Arnold Palmer... A Biography
Arnold is president and sole owner (since 1971) of Latrobe Country Club and president and principal owner of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, Orlando, FL, which he and a group of associates acquired in 1970. Bay Hill hosts the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational, presented by MasterCard, on the PGA Tour. In 1999 Arnold and a group of investors purchased the famed Pebble Beach golf complex on the California coast. He also is tournament professional and member of the board of directors of Laurel Valley Golf Club, Ligonier, PA, with which he has been affiliated since its founding in the late 1950s.
Palmer is consultant to The Golf Channel, based in Orlando, which went on the air on cable networks in January, 1995. Another important facet of his activities involves the Arnold Palmer Design Company, which is based at the Bay Hill Club.. Since the mid-1960s, Palmer has put his stamp on more than 200 new courses throughout the nation and world. His modest business empire and golfing activities keep Palmer on the move much of the year, most of the travel in his Cessna Citation X jet aircraft with Arnold at the controls when aboard. He was recognized in 1999 for his contributions to aviation and his Western Pennsylvania community when the Westmoreland County Airport at Latrobe was renamed the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. He is a member of the Westmoreland County Airport Authority.
Palmer was born on September 10, 1929, in Latrobe, a small industrial town in Western Pennsylvania at the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains some 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. He still lives there during the warm months of the year, but spends the fall and winter months at his homes at Bay Hill and at the Tradition Golf Club in La Quinta, California. He has numerous active and honorary memberships in clubs throughout the world, including famed Augusta National in Georgia, St. Andrews in Scotland, Pine Valley in New Jersey, Winged Foot in New York and Oakmont in Pittsburgh.
The golfing great has been the recipient of countless honors, the symbolic plaques, trophies and citations scattered throughout his personal, club and business worlds, the epitome coming in 2004 when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush at a White House ceremony. He has received virtually every national award in golf and after his great 1960 season both the Hickok Professional Athlete of the Year and Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year trophies. He is a charter member of the World Golf Hall of Fame and a member of the American Golf Hall of Fame at Foxburg, PA, and the PGA Hall of Fame in Florida. He is chairman of the USGA Members Program and served as honorary national chairman of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation for 20 years. He played a major role in the fund-raising drive that led to the creation of the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women in Orlando in the 1980s. A long-time member of the board of directors of Latrobe Area Hospital he staged a major annual fund-raising golf event for that institution for six years that led to the formation of the Latrobe Area Hospital Charitable Foundation.
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