,” Palmer said, “make a tournament of it. One ball would be Byron Nelson’s, my favorite golfer, another would be Ben Hogan’s, and the third would be mine. You might not be surprised to hear, mine was usually the best.”)
“I’d have a few balls going, too,” Mickelson said with a soft laugh. “One would be Arnie’s, one would be Jack’s, one would be Tom Watson’s, and one would be mine, and I never lost.”
TOM WATSON
“Arnie was nicknamed ‘the King’ for one reason . . . he was. When I was fifteen, I was asked to play with him in a benefit for multiple sclerosis in Kansas City. I was thrilled. It was sponsored by TWA [Trans World Airlines] and the Clipped Wing Society—stewardesses, as they were called then, who had to quit flying when they married. Times have certainly changed, haven’t they? My teacher, Stan Thirsk, was in the group, and I played pretty well for a while. I tied Arnie on the front nine with a thirty-four. But then he shot thirty-four on the back, too, to my forty. He complimented me just enough, built me up in the most generous way, without being condescending. Treated me like a real player. I learned a lot that day.
“I saw how he looked everybody in the eye, drew everybody in, didn’t shut anybody out. My father was there. His hero was always Snead, mine was Arnie, and Jack was the villain in those days. After our round, when Arnie was out of the shower and getting dressed, Dad asked him, ‘What will help my son become a better player?’ He said, ‘Competition. As much competition as possible.’
“The first time I played with him on tour was at the Hawaiian Open in the early seventies, and every time after that I learned something new. Even in practice rounds. We played a few Tuesday money games with Lanny Wadkins and that crew. Arnie just loved to compete. He wanted to beat you. He was all in, all the time. That was the way I went at it, too. In my opinion, Arnold, Mark McCormack, and ABC were the real Big Three. Arnold knew how to do it, McCormack knew how to sell it, and television knew how to show it. At that last champions’ dinner during Masters week, he looked so frail. He obviously didn’t like the situation his body was in. But he was standing up to it, the way you knew he would. Competing.”
(Palmer said, “I’ve laughed about the nickname ‘King,’ kidded about it. People have used the term as a fun thing and I appreciate it because I think I know where they’re coming from. Everybody has a different definition of what it means, and my definition is that there’s no king in golf. Certainly not me, and I’ve taken more from this game than given.”)
BEN CRENSHAW
“My dad, like all the other dads around the country, loved Arnold. One shot in particular, at Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, stayed with my father the rest of his life. He never stopped talking about it, the sound it made, ‘like a high-powered rifle going off,’ he said.”
(The first time Ben heard that sound was in the Texas Open of 1962, when he was 10 and Palmer was winning his third Texas Open in a row.)
“I’ll never forget being swallowed up by that crowd when it seemed to a little kid like the whole world was trailing Arnold Palmer.”
(Then, at a Texas Open Junior tournament in 1970, 18-year-old phenom Crenshaw was selected to play nine holes with Palmer.)
“He was so considerate to me that day, and to everyone. No one loved golf more or got more excited if you loved it too. That was the thing about Arnold. What thrilled him most of all was the fact that you were thrilled. It was never about him. It was always about the game. Loved being in the fray, but loved people even more. He was a father figure to a lot of us. Talking to him, anyway, was like talking to your father. In my second Masters [first as a pro, 1973] I drew Arnold on Thursday and Jack on Friday. How’s that?
“At Bay Hill once, I was hitting balls on the range next to Dave Marr, not far from Arnold. [In the warm-up Ben had been having trouble adjusting to his driver and was hoping it could be adjusted to him.] ‘Dave’—I turned to Marr—’do you think anybody here might have some lead tape?’ ‘Are you kidding me?’ he said. ‘That guy over there eats lead tape for breakfast!’ Arnold pulled out his entire tool kit, full of saws and scissors, and reweighted my club head just in time.”
(Palmer told Ben, “That’ll be a dollar fifty.”)
