What's New: Archives
June 13, 2007
Miller says beating Palmer tougher than Tiger
NBC Sports color commentator Johnny Miller says beating Arnold Palmer in Pittsburgh in 1973 was tougher than beating Tiger anywhere in 2007. His two rounds with Palmer steeled him for the second most remarkable charge in U.S. Open history.
Johnny Miller "thinks" Arnold Palmer’s gotten over it. He "thinks" he’s accepted what happened and has come to terms with it.
He shouldn’t be too sure about that.
As fierce a competitor as there ever was, it’s unlikely Palmer will ever get over the sinking feeling he had while standing on the 11th green at Oakmont C.C. on June 17, 1973. Palmer’d started the final round tied for the lead with Julius Boros, John Schlee and Jerry Heard. Still leading with Boros, he was convinced he was cruising to his second Open championship victory in front of legions of adoring Palmer loyalists from throughout western Pennsylvania. The He was certain the hometown victory would ease the sting of the historic loss he felt on that very course to Jack Nicklaus 11 years earlier.
And that’s when he looked up at the scoreboard and saw that a 26-year-old -- go ahead and say it -- “smart alec kid” had posted an Open record final-round 63 on rain-softened greens to vault to the top of the leaderboard and eventual victory.
“I really blindsided him with that,” says Miller, today the outspoken color commentator for NBC Sports. Miller will be in the broadcast booth starting Thursday as the network begins its coverage of the 2007 U.S. Open at Oakmont. He made his comments about Palmer on Tuesday following a press conference with more than 100 reporters. “He must have felt like I’d picked his pocket and come up with a U.S. Open trophy.”
Gotten over it? Nah.
Oakmont pro Bob Ford says he and Palmer played a sentimental round at the course in July 2006 and Palmer recalled exactly where on the 11th green he was standing when he, Boros and Schlee saw the record-setting round Miller’d posted.
“He said he couldn’t believe it,” Ford said. “It just shocked him.”
It was the second of three consecutive shockers Palmer would feel on day when things went awry. He'd missed a short birdie putt on 11 before seeing Miller's run of red numbers way down the leaderboard, and then he hit what appeared to be a perfect drive on 12 that kicked off a sprinkler head and into deep rough.
While Palmer had trouble accepting the fateful turns, Miller says with a dashing bit of bravado he embraced it.
“He never saw me coming,” Miller says. “Schlee told me his reaction to my score and it wasn’t pleasant. You have to understand, I was paired with Palmer for the first two days of the tournament and must not have impressed him. But that was one of the best parts of the week for me. I held my own with him. Not many guys would ever win the Open playing two days with Arnold Palmer in 1973 for the first two days. I ran the gauntlet of those fans and shot 69-71 during the first two days. A lot of guys have trouble even making the cut under those conditions. To be able to do that with all his fans around was almost, to me, as much pressure as anything that happened all week. Maybe that prepared me for Sunday, to be honest with you.
“Because not many guys could play with Palmer in those days. It was definitely tougher than playing with Tiger today. That’s what playing with Palmer in Pittsburgh in 1973 was like.”
While nearly every golf fan remembers Miller’s 63, few recall his 76 the day before, a round that almost knocked him out of contention. He began the final round in five-way tie for seventh place.
“For me, one of the things that makes that round so special was the caliber of players I had to beat,” Miller says. “The leaderboard had Nicklaus, Boros, Lee Trevino, Gary Player, Gene Littler and Palmer all playing at or near the top of their games.”
Funny, several days after his landmark victory, Palmer and Miller were again paired and once again Miller did something that confounded Palmer.
Call it an “ace-ssist.”
“We were paired together on the 230-yard par 3 5th hole at Firestone Country Club in Akron at the American Golf Classic,” Miller recalls. “I was holding a 4 wood and was all ready to hit when Arnie dropped his ball. I backed away, he apologized, I readjusted then stepped up and hit. The ball landed about five feet in front of the pin and rolled in just like a putt. Then I turned to Palmer and thanked him for his help. Maybe readjusting made the difference between an ace and just another really good shot.
“I don’t think I was his favorite guy back then, but good things were happening to me when I was around Arnold Palmer in June 1973.”
Miller points out that two of Palmer’s most painful losses -- the one to him and the one to Billy Casper at the 1966 U.S. Open -- occurred at the hands of practicing Mormons, prompting Miller to quip, “He may have gotten over it, but I doubt you’ll see any ‘Mitt Romney for President’ stickers on Arnold Palmer’s car. We Mormons haven’t been too kind to him.”
Incidentally, Miller’s final round comeback from six shots down is only the second greatest comeback in U.S. Open history.
Whose is first?
Arnold Palmer’s. He came from seven shots down on the final day to win the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills.
Posted by crodell at 11:19 AM
May 14, 2007
Arnie & Oakmont
A Beaut of a Brute
By Chris Rodell
as originally seen in KINGDOM MAGAZINE, issue 7
A look of grave concern creases Arnold Palmer’s face when asked his advice on how an average golfer can achieve a good score the day he’s scheduled to play Oakmont Country Club. “Well, I suggest you start by playing someplace else,” he says.
In fact, telling golfers who’ve been scarred by the brute that you’re scheduled to play golf at Oakmont is like telling a priest you’ve been dispatched to retrieve Satan’s pitchfork. They call you crazy. Try to talk you out of it. Say small prayers on your behalf.
As well they should. For all its stark beauty, Oakmont is one hell of a golf course: 7,255 yards, nearly 200 penal bunkers and greens so lightning fast the busybody U.S.G.A. crews preparing the course for the 2007 U.S. Open will be tasked to slow . . . them . . . down.
The rich Palmer legacy resonates at Augusta where he won four times, at Cherry Hills where the charge was born, and at St. Andrews, Royal Birkdale and Troon where Palmer is credited with inventing the fabled British Open as we know it.
But no major tournament venue is more closely associated with Palmer than Oakmont, and no course dished out more pain and poignancy than the course he grew up dreaming of conquering. When towheaded boys fantasize about winning the World Series with a final swing of the bat, it’s always Yankee Stadium. When those boys are western Pennsylvania golfers, the dreams are of snaking in the winning putt on the 18th green in the shadows of Oakmont’s gabled clubhouse.
For Palmer, the dream came true at a very young age.
“I was just a kid when I beat Jack Benson there to win the 1949 Western Pennsylvania Amateur,” he recalls. “Oakmont is so full of tradition from the locker room to men standing and laughing in the wooden floored barroom. The course is always in excellent condition. It just really resonates with all that’s great about golf. At 18, it was such an unbelievable thrill to win there.”
