Caddies have long been an important sidekick to the great golfers, the sherpas who help golfers navigate the tour courses that they play only one week a year. Palmer himself caddied summers at the country club where his father was head pro, and years later still recalls how he earned an extra nickel from one club member, Mrs. Fritz, for hitting her drive for her on a particularly difficult hole. And during his playing days, Palmer had some legendary caddies on his bag over the years, including “Tip” Anderson, who looped for The King during all of his British events; “Ironman” Avery, who was on Palmer’s bag at the Masters; as well as Ernest “Creamy” Carolan, who was revered on the pro tour not just for his expert yardage sheets, but his talent for shagging balls with a baseball glove. I knew from my research going into this morning that Palmer likes caddies who don’t shrink in his presence. In fact, at the peak of his career he seemed to respect most the caddies like Tip and Ironman who stood their ground and overruled him when he was about to do something foolish. In his autobiography, A Golfer’s Life, Palmer recalls how despite Avery’s weaknesses at judging distances, he always kept Ironman on his bag in Augusta because his “understanding of what made me tick was perhaps instinctive and definitely profound.” In the 1960 Masters, after a dreadful chip coming down the homestretch on Sunday, Palmer recalls how Ironman got in his face. “Mr. Palmer,” he said in a low rumble, “are we chokin’?” With those harsh words, Palmer realized Ironman was right - he’d lost focus, and thanks to Ironman’s stern admonishment, he settled down to close out strong and take home the Green Jacket.

As Palmer steps up to the first tee - which will ultimately play as No. 10 when the final nine are completed in early 2005 - he advises me that he’s packed a number of extra clubs today - two drivers, two putters, and a slew of fairway woods, all of which he wants to test out today in hopes of settling on the clubs he’ll use in the upcoming Masters. He then pulls three golf balls from his pocket, has me watch as he marks them with one, two and then three dots and asks me to keep them in order when ever he hits extra shots. “Got all that?” he asks firmly. I nod, and then ask with a nervous laugh, “So, you’ve never fired a caddy in the middle of a round, right?” Palmer laughs. “Yes,” he says with a wink. I choose to assume that he was only joking.

Palmer hits a respectable opening drive off the first hole today, a 414- yard Par Four, but his playing partner for the ceremonial first round, Scott Lamoureaux - Lakewood’s strapping young director of golf - crushes his drive a good 30 yards beyond Palmer’s. “C’mon let up will ya?” Arnie protests, to laughter from the gallery. That’s my cue to retrieve Arnie’s driver from him, secure it in his bag, and hustle behind him down the fairway - fighting my way through the 700 or so club members who have turned out to see The King today. As we step up to his approach shot, Palmer turns to me and asks loudly, “How many yards to the hole, Dean?”

I have to smile, because the day before, while at the Bay Hill Invitational, I’d conferred with Palmer’s long-time design partner, architect Ed Seay, for caddying tips and Seay warned never to give Arnie anything less than the most precise estimates on yardage. “Never say ‘about’, “ counseled Seay. “He hates when you say ‘about,’ because it could mean the difference in which club he uses.”

“One hundred and forty eight yards,” I respond confidently. “What’s the yardage, Dean?” “Er, 148 yards, Mr. Palmer.” Quietly, I begin to worry whether I’d already done something wrong. Arnie gives a somewhat deflated look, and I suddenly realize that my only crime here was stealing his punchline. Undeterred, he looks into the gallery, and says, “I once asked Ed Seay, how far it was to the hole and he said, ‘About 140 yards.’ I said, “Damn, Ed, I can figure ‘about’ myself. What’s the real yardage?” The crowd laughs uproariously. Arnie asks for his seven iron, and then slashes his approach shot to just off the right side of the green. And as we stride toward the green, I breathe a sigh of relief, happy that I’d met my first test with no trouble. Little did I know that this would be the last correct answer I’d have all day.