RORY McILROY
“It’s a little different for a European. Seve was our Arnie. Everyone says that, and it’s true. The way Arnie brought golf to the masses, Seve brought it to us. I didn’t grow up thinking of Arnie, but once I came over to the U.S., and learned what he did for the game, and all he meant to the tour, I got it. It was nice to come to his tournament, to honor him and all that he did for our game. Would there have been a Seve without him? Sure, but not the same Seve. None of us would have been the same. Golf wouldn’t have been the same.”
(“If you ever need anything,” Palmer said to McIlroy, “here’s my number. Call me.” “All I need, Mr. Palmer,” Rory told him, “you’ve already given me.”)
JORDAN SPIETH
“In the weeks before Christmas after I won the Masters, I came back to Augusta National to play the course a couple of days with my dad. You know, you can take the green jacket home with you for a year, but then you have to bring it back. I was already feeling my time with it kind of running out. I didn’t wear it around Dallas a lot—it pretty much stayed in my closet, in a garment bag that said ‘2015 Champion.’ But I would put it on at home when friends came over, and I wore it while doing crazy stuff, like grilling. Making memories. So now my father and I are walking upstairs to the Champions Locker Room, and I’m trying to soak in this feeling and make it last a lifetime. How often do you get to go and see your name in the Champions Locker Room at Augusta National for the first time? I had no idea—no one had told me—whom I’d be sharing a locker with. Arnold Palmer.”
NICK PRICE
“There are only two people I’ve met in my life who had that sort of—I want to say ‘It.’ Arnold was one and Seve the other. Because I knew Arnie and he made it so easy for me to know him, it was good to look at him at times through others’ eyes. My father-in-law, Jim, was the senior partner of a big law firm in Rhodesia—Zimbabwe—a very respected man in the community, president of the golf club, served on many, many boards of big companies. A very traditional man brought up in an English background and environment where manners and etiquette were everything. And he was a huge Palmer fan. Anyway, he came to Bay Hill not long after Sue and I were married. Nineteen eight-eight or so. I asked Arnold if I could bring him by. When I introduced him to Arnold Palmer, Jim was as nervous as any person I have ever seen in my life. I’m telling you, in Arnold’s presence he was like a kindergartner. That’s what Palmer could do to people. It wasn’t something he tried to do. In fact, he tried not to do it, to put everybody at ease. But I’ll never forget Jim’s nervousness as long as I live.
“My other memory: Sue and I were applying for our green cards, and because I didn’t know the president of the United States, I went to Arnold to ask if he’d do a character reference for me. Geez, I’ll tell you what, he wrote the most glowing letter on my behalf. I pictured the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] officer seeing ‘Arnold Palmer’ at the bottom and stamping that thing straightaway. For years, every time Arnold saw me, he reminded the people in the room, ‘I got Nick into the country.’
“All golfers, every single one of us, has learned from him in some form or fashion. My career, Tiger Woods’s career, even Jack Nicklaus’s career, all owe something to Arnold. Golf won’t ever be able to repay him for what he did for the game. Last time I saw him was at Augusta. He was sitting in the cabin there and called me over.
He grabbed my hand, just held on to me, and said, ‘It’s so good to see you, Nick.’ He told me he had been surrounded by old people all day—and I’m no spring chicken myself—but I was like the youngest guy who had come to see him. ‘Tell the other kids not to forget me,’ he said.”
GEOFF OGILVY
“There are people in the world—every now and then you bump into them—who have good energy. You just want to be friends with them. Everyone wanted to be friends with Arnold Palmer: women, men, young people, old people. Any interaction you had with him, you walked away thinking, ‘You know, I really like that guy.’ I think one of those natural laws of the universe, or the world, or whatever you call it, is that we are drawn to people who enjoy what they do. When you see somebody really loving what they’re doing, whatever that happens to be, it lifts you up for some reason. And so many golfers, because of the nature of the game, look like they’re not enjoying it at all. He always seemed like a kid having fun at the golf course. He loved playing golf, and that carried over into everything else he did. Every side success was just a happy by-product to the pleasure he got playing golf. He was a golfer.
