A Golfer's Life (19 page)

Nineteen sixty was a watershed year for America. With the election of the youngest president in history and talk of space exploration literally pushing our collective vision to new heights, Americans in general were reaching for new personal horizons, trying new things and forging new paths. As I’ve said before, it was a moment when many Americans, infused with the optimism of youth and prosperity, secure in their national identity, felt they could achieve almost anything—if they were only bold enough to try.

Count Arnold Palmer in those ranks. At the outset of the 1960 season, with my home life settled and, thanks to my new partnership with Mark McCormack, the first significant money from endorsement deals beginning to ease my natural worries about supporting my family, I was determined to achieve more than I ever had before on the golf course. That effort started very well, in the weeks leading up to the Masters, with wins at Texas, Baton Rouge, and Pensacola. Not insignificantly to me, this was also the year of the first Desert Classic, which I won. They added Bob Hope’s name to the marquee the next year, and it became one of my favorite stops in the game, as my four subsequent wins perhaps suggest.

In any case, my game had never felt sharper, and my attitude almost verged on cocky in the weeks preceding the Masters. I suppose it’s a measure of that confidence that, at
Pensacola, after I complained bitterly to George Low about shooting 73 in the final round, having to birdie six of the last ten holes and barely pulling out the win, he snapped at me with perfect Scottish indignation: “For God’s sake, Arnold. You made 78 into 73—and won the tournament. Count your blessings.”

He was right, of course. The truth was, though, I was far too busy concentrating on my game to stop and count any blessings. As a measure of how my thinking had changed, I’d set my sights on winning majors and knew that the first big test came at Augusta, where larger-than-ever galleries and a national television audience would be waiting to see if I could make up for the previous year’s collapse.

I birdied the first two holes of the tournament and took the first-round lead with a 67. Despite a blister on my foot (which I eased by padding my shoe with a torn scorecard halfway through the round) and my lackluster second-round 73, I maintained that one-stroke lead over Hogan and Finsterwald at the halfway post. That good fortune continued in round three, when no thanks to my shaky putter I was able to get around in 72 and still keep a one-stroke lead over Finsterwald, Boros, Hogan, and Venturi. Just behind them was a twenty-four-year-old South African who’d won the 1959 British Open and struck me as one of the most dedicated young golfers I’d ever seen, Gary Player.

With record crowds expected that Sunday, it promised to be a dramatic finish. Winnie and I were renting a small house with Ken and Susie Bowman, our friends and neighbors, not far off Washington Road (the first of a succession of private homes we would occupy during Masters week), and, as Winnie likes to joke, she had a hunch it might be a good week for Team Palmer. I basically never heard a word she said to me all week. She could have asked for a divorce, and I would have only grunted and nodded, so strong was my concentration
as I practiced my putting on the house’s short green carpet.

Augusta’s glassy greens were capable of giving me living nightmares. Admittedly, I was never a strong fast-green putter, and my reputation for ramming putts into the cup from all over the place stems, in large part, I think, from my ability to make comeback putts that had rolled precarious distances past the hole. At that time, standing over a ball, I never had any doubt whatsoever that the ball was going to roll into the cup. And when it missed, as more than a few did, I honestly was surprised and not a little angry about it.

Casper, Boros, and Player all faded fast on that Sunday, shooting numbers in the mid-70s, and Ben Hogan, who attracted perhaps the largest gallery, surgically hit greens but putted woefully to a disappointing 76. That left three of us to decide the outcome—Finsty, Venturi, and me. Paired together, the two of them played what appeared to be a match-play final, each of them winning holes but neither gaining much ground on the other. Finally, they arrived at 18, all even. Dow missed a difficult eight-footer to save par, and Kenny parred to finish with a two-under 70, and a total of 283 for the tournament.

