K: Tell us about the new center dedicated to your career in golf that will soon be opened at the USGA golf museum.

AP: It’s going to be a new wing at the USGA’s Golf House headquarters in New Jersey and it will house all sorts of things that have to do with the history of golf. A lot of it will centre around what I have done in connection with the USGA. In my time I’ve won the Open, the Senior Open and the US Amateur Championship, so there’s quite a lot for them to feature. I think it will consist of an appropriate combination of trophies, pictures from the past and other exhibits. The timetable is that it’s due for completion in two years from now, and hopefully I will live that long to be there to open it! It’s being created to attract more people to Golf House to learn about the history and background of the USGA. They don’t have a golf course at Golf House, but they have pretty much everything else to do with the business of the USGA – an experimental centre, a research laboratory and offices where the administration of the game and its rules are based.

K: You have recently been to Toronto to mark the 50th anniversary of your first PGA Tour win in 955. We carry a report on your visit in this issue of Kingdom and it sounds as though you had a good time up there.

AP: It was wonderful. The people there did a really nice job and I was very flattered by the reception I received wherever I went and all the things that happened during my stay.

K: The PGA Tour is set for a major realignment of its schedule in 2007, with the Players’ Championship moving to early May so that all the really big tournaments take place between April and September. What do you think of this proposal?

AP: As I understand it, the plans are pretty well in place although the actual dates of the tournaments have not been finalised as I don’t think they’ve put the 2007 schedule to bed yet. Many years ago, when I started playing on the PGA Tour, we played from January to September. Then the Tour stopped and the players took the opportunity to play in events which were unsanctioned and not part of the official schedule. I used to visit lots of different places and didn’t need anyone’s permission to do so. There is going to be more of that over the next few years and it will be interesting to see where and how often the bigname players play during the fall. It should give golf a higher profile in the summer months and in the fall there won’t be important championships competing against a major football schedule for air time.

K: 2005 was another busy year for Palmer Course Design Company. Does 2006 look like being just as busy?

AP: At present, we probably have 25 jobs on the go all over the world. I’m working pretty heavily on this as we speak. We will be unveiling some new ones in the near future. In January, we’re opening a course in Palm Desert, California, home of the Bob Hope Desert Classic – North Star. The Bob Hope is a pro-am tournament on the PGA Tour which stages five rounds across four different courses, and North Star is already in the rotation for the next year’s tournament. Another new course of mine, SilverRock, will also join the rota for 2007. With the Palmer Course at PGA West in La Quinta already on the rota, that would mean that three out of the four courses at next year’s Bob Hope will be Palmer designs, which would make me very proud.

K: Have you got any really special projects in the pipeline at the moment?

AP: One new project that will take up a lot of my time because it falls into the category of a Premier course is at White Oak, North Carolina. It’s owned by a group of Irish people and is going to be pretty special. There’s also another ambitious project that we are hoping to get at a place called Bend in Oregon.

K: Another of your courses, the Victoria in southern Portugal, hosted the 2005 World Cup of Golf. It seemed to make a good impression on the players.

AP: I didn’t go there myself for the tournament. It went very well for the first three rounds, but the exception was the last day when it rained so heavily that they lost the fourth and final round which was a bit of an anticlimax. I think the thing that was most astonishing is that they kept saying it never rains in Portugal. But overall, the course was well received.

K: What is your playing schedule for 2006? When we spoke last summer, you were saying you might cut back. Is that still your intention?

AP: At this point in time, I have signed up to one event – the Senior Skins Game. I have not committed to playing in anything else. I will definitely not play in the Bay Hill Invitational Presented by MasterCard although I will be there as host. The key factor is that my golf frankly is not up to speed. If I feel more confident with my game as time goes on I might select a couple of events on the Champions Tour. The problem isn’t putting, that part of my game is fine. I suppose it’s just that I don’t hit the ball far enough these days.

K: This obviously means you won’t play in the Masters in April. Will you be there at all this year?

AP: I plan to go to Augusta for a day or two. I’ll go for the past champions’ dinner and I will stay maybe for the first day of the tournament. It’s always a great place to visit.

K: Have you given any more thought to becoming the honorary starter for the Masters?

AP: It’s something that I certainly haven’t ruled out doing one day, but I’m not even thinking about it at the moment.

K: We understand that your grandson is a promising golfer. Have you played much with him and passed on much advice?

AP: I played with him recently in a grandfather-grandson event in the PGA Tour’s Father & Son Championship at Champions Gate in Orlando. His name is Sam Saunders, he’s 8 years of age and plays off a scratch handicap. He’s obviously very promising, but he’s just about to go to college at Clemson in South Carolina on a golf scholarship, hopefully for four years. Clemson is a great rival to my old alma mater, Wake Forest. In the grandfathergrandson event, we weren’t really as good as we should have been. We shot 67-65 for 12 under over the two rounds, but it was a scramble and we were 11 strokes behind the winners. I see him every day but I don’t play with him every day, although I keep a pretty good eye on him. I think he will turn pro eventually but there’s no rush. He’s tremendously long and averages 320 yards off the tee, but he can be a bit wild – some of shots don’t even have zipcodes on them. For someone who hits it as far as he does, you only need one thing slightly out of kilter and you can go a long way off line. He used to play basketball, but right now he’s just a golfer.

K: Michelle Wie is two years younger than your grandson, yet she has already turned professional with a view to playing regularly on the LPGA Tour? Do you think this is too early?

AP: I can have some influence on my grandson’s situation and I am an advocate of letting young people play golf with a view to getting as much experience as they want while they are growing up. Personally, I think it’s advisable they get to a mature age before they turn professional. I think the proper time for them to turn pro probably is after they have completed their education. After all, they have their entire life in front of them to play professional golf. There has always been a real danger of burn-out on Tour and I have seen many a young star of 6 or 7 who was going to be the next big thing only to find that by the time they get to 24 you never hear of them again. That is sad.