“Tiger in the early days, when he seemed to love it, was so great to watch. But even before everything went bad, the fun had already gone out of it. He was still good, still winning, but it wasn’t the same. It looked like he was hating it. I shouldn’t say ‘hating it,’ but he wasn’t doing it joyfully. He was just doing it to do it. Even after Palmer lost his game, he never lost his joy.
“Generally speaking, he was a little too early for me, but I’m a little different. As a boy in Australia, I read Jones’s books, Byron’s books, Jack’s books, Arnie’s books. But Palmer was mostly just a great name out of the past until I came over and met him. He was still playing at Bay Hill, where the people didn’t care at all what he shot. They were just so happy to watch him. I think the character he was and how big he got came to outweigh his career a little, which is kind of a shame, really. But if Nicklaus and Tiger and Hogan had slightly better playing careers, none of them had anything like Palmer’s impact on the game. If Arnold hadn’t been around, there’d be a PGA tour but it wouldn’t be quite the same. From a professional’s standpoint, anyway, he’s the most important guy in the last hundred years of golf.
“Especially to this latest generation, Tiger was very important, too, obviously. To Australia, Greg Norman was important. For Palmer, Norman, Tiger—and Seve—there was only ever a gallery on one hole, wherever they were. That magnetism and showmanship was handed down to the others by Palmer. He made golf more attractive to watch and easier to sell.
“I heard from him when I won the Open, but the best time I heard from him was when I won Reno after two or three bad years. He sent me a little note Monday or Tuesday saying, ‘Well done. Welcome back. I know it’s hard to win again after a bad patch.’ So he noticed. He didn’t have to be noticing who wins in Reno, but he did. Pretty cool.”
NANCY LOPEZ
“I guess I did have a sense of history growing up, but more Arnold than anyone. Of course, you hardly ever saw the women on TV then. But JoAnne Carner was my female idol. Whenever the women were on, my dad would always say, ‘Let’s watch them today,’ and JoAnne stood out.”
(The legend of JoAnne Gunderson Carner—“the Great Gundy”—included the fact that she outdrove Palmer once. It was at an exhibition. Both hit long drives into the fairway off the first tee. With a swagger, Arnold bypassed the shorter ball, bent down to identify the longer one, then withdrew backward with a look of chagrin. If asked, he would get up from his desk and reenact that embarrassing moment, and love doing it. “I birdied the hole,” he said, “a par five. She eagled it.”)
Nancy continued: “The first time I played with Arnold was at the Bing Crosby when I was fifteen. Mr. Crosby invited me and another amateur, Marianne Bretton, to play in his tournament. We played a practice round with Arnold and Mark McCormack, which was pretty cool. From there on, Arnie and I came to do a few clinics and outings together and to really get to know each other. I started a women’s golf club company in conjunction with his and that led to doing more things with him, like the PGA show. I just adored him and loved being with him, and I think he felt the same way about me. He was such a sweet, sweet man.
“I was at the Masters this year and for him not to be well enough to hit the opening tee shot with Jack and Gary broke my heart. He’s so proud, and I could see it was killing him to be sitting there watching. I went to hug him, and that was the first time he didn’t stand up to give me a hug. So I kind of knew. He had such a character about him. That’s why the fans loved him. They knew how close they were to him, but I don’t think they realized how close he was to them. He got choked up talking about his fans. And thinking of that makes me cry. The reason he always gave so much of himself to them was because he loved them.
“Arnold started out better with people than Jack was, but Jack became better just from being around Arnold. I think of Winnie and Barbara, too. A big part of Arnie’s and Jack’s success had to be what their wives went through, basically having to share their husbands with the world. I know Winnie had to do that.”
(Gary Player always insisted, “Vivienne, Winnie, and Barbara were the real Big Three.”)
“I like that,” Nancy said, hearing what Player said. “I agree with that completely.”