On the green, Palmer chips up, but misses his par when his putt just skates past the hole. And when Lamoureaux confidently taps in his birdie, Arnie drops his putter in mock disgust and turns to the audience for sympathy. ‘I usually do these by myself. That’s why,” he says pointing at Lamoureaux. More howls of laughter from the gallery. The second hole today is a short, but tough par three: From the tees that Palmer and Lamoureaux will play today, the hole is playing a relatively short 178 yards - but over a small pond and with a bunker just in front of the green. As we step to the tee, I hand Arnie both a four and five iron. Arnie reaches for them, but then pulls back his hand. “And which club do you recommend I hit on this hole, Dean?” he asks jokingly. I try to think how Ironman or Tip would answer, but can’t bring myself to watching Arnie hit any club chose for him into the pond. “Uh, can I consult with a few of my friends here?” I ask Arnie. The crowd roars, and on Lamoureaux’s advice, Palmer reaches over for the five iron. He steps over his ball, swings, and his tee shot clears the pond but tails off into a shallow bunker just in front of the green. Palmer chips his ball safely onto the green, and as he begins to study his putt he suddenly asks, “So tell me, Dean, what’s the grain on this green doing?” I have absolutely no clue. “Uh....growing?” I ask. The crowd howls at my answer.

Palmer smiles and begins to give the gallery a quick primer on how to read the grain on greens - that if the green appears shiny from your vantage point, it means the grain is growing away from you and a darker appearance means it’s growing toward you. “So what’s the grain doing, Dean?” he asks again. It’s shiny,” I now answer. “That means the putt will roll faster.”

Arnie walks back to his ball and tells the gallery, “Now you know how to read greens for the rest of your life.” He steps over his 10-foot putt, strokes it - but again, it scoots just past the hole. Arnie gives the gallery a sheepish look. “Of course, it doesn’t make you putt any better,” he laughs as he walks over to tap in.

My next education in caddying comes on the green of the third hole. As Palmer steps over a long, 20-foot putt, I race over - late - to tend the pin for him. He studies his putt, steps over the ball, then steps back and gives me another playful look of mock disgust. “Dean, where do you stand when you hold the flag?” he asks. I stand frozen, unsure of what I’m doing wrong. I’m not in the way of his putt, I think to myself. Finally, a member of the gallery leans over. “You’re creating a shadow in front of the hole,” says the man. I look down and sure enough, there’s my silhouette stretching back past the cup and arching right across Arnie’s putting line. The gallery cackles, and I step a foot to the side-safely out of the way now.

Palmer hits his putt, leaves it short and after I mark his ball, he steps over to my side while Lamoureaux prepares to putt. Palmer puts his arm around me and whispers, “Look, I’m not picking on you. This is all in fun, but if you’re not comfortable with this, I’ll back off...” I assure him I’m fine with it. “Don’t worry, I’m having fun,” I whisper back. And I am.

The fifth hole is a 560-yard dogleg par five around a small lake, and with honors, Lamoureaux hits first - and crushes a drive that cuts the corner, in part by taking advantage of the fact that the inside of the dogleg that will eventually be underwater hasn’t yet been flooded. Palmer turns to Lamoureaux. “Scott, is that the way you play this hole?” Arnie then peers into the gallery, looking for the member of his staff, Vicki Martz, who served as lead architect on the project. “If so, then Vicky, go get the bulldozer because we’re gonna dig out that lake.” The audience roars.

We play the sixth and seventh holes without event, and as we come to the eighth hole, a monstrous 595-yard par five, I whisper, “I hear that this is a great hole for hitting a driver off the deck.” Just three days earlier Arnie had hit a driver onto the green for a memorable closing par on No. 18 at the Bay Hill Invitational, and earlier that round some fans had begun egging him to repeat the feat. Arnie just gives me a smile. “Now you just stick to the writing,” he jokes. But sure enough, after a stiff drive, Palmer can’t resist. I approach him with a couple of fairway woods and a driver - and he surprises even me by reaching over for the driver. Arnie sets up over his shot, taking an unusual long time before impishly leaning out with his driver and nudging his ball into a slightly better lie. He gives the gallery a wink - and they roar when Arnie crushes his driver to within 100 yards of the hole. On the ninth hole, Palmer mishits his drive. He turns for me to hand him another ball, but I’m 10 feet away. So I toss him the ball - and immediately realize that if he doesn’t catch it, I will have unintentionally embarrassed the King. But Arnie deftly snags the ball out of the air, and gives me an arched eyebrow that says, Didn’t think the Old Guy still had the reflexes, eh? He tees up the second ball, but this shot too sails too far left. “These are somebody else’s right?” he asks as I hand him a third ball. “I don’t want to hit my own balls.” More laughs from the gallery, and Palmer keeps this drive in the fairway - to the thunderous cheers from the crowd. “Now don’t you wish you could hit three in a row like that?” he asks to laughter. Palmer pitches onto the final green, and putts out to one last round of applause. As he hands his putter to me as he walks off the ninth hole - thus concluding my duties as his caddy - I begin to reflect on how I’d performed. And then it dawns on me: I don’t think I’d remembered to repair a single ball mark. I immediately realize that caddying is serious work, and it’s harder to keep it all together when you’re looping for The King. As Arnie walks toward the clubhouse, he pauses long enough to rip off his glove, and then hand it to me along with the tees from his pocket. Whether he’s giving them to me as a keepsake or to simply put back in his bag isn’t clear. But it doesn’t matter. Because I know exactly what I’m doing with the glove and tees. As well as the three balls of his that are in my pocket, with the one, two and three dots on them.

