London - Arnold Palmer did not just leave an indelible mark on the game he graced but on everyone he met. He was that kind of man. If he saw a stranger dining alone in the restaurant at his Bay Hill golf club he would ask if he could join them.
He made time for everyone. I was once allotted a 10-minute interview slot in his office in Florida and began by asking him about Flags of My Fathers, a wonderful wartime tome adorning his bookshelf. Talking about that took up half an hour.
To one side, the kindly Doc Giffin, his right-hand man for more than 60 years, smiled gently. He had seen it all before. In the end, after spending most of the afternoon rapt, it was me who asked to be excused, for there was a tournament going on outside I had to write about.
The fact that it was Palmer’s own event simply underlined a generosity of spirit that appeared to have no bounds.It is not a coincidence that his beloved Bay Hill is perhaps the only prestigious country club in Florida that is not a gated community. Could you imagine anything more incongruous than Palmer, of all men, living behind gates?
Every week, when he was not on tour, he would turn up for the club’s midweek scramble, whereby all the members put their names into a hat to see who played with one another.The fact that the seven-time major champion often ended up alongside an 18-handicapper did not bother him in the slightest.
He revelled in the company every bit as much as if he was playing with the next great hotshot.To describe someone as a man of the people has become almost a cliche but Palmer might well have been the original.
This, after all, is the man who once took a double bogey on the 18th hole at Augusta to lose the Masters because he spent the entire length of the hole talking to his army, and became distracted.It might have cost him a green jacket but it earned him a loyalty no golfer came close to replicating. Soon, the army had so many troops - sorry, patrons - that it was not long before limited ticketing was introduced to the Masters.
Even when he could hardly play any more and his fans were struggling to walk, they would still follow him up and down the steep Georgia hills each April.‘Hell, I think I know all of them by name,’ he once said. ‘They even call me at home each winter to ask if I’ll still be coming back the following spring.’
I used to love to join them, to hear the stories of days gone by and the heartfelt groans when another shot was mishit or a putt missed. For 50 years he played in the Masters and both he, and they, were still living each shot to the end.What it must have been like at the start.
Palmer’s impact on a staid and stuffy sport has often been compared to Elvis Presley and the birth of rock and roll and it is not hard to see why. Palmer was young, handsome, flew his own plane and had the gift of the gab. The iconic black and white photographs of him with cigarette in hand, or thrashing at the ball with youthful vigour, deservedly occupy a revered place in American culture alongside Presley shaking his hips and shots of a young Muhammad Ali.
Palmer gave the game sex appeal. Over the years a number of readers have written to me telling of days in the sixties when the incorrigible flirt made a beeline for the pretty girls in his audience. Imagine the media hoo-haa if someone did that now.
Palmer could get away with anything. It was in the days when there was not much money in the game and the idea of a night out with the press was considered a treat, not a penance. Some of his best friends were journalists and he had a soft spot all his life for those who worked in newspapers.
Accordingly, every Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational a media dinner takes centre stage in the Bay Hill clubhouse and the great man himself even turned up two years ago. It was the first one held since the death of Bev Norwood, a kindly soul who had managed Palmer’s media operation for more than 30 years.
With a sweater wrapped around his shoulder, Palmer was clearly exhausted after a long day at the tournament. ‘I wanted to come and say a few words because Bev was one of my guys,’ he began. No wonder the people who worked for him never left. It was not just in America, of course, where he became a household name. Palmer was the first American golfer to travel widely and frequently, and his contribution to the growth of the Open was inestimable.
Picture the event in the fifties, with little support from the leading Americans who mostly could not be bothered making the arduous journey. Even one who did, Ben Hogan - who ended up winning - did not feel the need to return to defend his title.Palmer was the reigning Masters and US Open champion when he made his grand entrance at St Andrews in 1960 but came up a shot shy in his quest to keep his Grand Slam hopes alive.