That win, however, is an asterisk in Palmer’s career at the course that is just one hour on the Pennsylvania Turnpike west of his Latrobe home. It was at Oakmont where the symbolic changing of the guard took place in 1962 when Jack Nicklaus beat Palmer and an often belligerent crowd of Palmer stalwarts to win the U.S. Open. And in 1973, Palmer stood on the 12th green as the final leader of that year’s U.S. Open when he was stunned to see Johnny Miller had posted a record-setting 63 to vault to victory. And it was at Oakmont in 1994 that Palmer closed the door on his U.S. Open career before a crowd so adoring that tears spilled down the old golfer’s face as their 18th green ovation washed over him.
In fact, tears are Oakmont’s only water hazard. It is a heartbreaker. Forty-four years after the watershed tournament, Palmer still sounds mournful when talking about the ‘62 Open and how he let it get away.
“I used to putt those greens pretty well when I was younger, but in ‘62 Nicklaus beat me on the greens by 17 shots . . . 17!” he says, sounding as if he could snap a stout-shafted putter in half at the mere recollection. “I’ve never played the greens when they weren’t like lightning. Never played it once in my life when the stimpmeter reading was under 11.”
Had it not been for Oakmont, the word “stimpmeter” might never have even been introduced into golf’s vernacular. It was here at the 1935 U.S. Open, that renowned amateur Edward Stimpson noted the diabolical greens were so fast that only one man, eventual winner and western Pennsylvania resident Sam Parks Jr., was having success putting. Stimpson left determined to create a device that would measure the consistency of green speed so golfers everywhere could prepare. Thus, the birth of the stimpmeter.
Golfers at the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot skated across greens that stimped at 12.5. Oakmont members breathe sighs of relief when they stimp in the neighborhood of 13. The course will be unrecognizable to golfers who last played it in 1994. A massive tree removal program uprooted more than 3,000 magnificent hardwoods to restore the once leafy landmark to its barren, foreboding look of its 1903 introduction.
Bob Ford is Oakmont’s head professional and has golfed there with Palmer many times. Not once, he says, has Palmer stepped out of character and looked backward. Not once did he stop to dwell on the past.
Until last summer. Ford says Palmer had stopped by on July 11, 2006, to play a round prior to the Major League Baseball All-Star festivities occuring that day at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park.
“That’s the only time I’ve ever played with him that he even got the slightest bit reflective,” Ford says. “Never once did he look back or mention past tournaments until that recent summer day.”
Ford says Palmer stood at the side of the par 5 ninth green and recalled how he’d been at that spot in 1962 in two. He told Ford how he’d been just off the green, right next to the flag with idealistic thoughts of birdie, maybe -- cross your fingers -- a pivotal eagle. But Palmer, chagrined, recalled how the greens took a bite out of his ambitions and he stalked off with a discouraging bogie.
“Then on 12th green, he said how he stood there in 1973 and had been head-to-head in the lead with Julius Boros when both looked up at the leader board and saw Johnny Miller had posted his record-setting 63 on the rain-damped greens,” Ford says. “He couldn’t believe it.”
As the round continued, Ford says he was struck by how nostalgic Palmer was going through the years and rounds that are indelibly etched into the history of one of America’s most legendary courses.
“I got the feeling that maybe he thought it was one of the last times he’d ever play there, and it saddened me to think Arnold Palmer was having those thoughts,” Ford says.
But in the end, it won’t be those wistful moments Ford says he’ll recall from an otherwise ordinary round with an extraordinary gentleman. It won’t be Palmer talking about tournaments and titles that got away four decades ago. It won’t be the echoes of the cheers and the reciprocal love between a hometown boy who’d gone global and the fans who loved him so fiercely for both his successes and failures.
No, Ford says the recollection he’ll most cherish happened before the round even started. And the unlikely instigators were some scrawny youths clinging to a fence separating the Oakmont pool from the nearby first tee.
“We were getting ready to tee off and we heard these kids applauding,” Ford says. “We turned around and a bunch of the boys had climbed out of the water and were hanging on the fence to watch Arnold Palmer tee off,” he says. “They hadn’t even been born when he won his last tournament, but they were cheering him like he was Tiger Woods.
“He smiled, waved, turned to me and said, ‘Bob, that’s what keeps bringing me out after all these years.’ It made me tingle all over. That’s what I’ll always remember most about that day. That’s the memory I’ll cherish forever.”
Posted by crodell at 03:32 PM
May 08, 2007
Palmer dines with Queen, gives putting pointers to the Supremes
Arnold and Kit Palmer made one of the most demanding cuts of the 21st century on a sun-kissed Washinton evening. They were among the 130 A-list guests invited to fete Queen Elizabeth II at the White House on May 7.
The truly regal affair was widely considered to be the most spectacular dinner in official Washington in the past 10 years. Palmer’s name on the guest list added a dash of grit and grace to a roll that included Vice President Dick Cheney, Nancy Reagan, Peyton Manning and violinist Itzhak Perlman.
The Palmers received elegant gold-rimmed invitations (hand-penned by a calligrapher and then engraved) in April. The gala dinner May 7 is the highlight of a two-day extravaganza in which Palmer dined at the head table with President George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth, gave putting lessons to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at the highest court in the land, and was feted as one of just six life-time Tour Achievement winners at the new clubhouse at the TPC at Sawgrass.
“Even for Arnold Palmer, the last two days have been remarkable,” says Palmer spokesman Doc Giffin. “Both Arnold and Kit had a splendid time at the White House dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth. It was a very special evening and they were thrilled to be invited.”
If it was a national A-list that scored one of just 130 invitations to the dinner, then Palmer has vaulted to the A-list of the A-list. He was chosen to sit at the main table with both President Bush and Queen Elizabeth and guests Nancy Reagan, Alma Powell (wife of Colin Powell), Tricia Lott (wife of U.S. Sen. Trent Lott), Ashley Manning (wife of Indianapolis Colt quarterback Peyton Manning), CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, and Chief Justice Roberts.
The five-course dinner included “spring pea soup with fern leaf lavender,” “saddle of spring lamb” and three different wines. The dinner was the first, and probably will be the only, white-tie event of the Bush presidency.
The Palmers were up early to enjoy another memorable meeting the day after the dinner. Kit Palmer, who is a personal friend with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, accepted her friend’s invitation to see the Supreme Court. While there, Palmer gave putting lessons to a trio of renown rules sticklers who might be hiding snazzy golf shirts beneath their black robes.
“He was putting on the carpet in Chief Justice Roberts’s office and giving some pointers to Roberts, Kennedy and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who, incidentally, is the only Supreme Court Justice to ever score a hole-in-one,” Giffin says.
