A Golfer's Life (44 page)

Another time, while flying into Los Angeles International Airport in a leased twin-engine plane from Palm Springs, Ed Seay and I nearly got turned topsy-turvy by the jet blast of a commercial airliner landing on an adjacent runway. Luckily, I got the plane level before its wing could touch the runway, and we landed without further incident—just a little paleness around the gills.

I’ve also had a few harrowing moments in helicopters, which I am licensed to fly and enjoy doing from time to time. One of the most frightening experiences I’ve ever had in the air occurred in Korea in 1989, when Ed Seay and I took Dave Marr and a film crew making a documentary about our course-design work into the mountains more than a hundred kilometers from Seoul.

As we were preparing to board the client’s new twin-engine state-of-the-art chopper for the brief flight back to
Seoul, I noticed that the weather was closing down fast, which greatly alarmed me. I questioned the pilot, one of Korea’s most decorated military fliers, as it turned out, and was assured that he was fully qualified to fly IFR, which means Instrument Flight Rules.

So up we went. We weren’t a hundred meters up in the air when we disappeared into fog. I became even more concerned. I was watching the pilot and his instruments like a hawk and realized that either he was becoming disoriented or, far less likely, the craft’s instruments had gone haywire. The electronic horizons were all over the place and the helicopter was on the verge of getting into serious trouble.

My worst fears were confirmed seconds later when we broke free of the clouds and there was a huge rock—the side of a mountain, actually—mere yards away! Everyone in the chopper gasped and the pilot immediately responded and pulled away from the mountain. What felt like an eternity later, we got safely below the clouds again, popped out over a highway, and proceeded at low altitude to Seoul. If you ask Ed Seay about the incident, he’ll just close his eyes and shake his head, maybe mutter, “Holy cow.”

That expresses my sentiments exactly.

E
very pilot with any significant time in the air has a tale or two like this to tell—and the fact that he is still around to tell them means he probably knew just what to do when the difficult moment arrived. Maybe the most amusing ticklish moment came early in my flying career, in the old Aero Commander, when Winnie and I were flying down to Birmingham, Alabama, for a tournament. Because I was flying under Visual Flight Rules, I knew I might need her to jot down critical information from the tower if and when the weather changed. Sure enough, visibility got worse as we neared Birmingham,
and the controller began to pass along important information. I was working hard in the left seat but happened to look over at Winnie, assuming that she was dutifully writing down all the instructions. Instead, I discovered she was brushing her hair and putting on fresh lipstick!

Thanks in large part to Russ Meyer, I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know many of the movers and shakers in the American aviation industry, which is really a smaller community than you might imagine. I was once invited by the chairman of Boeing to fly with the test pilots of one of the first 747s to come off the production line in Seattle. Brother, did I jump at that opportunity, and I wasn’t in the plane five minutes when the head test pilot said to me, “Arnie, you want to fly her? Go ahead. Get in the left seat.”

Man oh man, was I in heaven taking that big baby up. We put her through some impressive maneuvers and brought her back down to earth—but I stayed up in the clouds for days just thinking about the experience.

Lucky for me, somebody at competing aviation giant McDonnell Douglas heard about my Boeing test flight and offered me a chance to fly
their
new production jumbo airliner, the DC-10. I didn’t hesitate to accept that invitation either. I took fellow Tour player Ken Still up with me on that test ride. For many years afterward, we would both talk about the day like giddy schoolboys.

I was also privileged to fly not once but on several occasions with the world-famous Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s high-performance jet squadron whose precision flight maneuvers have thrilled millions worldwide. The first time was when I was invited down to Pensacola, where the Blue Angels are based, by a friend in the insurance business named Jack Colter. Jack insured many U.S. Navy pilots and, since this was at the height of the Vietnam War, it just so happened that the navy was interested in drumming up some publicity
for its recruiting efforts. I was more than happy to become their civilian poster boy.