The following year he made no mistake at Royal Birkdale, clinching the title with an audacious shot from the rough that was fast becoming his trademark.With the ball buried, there seemed nothing on but a chip back out on to the fairway. Palmer, with his bulging forearms and swashbuckling style, somehow forced the ball on to the green to not only earn himself the Claret Jug but also a plaque that continues to mark the spot, to this day, from where the prodigious blow was played.
Palmer won again the following year and by now he was the veritable Pied Piper as the rest of the great Americans followed in his slipstream, recognising this was no longer a championship they could take lightly.Soon, however, he was joined in the pantheon by Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player and the victories started to dry up.
While Palmer played almost wholly from the heart, the other two used their heads to rack up their majors. Both would overtake him, with Nicklaus (18) going on to make his total of seven look positively meagre.There is no question that Palmer had regrets about that in later life and felt he underachieved.
Certainly he should have claimed the aforementioned Masters in 1961, when his double bogey handed victory to Player.In the 1966 US Open he suffered an unbelievable loss of nerve to squander a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play to Billy Casper.
He did finish second again to Nicklaus the following year but his days of being a factor at the majors were at an end.It did not affect his popularity. Indeed, such was the esteem in which Palmer was held, this new vulnerability might even have enhanced it.As his powers on the course waned, so his business empire moved in the opposite direction.
‘I’m going to make you the first millionaire golfer,’ the business impresario Mark McCormack had promised when the pair shook hands on their first deal but, during the course of their long commercial partnership, he did much more than that.
Even to the end Palmer was still raking in £30million a year, and the only golfers making more are Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.Palmer was one of the first to see the potential of Orlando as a holiday and second home destination, setting up Bay Hill back in the days when most of the region was still swampland. Today, the only person with a greater presence in America’s tourist capital might be Walt Disney himself.
Hundreds of thousands of babies have been born in the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. Go into any bar and ask for an Arnold Palmer and the staff will nod knowingly, then return with the said cocktail - lemonade and iced tea.Off the course, Palmer was married happily to Winnie for 45 years until her untimely death from cancer in 1999 at the age of 65.
They raised two daughters, Peggy and Amy. The latter would go on to have a son, Sam Saunders, who now plays on the PGA Tour. In 2005, Palmer married Kathleen (Kit), who was with him when he died.So robust to the age of 84, Palmer never seemed to recover physically from a dislocated shoulder he suffered that year.
The telltale signs of his decline came when he was unable to host a press conference at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last March, followed by his announcement shortly afterwards that he would no longer hit the ceremonial first tee shot at the Masters.Palmer struggled on during the summer but on his rare public appearances it was clear the zest for life had left him.
And now he has left us, less than four months after the death of Ali, his only sporting peer in terms of what they gave back and how they were revered. Alastair Johnson, CEO of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, reported late on Sunday evening that Palmer had passed away in the small hamlet of Latrobe, near Pittsburgh, where he was born, due to complications of the heart.
Given everything Palmer did was from the heart, it is perhaps not surprising it should be that organ which would give out on him in the end.It happened on the night Rory McIlroy was playing Arnold Palmer golf to win the sort of money on the PGA Tour that would not be in place if Arnold Palmer had not existed.
It happened at the start of a week when the game Arnold Palmer loved with a passion that was simply something to behold takes centre stage in the sporting world. An event built on the sort of attacking golf and interaction with the fans that will be his timeless legacy.
Let us hope for a Ryder Cup for the ages that will stand as its own fitting tribute.The son of Deacon Palmer, a Pennsylvania golf professional, it sums up his unique place in the game that there will not be a golfer anywhere in the world today over the age of 25 who will not be affected by his passing - and not just golfers, either.
Millions of us feel bereft.He was, quite simply, the best of golf, from the adventurous way he played to the fact that he gave so much of himself to others. The only things he could not abide were bad manners and bad sportsmanship.‘He was The King of our sport and always will be,’ said his once rival turned great friend Nicklaus, before adding the most plaintive and unbearably heartfelt of rejoinders. ‘I just wish I had another chance to talk to him.’
Don’t we all, Jack. Don’t we all.
Daily Mail