From there, the Palmers flew to Jacksonville, Florida, where Palmer was set to attend a black-tie dinner at grand opening of the new clubhouse at the TPC at Sawgrass, home of the Tournament Player’s Championship. Palmer, one of just three living recipients of the Tour’s Lifetime Achievement Award, will address the gathering.
Besides Palmer, only five other men have ever been deemed worthy of the award since it was first bestowed in 1995. The others are Pete Dye, Jackie Burke Jr., Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Gene Sarazen.
Following the whirlwind two days, the Palmers flew to Bay Hill Club in Orlando to do one of the few things he enjoys more than dining with royalty.
Palmer golfed with friends.
Posted by crodell at 04:08 PM
April 05, 2007
Palmer Tee Shot Opens '07 Masters
Arnold Palmer returned to The Masters Thursday to hit the ceremonial first tee shot, an honor previously bestowed upon revered champions such as Sam Snead and Byron Nelson. Dave Anderson of The New York Times writes: “His ball won’t go as far and probably not as straight as it did when he was winning the Masters every other year from 1958 to 1964, but who cares? Arnold Palmer will be on the first tee at Augusta National again, and that’s enough for anyone who remembers seeing him here when real soldiers at nearby Fort Gordon were the original enlistees in Arnie’s Army.”
"I was very impressed with all the people who came rushing through that gate when it opened," Palmer said. "It seemed like 20,000 people out there."
Palmer told reporters the competitive fires still burn, 52-years after as a rookie he played his first Masters round with the great Gene Sarazen.
“You realize it’s over, and it’s been my life for over 50 years,” he said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow. I’ll sit at home and watch on television from time to time,” referring to even the best of today’s touring pros, “and think, ‘You know, I could have done that better.’ ”
To view a video clip of the '07 tee shot visit www.masters.org
Posted by crodell at 09:43 AM
March 15, 2007
From small town to big time for Palmer
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -Even now, Arnold Palmer has a hard time realizing how far his tournament has come.
Tanned and relaxed, he stared out at some four dozen people, most of them media, a bank of cameras at the back of the room. To his side was the new trophy with a statue of Palmer lashing away with his driver.
The winner also will get $990,000, about half as much as Palmer made in his 50 years on the PGA Tour.
The name of the tournament has a nice ring: The Arnold Palmer Invitational.
"My daughters are responsible for that,'' Palmer said Wednesday. "While I was playing, I would have never allowed it. That was first stipulation for not making any name change. I liked the Bay Hill Invitational logo. But when I stopped playing, that sort of opened the door for the possible name change.''
He remembers being asked to host the tournament at Bay Hill in 1979, and "it's worked out pretty well.''
"The first tournament was $100,000, and that was about the average on tour in those days,'' he said. Of course, this year we're $5.5 million. That's reasonable progress in 29 years.''
There has been progress all around him.
Palmer hails from Latrobe, Pa., and he used to travel to south Florida to practice in the winter when he first turned professional. But the Miami area was too crowded for his tastes, so he began scouting areas up and down the coasts of Florida.
It was by chance in 1965 that the Orlando Chamber of Commerce invited him to an exhibition at Bay Hill, along with Jack Nicklaus, Dave Regan and Don Cherry. He fell in love with the course, and asked about buying it from 10 partners, a process that took some time.
Still, it was just what the King wanted.
"The only thing out here was orange groves, snakes, a few birds, but a lot of wonderful freshwater,'' Palmer said. "It was quiet. It was about a 15- or 20-minute drive to downtown, which was great. It was a small town.
"Well,'' he paused to smile, "you know the story from there.''
A few years later, Disney scooped up some 27,000 acres and announced plans for a theme park. Palmer's friends figured he knew what he was doing, but even Palmer wasn't sure how much the town would grow, how it would become a tourist mecca.
"I was really looking for a quiet place to just do a nice golf course ... and here we are,'' he said.
He has a golf course that has hosted the PGA Tour for almost three decades.
And the name isn't the only change.
Wanting to make Bay Hill more of a challenge, Palmer has changed par 5s at Nos. 4 and 16 into par 4s, making the course play as a 70. The 16th used to be the last spot among the final five holes where players could think about making birdie.
"Now the party's over after the 13th,'' Joey Sindelar said. "That last hour will be torture.''
Still, the biggest difference will be the scores to par.
"I would probably predict that the scores will be much the same as they have been in past years,'' Palmer said. "I don't think we'll see a lot of major changes. The only thing that we'll see that might be a little different is that the players won't be as many under par as they have been in the past.''
One thing that has become difficult to predict is how Tiger Woods will fare at Bay Hill.
The tournament has attracted one of the strongest fields of the year, with Jim Furyk and Adam Scott the only players missing from the top 10 in the world. Masters champion Phil Mickelson is back for the first time since 2002, while Ernie Els is playing Bay Hill for the 15th consecutive year.
Woods once played so well at Bay Hill that some suggested calling it the Tiger Woods Invitational.
But that's misleading.
True, he captured Palmer's tournament four straight years through 2003, when he won by 11 shots. And when people were speculating over his seven-tournament winning streak on the PGA Tour, some tended to chalk up an automatic victory at Bay Hill simply because Woods has won so often.
But it has been a classic case of feast or famine.
Woods has finished 20th or higher four times at Bay Hill. Among regular PGA Tour events, The Players Championship is the only other event where he has finished so far behind so often. In the 14 tour events he played as an amateur, majors included, the only time he failed to break 80 was in 1994 at Bay Hill.
And when he teed off Thursday, he was trying to end a streak of 11 consecutive rounds at Bay Hill without breaking 70.
"This week, all I have to do is shoot under par and I do it,'' he said. "It's one of those weird things. As I said, I feel comfortable on this golf course, but for some reason I just haven't played well. I haven't put it together.''
Posted by scurry at 01:33 PM
March 06, 2007
The NEW ArnoldPalmer.com - Version 2.0
This is what happens when old school goes high tech. This is what happens when one of the most storied lives -- not just in golf, but in all America -- is given the most lavish and loving consideration that only a medium like the world wide web can bestow.
Because there have been many splendid biographies written about Palmer. They highlight the 92 tournaments, including six major championships, he’s won. They detail how the son of a Latrobe, Pennsylvania, greenskeeper became a confidant of presidents, kings and Hollywood royalty. But not until ArnoldPalmer.com 2.0 has the common fan of this uncommon man had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the daily doings of someone who’s stood arm and arm with history for the past 60 years.