K: Tiger Woods won two majors in 2005 and was once again the dominant player on Tour after a couple of seasons when it seemed his standards might be slipping. Is he right back on track in your view?

AP: I don’t think Tiger’s ever gone away. No. He’s been the dominant player in professional golf since he turned pro almost 0 years ago. I don’t think anything will disrupt that in the near future, but there are some young people coming along who have equal presence on the course and can become major factors where Tiger’s concerned. A couple of the Australian golfers are very good, especially Adam Scott. When he fills out physically he will get a lot better. Then there’s Sergio Garcia, who has been knocking on the door for some time and is still quite young, and Sean O’Hair, last season’s rookie of the year. But I’m not sure that any of these is ready to challenge Tiger just yet. Talking of Tiger, he did what I think they should all do – he went to college at Stanford and then turned pro after that when he knew the time was right to do it.

K: What do you think about the recent relaxing of the rules on the use of GPS systems in competitions on golf courses?

AP: I think the fact that they have adopted it and it will be put to use was inevitable. It is a significant development in the regard that it could have a dramatic effect on the speed of play. Anything that helps to speed up the time in which we play golf is good for the game. One of the big problems to date has been people delaying play while trying to work out their distances. With the application of GPS systems, all this becomes academic because they will know exactly how far they’ve got for each shot and it’s then a matter of taking out the club you normally hit that distance.

K: We have a travel article about golf in Hawaii in this edition of Kingdom, Mr. Palmer, and we understand that it is one of your favorite places.

AP: I’ll be playing in the Senior Skins over the Four Seasons course on Big Island in Hawaii in January, and the action will be shown on television some time later over two consecutive days in February. It will be a new format this time: a two-man team scramble. There will be four teams taking part and I shall be partnering Peter Jacobsen. Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson and Hale Irwin will all definitely be playing as well, so I’m told. The golf will only take a day, but I plan to stay in Hawaii for about a week because I like it there so much. Turtle Bay, in particular, is one of my favorite places, not least because I got married there a year ago. The two courses there, both of which I designed, are wonderful and the resort is quite popular. It’s on the north shores of Hawaii which makes it a surfers’ paradise. All the major surfing competitors go there.

K: Last summer I visited Whistler Golf Club in British Columbia, one of your designs, and I was spellbound by the place? You must love that part of the world.

AP: I haven’t been up there for a couple of years, but I’m very aware of what is happening up there and the things that they are doing for golf in general in the area. I think it’s the most beautiful area in the world with the mountains, forests and huge waterways. It’s just lovely and I always enjoy going there. There’s always a lot of activity there – skiing, snowboarding, mountain-biking, sight-seeing – and of course they’ve got the Winter Olympics coming in 2000.

K: How are things down at Bay Hill. We understand you’ve had some construction and refurbishing work done on the facility.

AP: We’ve been upgrading the 70 hotel bedrooms so that they’re now five-star quality, making them more pleasant for our guests. As you know, we have many Europeans in particular come here and they love the place. This refurbishment work will be finished shortly. We’ve been doing some upgrading work on our two- and four-bedroom lodges in the grounds of the hotel as well. Our busy season starts straight after the beginning of the year, but we have more people coming all the year round now than before, especially in the spring and on into the summer. Having said that, January to May is still our busy season.

K: Have you played any good courses lately?

AP: Yes, I recently opened a new course in Stuart, Florida called Tesoro. It’s really beautiful and it’s only 20 minutes from here [Bay Hill] in my Citation 10 jet.

K: So you’re still flying regularly?

AP: I still fly about 200 hours a year. In a reasonable year that’s pretty much what I average. When you think that I put in 200 hours and my average flying speed is about 500mph, it makes you realise that my annual mileage is up into the big numbers. Mind you, I always have a co-pilot – we have to because that’s the law.

K: Another of the articles in this issue of Kingdom is about the proposed conversion of Hamilton Hall overlooking the 18th green on the Old Course at St Andrews into a high-end luxury members’ club with guaranteed access to Kingsbarns. What do you think of that?

AP: I think it’s a wonderful idea and it will have a big impact on the town of St Andrews. Kingsbarns is important to this – it is a beautiful setting and also a pretty good golf course.

K: What did you think of your colleague and design partner Ed Seay winning the 2005 Dave Marr Memorial Award for services to golf?

AP: I’ve had a very long and great friendship with Ed, and of course I think he is one of the most brilliant architects in the business. This award is thoroughly deserved and it means a lot that it is named in honor of my great friend Dave Marr. The combination of Ed’s brilliance and my association with the game has meant we have worked together on a lot of really nice projects. He is a good guy and has been a great partner to work with all these years. He must have been designing courses for 40 years.

K: Are you still as active as usual with your charity work?

AP: I’m doing a lot of promotion work for the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Cancer Treatment in Orlando. The Winnie Palmer Clinic for the treatment of sick babies will be opening here in Orlando some time in the next year. There’s also the Arnold Palmer Pavilion for the treatment of cancer in Latrobe and the Prostate Cancer Center at the Eisenhower hospital in Palm Springs, California.

K: Are you going to be involved in the Ryder Cup this September, especially as it is to be played on one of your courses – the K Club near Dublin?

AP: I don’t have any particular plans to go over to Europe for the Ryder Cup, but I haven’t eliminated the possibility yet.

K: Mr. Palmer, thank you very much for your time and best wishes for 2006.

AP: It’s a pleasure and a happy new year to you and all our readers.