BERNHARD LANGER
“We played together first in Australia. He was a worldwide player, of course. Went over to the British early, went everywhere eventually. International golfers probably appreciate him even more than Americans do because of that. They know how much his presence meant to kids in countries like Germany, where golf wasn’t the biggest sport. He invited me to play in his tournament at Bay Hill, and that meant a lot, too. When I think of him, I think of those enormous hands, one of his fingers like two of mine, and I think of how he always looked you straight in the eye, never giving you less than his complete attention. He was the superstar who cared about other people more than himself. In the twenty years since I won my first Masters, I’ve had all of those Champions’ Dinners with him. I’m blessed for that. I’m blessed to have known him. I’m sure others have told you, he never failed to send a note congratulating you on your successes. Seeing his name at the bottom of that note did something to you.”
PETER ALLISS
“Arnold and I had a few games together, including at Royal Lytham and St. Annes in his first Ryder Cup. Was that nineteen sixty-one? My father [an honored golf instructor], who was a great friend of Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, almost immediately pegged Palmer as their natural heir. As it turned out, of course, he was right.
“My first impression was just how indomitably confident he was. Damnably confident, I should say. As if there was absolutely no doubt in his mind he was going to beat you. It was infuriating. We tied at Lytham, you know. But he seemed to believe I had been lucky to tie him—even though he holed his ball from off the green four times. Four times! We played another singles match in the next Ryder Cup. I’m too modest to say who won, but he lost. On the golf course, Arnold could be strangely aloof to his playing partner but he was never that way to the public. The uniqueness was obvious. The flamboyance. The excitement. The charisma. Majestic at winning, majestic at losing. A bit crash-bang-wallop. Uniformly wonderful long game, not always so wonderful short game, though he was among the best chippers I ever saw. Not pitchers, chippers. He just played in this unbelievably bold style, going for absolutely everything, committing the silliest mistakes along the way, schoolboy mistakes. But making up for them most of the time.
“As a person he was utterly real. Authenticity always takes some time to verify. There was a slightly cruel joke going around golf at the start of the Palmer era, told by inferior players who are deservedly forgotten. ‘Where’s Palmer?’ ‘Oh, he’s out in the car park waiting for someone to ask him for his autograph.’ Once we became friends, he scolded me about my signature. ‘Only old prospectors make their X,’ he s
aid. ‘Stop scribbling and start signing.’ What he was really saying was ‘Take a bit of time for the ones who make all of this wonderful stuff possible.’ They say he liked all people, but I think he just didn’t mind them. He was a happy man, and made even grumps like me a little happier. He drank from the cup of happiness.”
(Palmer said, “Believe Peter’s license plate, ‘3 PUT,’ at your own risk.”)
BUBBA WATSON
“I was feeling a little tightness in my back, and with the Olympics and everything coming up, I thought the responsible thing to do was withdraw from Bay Hill. But I had too much respect for Arnold to do that on the telephone. I went to his office in person and brought Caleb [Watson’s four-year-old son] with me, figuring it might go a little better for me having Caleb there. But Arnold made it easy, as always. He didn’t talk about Bay Hill, the tournament, or golf. He talked about Caleb, about life. He looked worn-out. I tried to give him some energy, to encourage him as much as I could, if he even needed it from me. He was the one who picked Caleb up and put him in his lap. I didn’t do it. I didn’t stage it or anything. I asked him, ‘Do you mind if I take a picture?’ And after I left, I called back and asked if it was OK to post it on social media.” Caleb and the King.
JAMES GARNER
“We aren’t just acquaintances, we’re friends. Though I’m sure everyone says that. My brother is a club pro at the Oakmont out here [Los Angeles] and we talk about Arnie constantly. So do Dan Jenkins and I in the Lodge bar [at Pebble Beach], where I gave Dan the title for one of his books, Baja Oklahoma, and he gave me absolutely no credit. Jenkins likes to say, ‘Bob Drum invented Palmer,’ but I say God invented him, and is damn proud of it, too. I think Arnie likes me because I was Maverick on TV. He likes TV cowboys, being a kind of TV cowboy himself. Like Clint Eastwood, Rawhide. Though I think Clint would prefer to be Arnold Palmer.”