ArnoldPalmer.com 2.0 breaks down the Palmer life into day-by-day increments. “On This Day . . .” in the Experience Timeline gives you a daily update on one significant headline-making event in world of Palmer. Pretty neat, eh? Sure, but we weren’t satisfied settling for one item per day. Thanks to the genius of Palmer assistant Doc Giffin, we had access to more than 50 years of newspaper and magazine clips that detail Palmer’s meetings with presidents, the time in 1970 when Johnny Carson tabbed the golfer to be his “Tonight Show” stand-in, to when the lives of at-risk infants were saved in Arnold Palmer hospitals.
Every day mingles insight, warmth and glory. Take June 23. That was when President George W. Bush presented Palmer with the Presidential Medal of Honor (2004), coincidentally, 11 years to the day after Palmer was still basking over being honored by President Bill Clinton with the first National Sports Award (1993) and the same June 23 day Palmer won the 1985 Senior T.P.C. Championship earning $36,554.
Or try July 29, a day when Palmer won three different tournaments in three different states over three decades for an escalating first place prize of $3,800 (1956), $11,000 (1963), and $20,050 (1971).
Or better still, just try your birthday. See if Palmer had one of his 19 aces on the day you were born. Hint: if you were born in September, your chances are really good. Tell your buddies. Make it a game you can play while you’re waiting to tee up: Who’s birthday is more meaningful in the life of Arnold Palmer? “On This Day . . .” is home to more than 1,200 fascinating options to consider.
And that’s not all. Every career stat, decades of candid photographs, Palmer quotes, quizzes and quips are all here. It’s maybe the only place on the web you can spend hours learning about a genuine hero who broke world records in aviation and at the same time help fight prostate cancer. Because as any student of Palmer knows, life isn’t just about being good. It’s just as much about doing good.
Because this is is the place where every future Palmer biographer will begin his or her detailed and illuminating work. In fact, spend any time here and you’ll be qualified to author a fine Palmer biography all of your own.
For those of you who aren't familiar, Arnold Palmer and his trademark 4-color umbrella, are also a major fashion brand overseas. In Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malasyia and Indonesia the Arnold Palmer name represents a posh and stylish fashion label centered around the american icon. By navigating to the brands section you're able to click a country and see their latest fashion look-books, store locations and licensees. Yes, there are Arnold Palmer stores in Japan!
But with all due respect to learned researchers, this site wasn’t constructed with work in mind. Like Palmer and the game he loves so much, ArnoldPalmer.com 2.0 is pure fun. Dig in, click around. The answer to every question you’ve ever wanted to ask Palmer during a friendly round of golf is within these pages. So run your cursor over this home page. Discover the links that’ll take you inside on a journey of discovery.
All there is to do is act like Arnold Palmer.
And charge!
Posted by scurry at 02:13 PM
February 18, 2007
Palmer's Past Repeats Itself
Arnie's Career Similar to Tiger's
By: Larry Bohannan
The Desert Sun
LA QUINTA - Every golf tournament wants him in its field. Every sponsor wants him in their tournament or their commercials. Every television broadcast hopes to focus its cameras on him.
That might sound like the career of Tiger Woods, the brightest - and some say the only - star in golf today. But it happened 15 years before Woods was born, and the player in demand was Arnold Palmer.
Palmer, golf's biggest and most successful star at the dawn of the television age in the late 1950s, may be the only golfer who can grasp the kind of external pressure Woods is receiving from fans and media these days. They want Woods to play more PGA Tour events, revive lagging television ratings and generally push the sport to greater heights. It was no different in Palmer's heyday.
"Was there pressure? Sure, there is a lot of pressure. Jack (Nicklaus) had the same thing. Everybody does," Palmer said sitting in his La Quinta home inside Tradition Golf Club, site of one of his eight desert course designs. "And of course a lot of us were very conscious of that. But you have to live your life. You can't stop and go play everywhere. You would ruin your existence."
Palmer, 77 and now retired from competing in official PGA Tour or Champions Tour events, fueled the boom in golf's popularity in the 1960s. His dramatic comebacks - he rallied from seven shots back in the final round to win the 1960 U.S. Open - his go-for-broke style and his blue-collar work ethic brought new fans and excitement to a sport that was too often perceived as staid or elitist before his arrival.
Like Woods today, there was often a sense in the early 1960s that if Palmer wasn't in a tour field, the event didn't matter as much. Now 47 years after his seminal 1960 season of eight wins including the Open and the Masters, Palmer might be forgiven for looking at the modern PGA Tour pro with a "We did things different in my day" attitude. Instead, Palmer said he sometimes wishes he had been able to force himself to cut back on his tournament appearances and play a schedule more like Woods.
"Maybe I should have (taken weeks off) a little more. It might have enhanced my position on the tour a little bit," said Palmer, who averaged 29 tournament starts a year from 1955 to 1961. "You know, it's difficult. I was so grateful for the fact that I was there and could do what I was doing. I wanted to do everything I could do to enhance it and make it better for everyone else."
By contrast, Woods has averaged 19 PGA Tour starts in his first 10 seasons on tour and has never played more than 21 events in a year. Woods played 15 in 2007, the minimum required for full tour membership, though he took 10 weeks off because of his father's death. Still, Woods has 55 career victories, fifth on the tour's all-time wins list. Palmer is fourth with 62 wins.
Palmer said he felt similar pressure but in less-public ways.
"The commissioner would call you sometimes. I've had occasions when that happened. But not to the point where they called and said 'You've got to play.'" Palmer recalled. "Deane Beman might call and say, 'Arnie, it would really help us if you would consider playing in an event.'"
Palmer said he received similar calls from Joe Dye, the commissioner before Beman. Woods has certainly had similar conversations with people behind the scenes, Palmer said, but Palmer doesn't criticize Woods or any player for playing fewer than half of the tour's available events.
"I played a lot, as you know. And I tried to accommodate. But there was a time when I played so much just trying to accommodate, I wore myself out," Palmer said. "And I got sick, mentally and physically. That doesn't mean that I was literally sick, but I felt awful and my game was not good."
Palmer recalled arriving in Fort Worth, Texas, for the Colonial tournament one May after having played a heavy schedule of tournaments early in the season.
"I was exhausted. I got sick. And that was a case where I wanted to be excused from the tournament," Palmer said. "I was on site and sick, but they kept me and they wouldn't let me go. And I understood."
Some things have changed significantly over 40 years of golf - primarily money. When Palmer won eight tournaments in 21 starts in 1962, he earned a record $128,230 for the season. The winner of today's Nissan Open will earn $936,000 for the week.
"You can't help but look at the money. They have got it. I mean, if you finish second or third in a tournament, you are set for the year, financially," Palmer said. "So that definitely has to have an effect."