The plan called for me to take up the wives and girlfriends of the Blue Angels in my Aero Commander—a prop plane, mind you—climb to 10,000 feet, then begin a slow descent, at which point the Blue Angels in their much faster F-9 fighter jets would descend upon us and hold their position for a few minutes while a photographer on board captured the moment for posterity, or at least for an interesting training poster. We also had on board Gordon Jones, a former U.S. Marine pilot and Tour player; he was supposed to communicate via hand signals with the Blue Angels, since we had no direct radio communication available.

Anyway, all goes precisely as planned and we make a slow descent and the Blue Angels appear off our wings and the girls are waving to their men to beat the band and the photographer is snapping pictures madly … when suddenly I realize our on-board communications man is throwing up like a son of a gun on the floor of the plane. To make matters worse, the next day we learn that the camera malfunctioned! The base commander was deeply apologetic and all, but begged us to go up and do it all again; I consented to a shorter run, minus our interpreter. The resulting photos still hang with pride in my Latrobe office.

I later had a similar opportunity to fly in an F-16 with the U.S. Air Force’s famed Thunderbird performance team, and I was even allowed to help land a military jet on the aircraft carrier
Eisenhower
. Talk about precision flying. There’s simply no room for error in such a situation. Trying to hit that famous island green at TPC Sawgrass on a Sunday was a piece of cake compared to the challenge of trying to safely set a multimillion-dollar aircraft on a floating runway. No mulligans there.

But the biggest thrill, hands down, came in the summer
of 1976 when the people at Gates Aviation, the Lear Jet manufacturer, asked me to participate in an effort to establish a new speed record for circumnavigation of the globe.

On May 17, 1976, during America’s bicentennial-year celebration, two other pilots, Jim Bir and Bill Purkey, veteran journalist Bob Serling, and I left Denver’s Stapleton International Airport at 10:24
A
.
M
. and flew to Boston in a specially outfitted Lear 36. After a quick refueling stop in Beantown, the next scheduled stop was Paris, but severe head winds ate up our fuel supply, so we had to land in Wales instead. From there it was on to Paris, Teheran, Sri Lanka, then Jakarta. At each stop, the drill was pretty much the same. We would hop out waving flags and distributing bronzed replicas of the Declaration of Independence, socialize a bit with local folks and dignitaries, then maybe trot off briefly for a bit of refreshment while the plane was being serviced. In Iran I was taken to have high tea with the crown prince, while in Sri Lanka I was put on top of an elephant and paraded about the local town. As amazing as these little ceremonies were, we managed to hold each of our visits to less than an hour’s time.

I flew the plane most of the way, and there were moments I’ll simply never forget, like heading toward Sri Lanka over the Indian Ocean late at night, with everybody onboard asleep but me. We were cruising at 45,000 feet when I suddenly noticed that, because of ice formation, our global navigation computer had kicked off. I remember being briefly frightened, but as I sat there flying the plane, fooling with the radar and radio signals, I began to calm down, and I told myself I’d be damned if I’d wake the others. I knew my proper coordinates and I aimed the radar down, picking up an image of the coastline of India. I flew the coast all the way to Sri Lanka, and as we descended the plane’s state-of-the-art electronic guidance system came on and we glided in as though we were on the wings of an angel.

A tenser moment came far out over the Pacific, on the dangerous leg from Manila in the Philippines to Wake Island, which is approximately halfway across the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii—the same stretch where Amelia Earhart vanished without a trace.

We left Manila in the first serious blows of a fast-approaching Pacific typhoon and soon had a big decision to make. Halfway between Manila and Wake Island, the only refueling stop thereabout, you must decide to either proceed or go back, or at least divert to Guam. Problem was, Manila was being pounded by the typhoon, and amid all the radio static it wasn’t clear whether Wake Island was faring well, either. We did, however, hear that Guam was being evacuated in the face of the storm, and we made a decision to keep going, placing our hopes on tiny Wake Island, little more than a speck, a bleak chunk of coral rock in the world’s largest ocean.

Well, obviously, we made it. After refueling at Wake, we flew to Honolulu, arriving in the dead of night, then straight into Denver’s Stapleton International Airport, where we buzzed the tower to signal the end of our great aerial adventure at 7:49
P
.
M
. on May 19, before angling off to nearby Arapaho Airport, where Winnie and our eldest daughter, Peggy, were waiting to greet us. I remember Winnie’s great bear hug, followed by her comment that I really needed a shave. I think I slept maybe three hours the whole trip.

