A Life Well Played

by Arnold Palmer

However, for whatever reason, he was never extended an invitation to join the PGA of America, or the PGA led him to believe that he couldn’t join because of his physical handicap. The circumstances were never 100 percent clear to me, but I know Pap felt slighted by the organization, and this created a certain amount of tension between the organization and me on occasion, though my relationship with the PGA and its members has been a good one over the years. But thanks to Golf Channel president Mike McCarley and former PGA president Ted Bishop, the relationship grew even stronger with the creation of the Deacon Palmer Award. My understanding is that the two men brainstormed the idea together, and then Bishop got the PGA of America board of directors to buy into it.

  Ted came to Bay Hill in April of 2014 and informed me of the PGA’s idea, and hearing about it brought tears to my eyes, especially when it was further communicated to me that the first recipient of the Deacon Palmer Award would, in fact, be Milfred Jerome “Deacon” Palmer. That November at the PGA Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, I accepted the award on my father’s behalf.

  It was a big day for both of us.

  DREAMS

  I DREAMED THAT ONE DAY I would be the star in a western movie, which would have fulfilled a childhood ambition of mine. Oh, yes, I often pretended to be the cowboy riding to the rescue, the guy in the white hat who would vanquish the bad guys with six-guns blazing. Not surprisingly, I have loved watching western movies all my life, and once provided Golf World magazine with a list of my favorites. As I recall, most of them were John Wayne films.

  After my cameo appearance in Bob Hope’s film Call Me Bwana, I had some serious conversations with Jay Michaels about producing a feature film with a western theme. Jay had been our producer for Challenge Golf, and we explored the possibility more than once. But it always seemed to get pushed aside for some reason or another—mostly golf, not surprisingly. Then in the early 1980s Jay passed away suddenly, and Mark McCormack, my business manager, who worked closely with Jay on Challenge Golf, never really pursued it in earnest, and I didn’t push the idea very much.

  I’m a dreamer. I freely and readily admit that. But I consider that one of my strongest qualities.

  I don’t hope for things, or rather I don’t hope certain things happen to me. To hope is to wait for things to come to you. To dream is part of the process of setting goals and then striving to achieve them. You first must dream of doing things before you can do them.

  When I was preparing to play in my last Masters in 2004, I was asked about how strong was my desire to make the cut. I hadn’t made the cut in the Masters in several years, and I said that it was very important to me to try as hard as I could to play all four rounds in my 50th and final Masters. I think some of the writers were having a hard time understanding my thought process.

  I simply explained that I knew myself well. I think my actual words were that “I’ve been associated with me for a while.” Not a bad line. And I continued by talking about being a dreamer. There are not many people who recognize that quality in themselves or want to recognize that quality in themselves. I was always a dreamer when it came to my golf, and I think that was one of the secrets to my success, but it applied to other things in life, too. That’s the way I thought and the way I felt, so that’s the way I lived.

  When it comes to golf I still have dreams. I’m eighty-six as of this writing, and my shoulder is banged up and my back is giving me trouble, but I still want to go out and try to hit a golf ball as well as I can. Not every dream that I’ve ever had has come true, but a lot of them sure have. So I believe in the power of dreams. I sure would have enjoyed filming that western, though.

  FATHERHOOD

  NOTHING IN MY LIFE has been more rewarding than being a father, and perhaps nothing has been as challenging, either, particularly when you’re a father who traveled frequently on the job and had to contend with some of the pressures and perks of fame.

  Winnie and I raised two beautiful, intelligent, creative, strong-willed daughters. I know that Peggy and Amy got the beautiful, intelligent, and creative part from their mother. It’s beyond words describing how proud I am of them, the kind of good-hearted person each is, and how genuinely decent and down-to-earth they always have been.

  When I think about how they had to grow up, I realize how difficult it was for them being the children of Arnold and Winnie Palmer. They had to deal with a lot of things going on around them, and they faced challenges a lot of other children didn’t have to endure.

  They attended a private school, but that was not our original choice for them. Winnie and I didn’t want to spoil the girls or to have them feel more privileged than any other children, so we were dead set that they were going to attend public schools, and they started out at the local grammar school. Unfortunately, they did get that sense that they were somehow different—but not from their parents. Other kids knew who they were, what their father did, and they, therefore, felt inclined to treat them often not in a manner that was nice or polite. They faced their share of rudeness to the point we had to place them in a private school where few cared about their last name.

  Even so, the girls worked jobs throughout their high school and college years. We wanted them to earn their own money and learn how to work, just as Winnie and I had from our respective parents. While they were attending college, neither Peg nor Amy had the benefit of a personal car, and Winnie and I insisted that they were going to get an education and learn to do something with their lives.

  There was no getting around the personal and financial advantages the girls were going to enjoy, but they handled it all very well. I’d like to think that Winnie and I provided the proper direction, but my daughters didn’t let themselves get caught up in the trappings of their circumstances. They grew up to be solid citizens and kind, giving, strong women—just like their mother. And it pleases me greatly to see each of their children grow up to be a good person with fine personal qualities. For instance, I felt proud to hear that my grandson Sam, who has played in the Arnold Palmer Invitational Presented by MasterCard a number of times, acted in a cordial, respectful, and mannerly fashion toward his amateur partners in the tournament’s pro-am. That is much more rewarding to me than how he scored in the tournament proper.