Palmer said many players in his era played week to week just to make ends meet. A missed cut and no paycheck for a week could be a disaster for a struggling player.
"I won $75,000 in 1960. Well that was the top. Down the list not very far, you find out you were winning $20,000 or $25,000, even for a medium-type player," Palmer said. "You could barely make it on the tour. Your expenses were getting close to what you were winning. That made a lot of guys play a lot more than they otherwise might have played."
There were differences in the two players' careers. Palmer didn't turn pro until he was 25, while Woods was a pro at 19. And while Woods is generally considered unchallenged for the top spot in the game, Palmer's career spanned the winning eras of Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Billy Capser and Palmer's greatest rival, Jack Nicklaus.
For the demands to ease on Woods, and for tournaments to feel comfortable without Woods in the field, Palmer says the competition needs to step up.
"Golf needs someone to challenge Tiger. He is so good and he is, right now, just my opinion, out there by himself," Palmer said. "It's kind of like how (Byron) Nelson was in his day. I think Tiger will continue to play and play a very dominant game."
Arnie Articulates
On the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, which Palmer won five times: “It was a week off for me, just to be playing there. And the people like Ernie (Dunlevie) and the people that were running the tournament were all buddies. It was a week I wouldn’t miss for anything. Today, it would be the same situation for me. Tiger hasn’t had the experience. Had he, he might feel differently.”
On Woods’ dominance of the tour: “You can’t help but admire everything he does. It’s like at the British Open last year. He looked up at the leader board, saw he was three shots back and made three birdies in a row. That’s the kind of guy he is. He’s tough.”
On playing internationally, something he did often early in his career: “I had a couple of goals in my life about playing. One was to win as many countries’ championships as I could. When I started, I won the Panama Open, I won the Colombian Open, the U.S. Open, the British Open, the Canadian Open. One of my goals was to win as many national opens in the world as I could. And I tried for a while. But then I got curtailed, because of the travel and all the things, I just couldn’t do.”
On playing nearly every PGA Tour event at one time or another: “I skipped a lot of tournaments, but I played them all at one time or another. I kind of had a thing about that. Like the PGA. I never won the PGA, but I wanted to. The same thing applied to the (regular) tournaments. Palm Springs, L.A., Phoenix, Tucson, I wanted to win at least one time in every city in America. That was something I pursued. I did reasonable.”
On his best wins: “There is one thing that I always liked, and that was when there was a full field when I won. I wanted everybody there. And I think Tiger feels the same way. I think he likes the full field, he likes the competition and he doesn’t want a soft field. And I felt that way.”
Posted by scurry at 05:17 PM
February 02, 2007
And the winner is . . .
. . . Colts, 31-24. That's Arnold Palmer's prediction. "I take the Colts for two reasons: Peyton Manning at quarterback and the Colts are a faster team," he says.
For those disposed to placing a small wager, Palmer looks for a 7-point spread which matches the line predicted by USA Today expert oddsmaker Danny Sheridan. Sheridan's over/under of 48 1/2 means Palmer thinks the smart money will bet "over."
Why listen to a golfer when making a Super Bowl wager? Palmer is the 2003 Super Sage Award winner given annually by Scripps Howard news service to the celebrity that comes the closest to accurately predicting the winning score. Palmer won the year Tampa Bay beat Oakland, 48-21, to win Super Bowl XXXVII.
Past Super Sage Award recipients include Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, actor Dennis Farina ("Law and Order") and Palmer's long-time congressman, U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Johnstown). Youth actor Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) has the longest winning streak in the celebrity poll's 17-year history, having accurately predicted the winner seven consectutive times.
Posted by crodell at 02:27 PM
January 23, 2007
Hoffman matches Palmer at 1st Hope
Congratulations to Charley Hoffman on becoming only the second player ever to win the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic on his first try. He can only hope he eventually matches the success at the Hope of the man whose name he now joins in the record books.
Arnold Palmer won The Hope on his first try in 1960 and went on to win it again in 1962, ‘68, ‘71 and ‘73.
“As my record might suggest, The Hope became one of my favorite spots on tour,” Palmer says.
Perhaps Palmer’s best memory of the tournament has nothing to do with what happened on the course. It was at the Hope in the early 1970s that Palmer was summoned to a mini-summit with President Richard M. Nixon. A U.S. Marine helicopter picked up Bob Hope, Palmer and their spouses and flew them over the mountains to Nixon’s Western White House at San Clemente north of San Diego.
On hand with Nixon was Vice President Gerald Ford, foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger and a host of top level national security officials. “It seemed the president wanted to pick our brains, of all things, about how to end the war in Vietnam,” Palmer told author James Dodson in the Palmer biography, A Golfer’s Life. When Palmer’s turn came to express his opinion, Palmer sheepishly told the Commander-in-Chief to “get this thing over as quickly as possible, for everyone’s sake. I mean, why not go for the green?”
The golf pro’s advice got a round of laughs from people who were unaccustomed to the levity.
So, again, congratulations to Hoffman. May The Hope be the first of many tour victories and lead to -- who knows? -- presidents seeking your advice on worldly matters.
After all, stranger things have happened.
And congratulations to 1996 Bay Hill Invitational champion Paul Goydos for winning Sunday’s Sony Open in Hawaii. His opportunity to become a repeat champion at Bay Hill begins March 12 at the newly renamed Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard.
Posted by crodell at 10:05 AM
September 26, 2006
Death of Byron Nelson Saddens Arnold Palmer
Arnold Palmer expressed his deep regret on the death of Byron Nelson when informed this afternoon (Tuesday, September 26.) His comments:
"I was terribly disturbed to learn that Byron Nelson has passed (away). He was one of the great people of all time, in addition to being one of the greatest players who ever lived. His record speaks for itself. I don't think that anyone will ever exceed the things that Byron did by winning 11 tournaments in a row in one year. But, I suppose that is not the most admirable thing that he did, although it was certainly tremendous. He was a fantastic person whom I admired from the time I was a boy. He just did nothing during his long life but make great contributions to the game of golf and life itself."
Posted by dgiffin at 04:36 PM
April 24, 2006
Mister Palmer’s Neighborhood
ArnoldPalmer.com would like to introduce writer Chris Rodell. In this story Chris shares with us what it's like to live a stone's throw away from the legend himself on Arnold Palmer Drive. "Mr. Palmer's Neighborhood" will be printed in the 6th issue of Kingdom Magazine available this June. Look to hear lots more from Chris this summer on ArnoldPalmer.com.
The saucy old widow lady next door surprised me when she said she spent a lot of time watching televised golf. Then she about shocked all the hairs off my head when she confided the reason why.