Our circumnavigation of the globe had set a new aviation record for that class of business jet of 57 hours 25 minutes 42 seconds, eclipsing the old mark, set a decade before, by almost thirty hours. In writing about our little adventure,
Time
magazine cheekily concluded: “Considering the water hazards and long pars, the 46-year-old Palmer didn’t do a bad job. He was 77½ days ahead of Phineas Fogg.”

*  *  *

L
ater the same year, Russ Meyer brought out his first production jet at Cessna Aviation, the Citation 500, which I leased until an improved version of the plane came along two years later. After flying a Citation II for three years with great satisfaction, I upgraded to a Citation III, and that became the first of my planes to bear my new FAA-designated registration number: N1AP.

From there we moved into a slightly larger version of the model III and then jumped, a couple years later, to the beautiful, roomier, more powerful Citation VII model.

Every airplane Russ delivered seemed to be slightly more wondrous than the last, with innovations that would make Cessna the eventual dominant player and world leader in the private-jet aviation field. Every year when I would go back to Wichita for my annual check ride and three-day brushup in the simulator, I would learn what was coming down the Cessna production pipeline. To say I was anxious to get my hands on the controls of the new Citation X would be understating the matter by a mile.

Russ kept a designated delivery date close to his vest, the old rascal. Then one afternoon in August of 1996, while I was standing in the sixth fairway waiting to hit an approach shot in our annual gala that benefits the Latrobe Area Hospital, I heard a familiar jet roar and looked up to see just about the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen—the new Citation X gliding right over us as it approached Latrobe Airport.

The feeling that the sight of the new plane gave me was comparable to the thrill of winning a golf tournament, I can honestly say, and I took a few of my guests to the airport to see the new ship up close and for brief “test rides.” Everyone was ga-ga over the beauty and technical wizardry of the plane, but I’d already had a nice preview of Cessna’s latest creation.

A few weeks before the gala, Winnie and I got up early for breakfast in Latrobe, then drove to the airport, where a prototype of the new plane we were scheduled to soon receive, with Russ and his wife, Helen, aboard, was waiting. We took off and flew for 5 hours and 58 minutes, straight to St. Andrews. We drove into the Old Grey Toon and had a drink with Tip Anderson at the Bogey Ben Pub. The next morning, we played the Old Course and later attended the majestic opening ceremonies of the Royal and Ancient’s annual autumn meetings, during which the out-going club captain is thanked and the incoming one installed, along with any new members.

I happened to be one of the new members that year. What an enormous thrill, given my lengthy association with the British Open and the the golf fans of Britain and Scotland. I performed the ageless ritual of “kissing the captain’s balls,” and we had a dandy time catching up with old friends, reminiscing about several Open championships that are near and dear to my heart. The following morning, we got up and flew home, arriving in Latrobe in time for lunch at the club.

It had been some trip. Among the nicest two days of my life.

Afterward, I got to thinking about what Old Tom Morris would make of the age we inhabit, how thanks to flying Winnie and I have been fortunate enough to have seen virtually every corner of the globe, met thousands of people we never could have met, seen astounding natural wonders, met queens and kings and hotel doormen armed with sparkling wit. I’ve even managed to play a fair bit of golf amid all that air travel, and I somehow don’t think Old Tom, patron spirit of the game that he is, would begrudge me the pleasure of saying that flying an airplane all these years has given me a joy that’s the equal of golf.

Well, almost.

I
n the fall of 1963, as my most frustrating year on tour, to that point, was drawing to a close, Pap began building the new nine at Latrobe Country Club. He’d waited a long time for this project to begin, and not surprisingly, being the original hands-on boss, he did much of the manual labor and almost all of the design work himself. Nobody knew the character of that rolling Allegheny farmland any better than my father did, and he seemed to know exactly what he wanted to do with it from the very beginning. For my part, I suppose I was anxious to lend a helping hand, shaping some of the fairways and greens with a bulldozer, if for no other reason than it gave me time to ponder the mystery of my performance in 1963.