Out on the course, I was chain-smoking L&M cigarettes and swigging Cokes to try and keep my nerves at bay. Starting on the back nine, a stroke behind the leaders, I got a lift when I saw one of those scoreboard signs saying, “Go Arnie. Arnie’s Army.” I had two excellent birdie chances coming up at 13 and 15, but poor chipping cost me both opportunities. After a dreadful chip at 15, I flipped my wedge disgustedly toward Ironman. He fixed me with a stare I’ll never forget. “Mr. Palmer,” he said in a low rumble, “are we chokin’?” His scowl was eerily reminiscent of the disapproving glare Pap used to give me as a kid whenever I threw a club or failed to keep my mind on my job.

Ironman wasn’t the greatest caddie. I’d be less than honest if I said he was. His distances were often inaccurate, and I relied, instead, on my own calculations and knowledge of the course to get around Augusta. But his understanding of what made me tick was perhaps instinctive and definitely profound. I stared back at him and realized he was right—I was foolishly beating on myself instead of taking care of the business of playing the golf course.

The closing three holes at Augusta are tough birdie prospects. At 16, the demanding par 3 over water, I put my 3-iron shot safely on the green but twenty-five feet below the hole. Because of the severe contour of the green, I was unable to see the cup from where my ball lay. I chose to leave the flag in the cup, an option not available to players today, and struck the ball firmly. Had the pin been out, it might have dropped, but it struck the pin and stopped a couple of feet away instead. I made the par and went to 17, commenting to an official that I would have to make two birdies to beat Ken Venturi, who was already in the clubhouse and, I was later told, already being measured for his green jacket.

A good drive at 17 was followed by something less than a perfect 8-iron shot that left me thirty feet from the cup. Twice I took my stance and twice I backed away. The uphill line was much the same as the three-footer I’d missed there in the clutch the year before. I decided I wasn’t going to be short this time and took my stance for a third time, gathered my concentration, then hit the ball hard. It rolled up the slight incline and seemed to stop on the very edge of the cup—then dropped in.

I jumped excitedly into the air, punching skyward with my fist. I don’t think I ever heard the roar of the gallery, though everyone later talked about what a sustained excitement that putt created. People sprinted from the green to find a spot along the 18th fairway. I made one of my best drives of the
week and struck a 6-iron approach that dropped the ball about five feet from the cup.

Walking up that final fairway, having just hit maybe the finest clutch shot of my career to that point, I knew I now faced the biggest putt of my career. Even though I was probably as nervous as I’d ever been on a golf course, I knew I could make the putt. My father and mother were there, along with Winnie and Cheech and Ron, and I calmed myself by thinking of my father’s familiar advice to keep myself still over the putt and make a smooth stroke.

This time I didn’t hesitate, but just as I was about to putt, I heard an announcer chattering excitedly in the television booth above the green. Distracted, I looked up and saw a sheepish Jim McKay. I smiled at Jim, then refocused on the task of somehow getting that ball across five dangerous feet and into the cup. I took my stance, and stroked the ball, and watched it curl lazily into the hole for a birdie. I stayed in my familiar hunched-over stance for a beat or two longer, as the crowd roared and Jim McKay shouted over and over that I’d won the 1960 Masters.

After that I looked up, grinned, walked a couple steps, and once again jumped ecstatically into the air.

T
here’s no feeling quite as satisfying as entering the media room to face the press after winning a big golf tournament—or, at the other end of the spectrum, as potentially painful when you’ve blown it. During my game’s peak years, which I consider to have been roughly between 1958 and 1972, I had more than my share of both experiences.

Nineteen sixty has been called the “Golden Year” in American golf, for several reasons. To begin with, thanks to television, millions more people than ever were suddenly watching golf and taking up the game in record numbers.
Fueling the grassroots explosion, every major tournament that summer seemed to come down to last-second heroics like my birdie-birdie finish at Augusta.

Others have correctly noted that the summer was golden because representatives from three distinct eras of the game were contending for the same recognition of being the top golfer in the world. Ben Hogan was a living legend and symbol of the game’s postwar resurgence. As he would prove at Cherry Hills later that summer, though slowed a bit by age and the effects of his near-fatal car crash, he was still the man to beat in major golf tournaments. To the growing number of recruits who followed me and counted themselves part of “Arnie’s Army,” I represented the optimism and excitement of the game at the moment.