She used to spend hours and hours with her hands in Arnold Palmer’s pants.
“He always paid me,” she said matter-of-factly. “To me, he was just another customer. His office called a while back, but I told them I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
She was Palmer’s seamstress, something I’d never known in the 12 years she and I had lived next door to one another on Arnold Palmer Drive one half mile from Latrobe Country Club and the humble home of Palmer himself.
Her casual mention and my giddy reaction -- I dashed inside and phoned five friends who assumed my breathless tone meant I’d just sired healthy quadruplets -- are sound indicators why I’ll never fit in as a year-round resident of the birthplace of the venerable gent, who in 1955 won the Canadian Open, the first of 92 illustrious victories.
My father served his country as a U.S. Navy chaplain’s assistant. It’s almost impossible to conjure a less perilous title -- Army pillow tester? -- for a World War II veteran. That’s why his stories as a foot soldier in Arnie’s Army struck his sons as more stirring than his days dusting Bibles on behalf of God and Uncle Sam.
He got sunburned at Oakmont in ‘62. Stiff new golf shoes blistered his feet on a long march following Palmer at Firestone in ‘75. He caught hell for spilling beer on the couch reaching for Kleenex to mop away tears when Palmer crossed the Swilcan Burn for the last time in ‘95. I was raised with a reverence for the man I still, out of respect, refer to as Mr. Palmer that is unsurpassed by statesmen, philanthropists and medical innovators.
But that’s not why I moved to tiny Youngstown (me and the 391 other locals are always snobbishly informing strangers that Mr. Palmer’s Latrobe Country Club is actually in Youngstown, 15696, not Latrobe, 15650).
I was a newspaper reporter in a small Latrobe bureau office that was right next to a friendly tavern that served 50-cent Rolling Rock drafts. The buildings were a well-struck 3-wood from Latrobe Brewing Company. When my wife-to-be and I were searching for an area home, it seemed prudent to move to a place that, in those days of Y2K computer bug hysteria, assured convenient access to a brewery that served good, cheap beer.
But the real reason is the same as why Palmer still resides here and why he’s still active with the club, Arnold Palmer Motors and the local airport that bears his name: I’d grown fond of the folks. They are tough, no-nonsense people who work hard and play hard.
We moved into 505 Main Street and I began a career of freelance writing general feature stories for various national magazines. It wasn’t until the local council changed my address to Arnold Palmer Drive that I began to concentrate on golf writing. Palmer isn’t tiny Youngstown’s only claim to fame. The rest of Main Street was renamed in honor of another famous resident, the late Mister Fred Rogers, a schoolmate of Palmer’s. In fact, I can leave my front door turn left and be on Arnold Palmer Drive or turn right and stroll down Fred Rogers Way.
Alas, my golf game tends to trend after Mister Rogers. It’s gentle, unfailingly polite and is something grown up meanies make vicious fun of. But that hasn’t stopped me from seizing the Palmer connection. “I may never be the best golf writer,” I reason, “but I can be the only one on Arnold Palmer Drive just down the street from Latrobe Country Club and Arnold Palmer himself.”
Even before employing that little professional conceit, I was awestruck every single time I had a brush with Palmer, a small town neighbor who wouldn’t know me from the Biblical Adam. I’d slow the car to a crawl when I’d see him teeing up on the club’s roadside 122-yard par 3 second hole -- he’s aced it four times -- in the hopes I’d see some magic.
A courteous motorist, he once waved me through a stale yellow light. I must have run five senior citizens and a school bus full of frightened toddlers off the road on my mad rush to the bar to spill the news to my buddies.
And I was among the small gallery at Laurel Valley Golf Club for the Pennsylvania Classic two weeks after September 11, 2001, and saw him make deliberate and bracing eye contact with every one of us while his forgettable partners teed off. In those still-fragile days, his lingering eyes seemed to convey encouraging strength. I understood that day the messianic charisma that’s inspired a nation for more than 50 years.
I remember the sunny Saturday morning outside the Youngstown Post Office, a small town social center, when my wife and I were approached by a striking autumn haired woman with a soft spot for golden retrievers like the one tugging at the end of our leash.
“He is magnificent!” she gushed, luxuriously kneading both hands deep into Casey’s fur. “Oh, you must have him come and meet our Prince! Please call. It will be so much fun!”
We promised we would. After she’d skipped away, my wife asked the identity of the bubbly stranger.
“That’s Mrs. Winnie Walzer Palmer,” I said. “She married young Arnold on December 20, 1954, the same day as my own father and mother were married. When my old man heard the coincidental news and sent them an anniversary card, she responded the next few years with ones of her own.”
I called a few weeks later, but was told she wasn’t feeling well. It was 1998. We didn’t know it, but she was suffering from the cancer that would defeat her in November 1999.
I’m mystified by reporters who treat their frequent dealings with Palmer the way I used to treat the poor schlubs who were appointed to the local municipal authority board. I understand a certain professional detachment is necessary to cover a subject, but this isn’t some politician seeking our dollars and votes. It’s not some preening movie star posing as an action hero out to charm the ticket-buying public. This is Arnold Palmer.
Thus, I’m terrified that someday I’ll be called upon in a professional capacity to interview Mr. Palmer because I know my most pointed question will be along the lines of, “What’s it like to be so great? And, please, try be honest . . . unless you don’t feel like it.”
I’m convinced my story would read, “It’s been five hours since I was privileged to sit down and meet the great Arnold Palmer. My right hand is still tingling from his introductory greeting. My fair and balanced conclusion is as such: this man is far too accomplished to have to submit to silly questions from impudent reporters like myself.”
Such gushing would earn widespread ridicule from industry colleagues. I’d be finished, unemployable, a lonely ghost rattling through the cobwebbed house with no prospects and nothing but time to dream in vain of better days that would never dawn.
On the bright side, that would leave me with plenty of time to learn how to work a sewing machine. I understand the neighborhood could use another seamstress.
Posted by scurry at 04:32 PM
April 08, 2005
The Master's was his Domain
"Augusta and this golf tournament have been as much a part of my life as anything other than my family." - Arnold Palmer, at his farewell press conference in 2004.
After slashing his way to four Masters wins, Arnold Palmer is about to become a Masters spectator for the first time in 50 years. "It's traumatic," admits Palmer, who has an open invitation to hit the tournaments ceremonial first ball on April 7 but is leaning against it.
Palmer is uniquely wise to all things Augusta, and he gave us some thoughts on The National from his desk at Bay Hill in Orlando. On people-watching: "You can't beat the terrace outside the clubhouse." On the menu: "I like a good strip steak with a nice glass of wine." On making speeches in the winner's circle: "If you get to the Butler Cabin, you're not going to worry about what you're going to say. You're just one happy dude."