More Stand-up Than Warm-up On the morning before he christens one of his newly designed courses, Palmer makes it a ritual to provide a golf clinic for the audience. In truth, though, Palmer’s performances are more standup than warm-up. From the moment he was first introduced by a member of Lakewood Ranch, Palmer had the audience in stitches. As Palmer begins to warm up, he asks the audience if they have any questions. Yet no questions come forth, as the audience seems intimidated in Palmer’s presence. Finally, Palmer suggests to his audience, “If you have a question, ask the person next to you because they can probably answer it.” Finally, one of Palmer’s assistants steps up to say that the club’s director of golf, Scott Lamoureaux - with whom Palmer will play a round afterwards - wants to know if Arnie is going to hit a driver off the fairway like he did in the Bay Hill Invitational. Palmer blurts, “Actually, what Scott really said is he’s going to beat my ass, right?” The audience roars as Lamoureaux blushes at the joke. “And what I said is if Scott gives me the difference in our ages in strokes, then I’ll be OK.” More laughs. Palmer notes that he’s going to play more than the 14-club limit because he wants to test out some new drivers, fairway woods and putters today as he prepares for the upcoming Masters. That prompts Palmer to reflect back to when as a young tour pro, he was on the driving range with a couple of grizzled tour pros. Arnie recalls hearing one pro ask the other who he was, and then hearing, “Well, you’d better tell him he needs to get a job.” Palmer pauses. “So this year, after 50 Masters, I’m guess I’m going to finally have to get a job.” More laughs. Arnie’s jokes have loosened the audience, and the questions begin to flow. Some ask Palmer about amateurs he’d played against as a young man, others ask him to reflect on his greatest golf memory (Answer: the tournament where he met his eventual wife, Winnie). Finally, a woman in the audience asks Palmer what advice he’d give to a high handicapper. “Quit,” he responds. Howls of laughter. Then Palmer turns the joke on himself, recalling that when he was once in an interminable slump, “I once asked an old friend what I should do with my game.’ He said, ‘I think you should give it up for six months and then after that, you should quit.” More laughs.

“Seriously, what you need to do is relax. I think most high handicappers just need to relax. And make sure you keep your eye on the ball.”

As the two begin warming up with their short irons, Lamoureaux hits a shot with soaring arc. Palmer pauses and then looks at the gallery. “Last time I hit a shot that high, Scott, it was off the Eiffel Tower.” The pair work through their bags until Lamoureaux pulls out his driver first. Palmer backs off and looks at the gallery again. “You don’t think I’m going to stand here and hit a driver when he hits a driver.”

Finally, Palmer pulls out one of his drivers, the Callaway ERC Fusion. He slashes at the ball, and then mutters aloud, “This driver’s got a slice in it.” He pretends to vigorously twist the driver head. “I’m going to adjust it.” Another fake twist. “See if we can get the slice out of it.” He smashes another drive, with better results. “Oh yeah,” he says approvingly. With Palmer’s aides suggesting that it’s time to begin his round, Palmer hits another couple of balls - but not before thanking the gallery, most of whom paid $100 for the privilege of seeing the King today, for turning out. “In my case, I probably wouldn’t be playing if it weren’t for you people, I would have stopped a long time ago."