Finally, whispering of things to come, there was also a stout young amateur phenom from Ohio State with a butch haircut and a high fade, who announced his presence that summer by simply posting the lowest amateur score in Open history. His name was Jack Nicklaus.

It was undoubtedly also a golden time to write about the game of golf, and luckily for us there were some simply marvelous reporters and writers doing it. I vividly remember walking into the interview room minutes after winning the 1960 Masters and receiving the hearty congratulations from a sea of faces I’d come to trust and admire. My curmudgeonly old friend Bob Drum was there, along with Tom Birks from the Pittsburgh
Sun-Telegraph
and Phil Gundelfinger from the third Pittsburgh newspaper, the
Post-Gazette
. I remember seeing Jack Clowser from Cleveland and Irwin Smallwood from Greensboro, Dana Mozley from New York’s
Daily News
and Link Werden from the
Times
, Ron Green from Charlotte, Charlie Bartlett from the
Chicago Tribune
, Nelson Cullenward from San Francisco, Herb Graffis, the late great Jim Murray from Los Angeles. Joe Looney was there from Boston and
Bob Sommers from the
Washington Post
, Larry Robinson from the
World Telegram
, Dave Eisenberg from the
Journal American
, Al Laney from the
Herald Tribune
, Dan Jenkins from the
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
, Fred Byrod from Philadelphia, Al Wright from
Sports Illustrated
, the eloquent Herb Wind from
The New Yorker
, and the ambassadorial Alistair Cooke from Britain. Watching from off in the corner, down from the broadcast booth, were Chris Schenkel and Jim McKay and the ever-dapper Jack Whitaker.

I’m sure I’ve missed some other important writers. But that’s still a pretty small fraternity compared to the monstrous packs of journalists that cover a major golf tournament these days. On that note, permit me to say that it surprises and dismays me a bit to realize how aggressive, impersonal, and controversy-driven much of today’s sports reporting has become, even in golf—the last refuge, as someone once described it, of the true sporting man. I’m sure some will brand me an old fogey for saying this, but considering the way gossip-column and tabloid-style reporting have crept into golf writing in the past decade or so, I miss the days when reporters judged a player largely by his public actions and the way he conducted his affairs on or around the field of competition, and left his private affairs out of their columns. I daresay few of us could stand up to the scrutiny and sometimes mean-spirited reporting that certain charismatic modern players—John Daly and Tiger Woods come immediately to mind, in this respect—are subjected to. Both of these gifted young men have had to grow up in full public view, as it were, barraged by constant psychoanalysis or criticism from sideline “experts,” who won’t grant them the benefit of being able to make mistakes, and learn from them, as all young men must do.

I counted many of these scribes of my time as good friends, and respected the rest as men who wrote about golf
with the best interests of the game at heart. There is no question that their writings about Jack and Gary and me stoked the public excitement about the blossoming PGA Tour and transformed all of us into larger-than-life figures. It made us stars and wealthy men, and we owe them a deep debt of gratitude.

Some of these reporters came to my home in Latrobe, and we’d traveled thousands of miles together on the PGA Tour, and in doing so a definite environment of mutual trust had developed among us. I didn’t have to say something was “off the record” because, typically, they knew when to stop writing. They appreciated that, win or lose, I spoke straight from the heart, and I appreciated that they worked hard to get the story right—neither hesitating to praise my exploits when they deserved it, nor failing to hold my feet to the fire when I’d blown a tournament I should have won. After hours, we loved nothing better than to share a beer, play cards, and shoot the breeze.

Given this intimacy, which I’m certain some today might criticize as being “too cozy,” I can only recall a couple of incidents where reporters took what I regarded as unfair shots at me in print. Early on I learned the value of cultivating friendships with these opinion makers by taking a genuine interest in their work and lives. Not to beat a dead horse about it, I sometimes think both players and reporters of today are guilty of having forgotten—or simply abandoned—this old-fashioned ethic of mutual respect and cooperation. It would be good for golf were it to return.

M
any of those same fine wordsmiths chronicled my collapse at the 1961 Masters in minute detail. It still makes me wince to think about it.