Because he's played 150 rounds in 50 Masters-and because he's the Kind-we asked Palmer for a hole-by-hole tour of the famed course, and to recall the shots that won him four green jackets.
1958
The Shot: 3-wood approach on 13
Palmer had eight Tour winds entering the 1958 Masters, but many in the media were still skeptical that he had the game to win a green jacket. With Bobby Jones on hand to watch, Palmer "smoked" his 3-wood approach to 18 feet (this was minutes after the embedded-ball Rules controversy on the 12th hole involving Ken Venturi). Palmer drained the eagle putt and went on to a one-shot victory. The new King was crowned.
"They said anybody who hit it low like I did would never win The Masters-1958 proved otherwise, and that kind of ignited all my success at Augusta. I hit a lot of 3-woods into 13 over the years, but that one was maybe the best of them all."
1960
The Shot: 27-foot birdie putt in 17
Trailing Ken Venturi by a stroke, Palmer twice backed off his birdie putt before finally ramming in the 27-footer. ("I couldn't look," said Palmer's wife, Winnie. I didn't see it, but I heard it-it sounded like the best putt of the tournament.") He then birdies the final hole, thanks to a 6-iron to six feet, to capture his second green jacket.
"There was commotion and excitement [around the green]. The pin was back- right, and I was on the front-center of the green going slightly to the right and up the hill. About 27 feet. That ball was going-really moving. I didn't have many putts die in the hole in my career. I jumped into the air."
1962
The Shot: Tee shot on 12
Palmer got off to a lackluster start in his 18-hole playoff with Gary Player and Dow Finsterwald but caught fire on the back nine, citing his tee shot here as the spark.
"I found myself trailing Player by three shots at the turn, but I hit an 9-iron to the front-left pin and almost made a one. It was kick-in length. That sent me off. I birdied 13-I hit a 3 wood to reach it in two-and shot 31 on the back nine. My 68 beat Player by three strokes."
1964
The Stroll: Victory march up the 18th fairway
Palmer realized a Masters dream in 1964. "One of my great ambitions was to walk up the 18th hole at The Masters and feel comfortable. In my first three wins, I was on edge [coming to 18]. In '64 I was leading by six and playing with my great friend Dave Marr. He was contending for second place. When we walked off the 18th tee I said, "Is there anything I can do to help you?' And he said, 'Yeah-make 12.'"
Arnie's Agony
The Palmer mystique is rooted in his humanity. We see ourselves in him, both in his triumphs and failures. He won four green jackets, but it could have easily been six. The King recalls the two that got away.
The Defending Champion 1959
Palmer led with seven holes remaining, but drowned his tee shot in Rae's Creek when the wind knocked down his well-struck 6-iron. His third, a pitch from near the hazard, trickled over the green into an indentation. It took Palmer three to get down from there for a triple- bogey 6. (He made the same score the final time he contended on Sunday at The Masters, in 1972.)
"I didn't do very well, that about all I remember. Art Wall won the tournament, didn't he? [He did, closing with a Palmer-like charge of birdies on five of the last six holes for a 66 and a one-shot win.] I don't want to remember the gory details. I have enough of those memories."
Greenside Bunker Blunder 1961
Clinging to a one-stroke lead over Gary Player, Palmer striped his drive down the middle of the 72nd hole, then accepted congratulations from a fan. Big mistake. His 7-iron approach missed wide right into a sand trap. From there, Palmer skulled his explosion shot over the green, failed to get up-and-down and ended up making double-bogey 6. Player got up-and- down from that same bunker to win.
"That bunker shot is the shot from my career that I'd like to have over again," Palmer says. "I hit a bad approach and tried to revamp it by gambling on the shot out of the trap. I could have flipped it out onto the green and taken a chance on it trickling down to that Sunday pin and caught it a little thin. I didn't get it down, made 6 and lost The Masters."
Photo Caption: Not even this last-second field goal attempt could salvage a Masters disaster.
Golf Magazine, April 2005, pgs. 165-169.
Posted by scurry at 10:57 AM
April 09, 2004
Arnie Says Goodbye
By Richard Mudry
Augusta, Ga. - Playing before a bevy of family, friends and long-time Patrons, Arnold Palmer said an emotional goodbye to the Masters Tournament Friday with his record 50th Championship.
Palmer, 74, was given a hero's sendoff along the fairways of Augusta National Golf Club, receiving warm applause and hearty cheers from appreciative Patrons.
The four-time Masters Champion was moved by the applause that greeted him on every tee, along every fairway and at every green.
With tears welling in his eyes periodically throughout the day, the charismatic golfer strolled down memory lane on his last competitive round over the 7,290-yard, par-72 layout. His score mattered not to those watching him bid adieu to a tournament that made him famous and that he helped grow as well.
"Augusta and this golf tournament has been about a part of my life as anything other than my family and most of you know that," he said afterward.
"I don't think I could ever separate myself from this club and this golf tournament. I may not be present, I may not be here, but I'll still be part of what happens here only because I want it to be. I've had such a great life and enjoyed it so much."
Palmer's departure left tears in its wake, tears from Sam Saunders, who caddied for his famous grandfather during the 68th Masters, to his two daughters, many grandchildren and finance Kit Gawthorp.
Emotion?
Plenty, said Palmer.
"A lot," said Palmer, showing the facial strain of his emotional week. "Sometimes I just get tired and the emotion overrules and runs away with me. I'm not upset about it. You know if I can't handle it that's my fault."
Everywhere he walked along the rolling fairways this week, Palmer saw friends, most made over the course of his 50 years at The Masters.
Those tender moments were about the only thing that Arnold Daniel Palmer couldn't handle in his life.
He handled victory or defeat with equal grace and dignity. He beat prostate cancer and returned to play the following year at The Masters. He handled the loss of his wife, Winnie, to cancer with the dignity one expected of a golf icon.
Palmer said he will return yearly to the Champions Dinner to remain a part of the Masters and will seriously consider a role as an honorary starter, perhaps as early as 2005.
But there will always be the memories, wonderful memories, for a man with a trunk full of them.
"I've thought about how many times I've walked up that 18th fairway," he said, rewinding his reel of highlights back to 1955, his first Masters appearance.
"I can think of the four times that I won The Masters. I can think of a couple of times that I didn't win that I felt like I should have won. I can think of the fans that have support me and listened to them, and, of course, they all have something to say, or most of them have something to say about what I'm doing when I'm walking up that fairway."
Arnold Palmer never met a fan he didn't like or a fan that didn't like his blue-collar style.
He never failed to sign an autograph or look a person in the eye whether he was on the fairway playing golf or in an entirely different arena of the business world.
He was a legend who walked among us, said Gary Player, himself a larger-than-life former Masters Champion.
"He gave of himself," said Player. "If you give to the fans, they give back. A lot of athletes are aloof. But Arnold was always aware of the man in the street."
And that can be no greater testimony for anyone.
Posted by scurry at 06:14 PM
Love for Palmer
He looked tired, but you could see in his features that Arnold Palmer had made peace with the idea that after 50 Masters, after 150 rounds, he had competed for the last time.
"I'm not going to make a big, long speech today," Palmer said. "I'm through. I've had it. I'm done. Cooked. Washed up. Finished."
A smile crept onto his face, as it usually has when he is at the Augusta National Golf Club.
"Augusta and this golf tournament has been about (as much) a part of my life as anything other than my family," Palmer said. "I don't think I could ever separate myself from this club and this tournament. I may not be present, I may not be here, but I'll still be a part of what happens here, only because I want to be."
Statisticians will remember that Palmer shot his second consecutive 84 on Friday. But the golf fans who have revered him for so long stopped worrying about what Palmer shot a long time ago.
Among those fans was one Davis Love III. He has finished second in two Masters. On Friday, he shot a 67 and won a crystal vase for the low score of the round, a trinket he has won five times. Love is tied for sixth at two-under 142, four shots back of Justin Rose.
Yet one of the fondest memories of Love's 15 Masters occurred Wednesday, when he played a nine-hole tune-up with Palmer.
"He came out on the range," Love said. "I could tell he was looking for somebody. I said, 'Are you going to play?' The guy he was going to play with, I guess, had already taken off. I said, 'Well, you can come play with me.'"
Practice rounds are informal. But still, can you imagine, not waiting around to play with Arnie? At Augusta National? In his 50th and final Masters? Love understood how special the opportunity was.
"So I blew Freddie off," Love said with a grin, referring to his good friend Fred Couples.
In 1964, when Palmer won his fourth and final Masters, he shared the first-round lead with two other major championship winners, Gary Player and Kel Nagle; Bob Goalby; and Davis Love, Jr., who wasn't even sure he would be able to complete the tournament because his wife expected to deliver a baby at any moment.
Davis Jr. finished tied for 34th. The following day, Davis III was born. He turns 40 on Tuesday.
Love lost his father in a plane crash in 1988.
"He talked about my dad," Love said of Palmer. "It's just amazing, the little things he remembers, that my dad qualified through the U.S. Amateur to get here in '55, and Arnold remembered, and he remembered the matches that he won."
Palmer remembered because he won that 1954 U.S. Amateur at the Detroit Country Club. In 1955, he, too, played in his first Masters, and tied for 10th. Palmer had turned pro.
For that top-10 finish, he earned $696.
"He's been good to me since I was a very small child," Love said, "so it was an honor to get to play with him in his last Masters."
Love needed a taste of vintage Arnie to get back into this Masters. When you shoot a 75 in the opening round, you've got to set aside all the bromides about being patient in a major, accepting par, blah-blah-blah and force yourself back into the tournament.
It's usually easy to spot the golfers who fire at the Augusta National pins -- they're the ones cleaning out their lockers on Friday evening. But Love went out and made an eagle and five birdies on his way to a 67. The eagle, his first at Augusta National in six years, came on a 50-foot bomb at the 500-yard 15th hole and got his name back on the leaderboard.
"Hopefully, I can build on that eagle and say that, hey, I can play these holes aggressively and make some birdies and some eagles," Love said.
It is the coda by which Palmer played throughout his career, most famously on these grounds. Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson said Wednesday that, "after Bobby Jones founding this place, I guess Arnold has meant more to the Masters than anyone."
That may come as a surprise to the ghost of Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of the club and the man who ran this tournament with an iron fist until his death in 1976. And it may come as a surprise to those who favor Jack Nicklaus, winner of six green jackets. But Palmer is as much a part of Augusta National as pimiento cheese sandwiches and pollen. He and the tournament nurtured televised golf, which in turn made them the two biggest attractions in the sport.
Nicklaus, after shooting a second consecutive 75 to miss the cut by two shots, said he didn't know if he would return next year for his 45th Masters. Nicklaus received a rousing ovation at No. 18, especially after he stiffed a pitch within two feet to save par.
Nicklaus took off his hat and waved at the patrons. As he bent down to fix his ball mark, a woman yelled, "That's a gimme!"
Nicklaus looked up at her and said drily, "Someplace else."
The Golden Bear may or may not come back. Palmer has made up his mind. He hasn't made the cut since 1983. He hasn't shot a round of par since 1985. He hasn't broken 80 since 2001.
And no one cares.
They applauded him as he left the first tee, "they" including the fans on the other side of the adjacent ninth fairway. He doffed his visor no more than several hundred times.
Perhaps the only living thing at Augusta National unimpressed with Palmer on Friday was the snake he nearly stepped on as he took a shortcut through the ditch on the 13th hole.
"I don't know whether it was a moccasin or not," Palmer said, and he turned to the press conference moderator, Billy Payne. "I'm going to guess it was, wouldn't you, Billy?"
Payne, a fellow member of Augusta National, never broke his deadpan.
"We don't have snakes here," he said.
After the laughter subsided, Palmer said, "Well, if I had felt a little tired, I didn't then. I came out of there and I was flying."
His feet barely touched the ground when he walked up the 18th fairway as well. The gallery applauded him for 90 seconds as he approached his second shot.
"I thought about how many times I've walked up that 18th fairway," Palmer said. "I can think of the four times I won the Masters. I can think of a couple of times I didn't win and should have ... Whether it be making a 6 at the last hole to lose the Masters (in 1961), or whether it be hitting a 7-iron in about four feet to make a putt to win the Masters (in 1960), all of those things go through my mind."
Palmer waved goodbye two years ago, when Johnson decreed that no Masters champion over 65 would be allowed to start. Johnson might not back down to Martha Burk, but he acquiesced on this issue.
"That farewell was created by other people than me," Palmer said. "I never really felt that that was the end. I was more obliging than giving up."
That may be the first time that the words "Palmer" and "giving up" have ever appeared in a sentence together. He may view this battle that no one ever wins as a defeat. But he gave up on his terms.
"The fact is that one of the things I wanted to do was what I did today," Palmer said, "and that was finish 50 years at Augusta."
Forty years after his fourth and final Masters victory, Palmer walked off No. 18 for the last time.
Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. You can reach him at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.
Posted by scurry at 06:05 PM