  It’s not enough to simply provide the basic necessities and maybe some creature comforts to your children. A parent needs to offer strong direction in attitude and behavior, which I can say my parents did for my siblings and me. Being a parent isn’t easy, as anyone with children is well aware. But like golf itself, it’s not supposed to be easy. It’s a challenge, one that needs to be met with intelligence and strength. Good parenting is the most important endeavor a person can undertake. But the rewards surpass anything else you do in life.

  FLYING

  I’M ASKED OFTEN what I would have done with my life if I hadn’t become a successful professional golfer. It’s a difficult subject because golf has been such a thorough and essential part of my life. I will say it again: golf, for me, always has been a way of being alive.

  Something that has come a close second is flying. So when the question is asked, my response is that I would have become a commercial pilot. Other than the amount of time I have spent on the golf course or with my family, the happiest hours of my life have been spent in the left seat of an aircraft.

  I learned to fly a Cessna 172 single-engine plane not long after I turned professional and could afford to take flying lessons, and by 1958 I was flying myself to many of my tournaments, exhibitions, and other business responsibilities in a leased Cessna 175. Learning to fly and then owning my own planes, starting in 1962 with an Aero Commander 500, a secondhand aircraft for which I paid $27,000, was a real game-changer in my life. I discovered a tremendous sense of freedom in flying myself. No longer was I beholden to airline schedules or limited to major cities. The planes I flew took off when I was ready for them to leave and could fly into any town that had an airstrip. If a tournament finished late, I didn’t have to wait until Mo
nday morning to return home; I could fly myself home Sunday night in time to kiss my girls good night.

  In short, I found I was more productive in my professional life and was able to get more enjoyment out of my personal life by having more time with the people who meant the most to me—my wife and daughters and my larger circle of family and friends.

  Two early experiences in flight shaped my future as a pilot, one exhilarating and the other frightening.

  The first occurred when I was thirteen years old, when a family friend named Tony Arch took me up in a J-3 Piper Super Cub, a high-wing two-seater. Tony had washed out of fighter pilot school at the onset of World War II, but he still had his pilot’s license. I quickly learned a bit about why he washed out. As we made one of several low passes over the golf course, he nearly stalled the plane by pulling back on the stick without giving the throttle enough power. We’re lucky we didn’t crash, but the tail rudder did scrape a portion of one of the fairways. I thought it was exciting.

  The second came in 1949 when I was on a commercial DC-3 from Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a return trip from an amateur event. We encountered a ferocious thunderstorm. The plane was struck by lightning, sending a ball of static electricity (known as St. Elmo’s Fire) hurtling down the aisle. It really terrified the passengers, including this one, who was twenty at the time. Later, after thinking about that event, I realized that flying was something I wanted to learn more about. Not long after I turned pro and could afford the lessons, I set about doing just that, taking instruction from Babe Krinock at Latrobe Airport.

  I went on to own eight airplanes, including my current one, which is the second Cessna Citation X I purchased and the fastest private jet of its class in the world. I averaged more than 200 flight hours per year, and I’ve traveled more than two million miles by air. And though I stopped piloting my own aircraft in 2011, I am still logging the miles in my plane with the call letters N1AP—November One Alpha Papa. By the way, I also became licensed to pilot a helicopter.

  While there have been many highlights to my golf career, I’ve also enjoyed a few landmark moments in the air, most notably in May 1976 when we set a round-the-world speed record in a Learjet that still stands for planes in that classification. With me were two other pilots, Bill Purkey and Jim Bir, plus journalist Bob Serling, and we set off from Denver and then flew to Boston, Wales, Paris, Tehran, Sri Lanka, Jakarta, Manila, Wake Island, Honolulu, and back to Denver in 57 hours, 25 minutes, and 42 seconds. It might have been faster, but we had to make an unexpected stop in Wales for fuel, and in Sri Lanka, on another refueling stop, I rode on an elephant. We departed Denver Stapleton Airport at 10:24 a.m. on May 17 and buzzed the tower at Denver at 7:49 p.m. May 19 to signal the end of our journey. Another highlight was flying a Boeing 747 before they were even in commercial service. Not long after I jumped at the chance to do the same in a new DC-10. On several occasions I had the privilege of flying with the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s precision-flying jet squadron.

  In 1996, my longtime friend Russ Meyer, who had moved on to head up Cessna, flew the new Citation X into Latrobe with his wife to pick up Winnie and me. We made a hop straight to St. Andrews, where I was granted membership in the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

  I could go on and cite dozens more. Pap always instructed me to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, but it’s been in the air that I’ve enjoyed many of the most satisfying times of my life. Strangely, perhaps, some of the most soul-soothing moments have come after some difficult setback on the golf course. To be able to get in my plane, soar into the wild blue yonder, get my mind off worldly problems, and just enjoy the ride and the feeling of ultimate freedom was reinvigorating. Many times, by the time I landed the plane at home, my disappointment had usually dissipated. Its therapeutic value to my mental well-being was immense.

  It’s hard for many people to believe how I turned an innate fear into one of the most rewarding and gratifying things I’ve ever done in my life. Sometimes, when I think of it that way, I find it a little hard to believe myself. But that’s how it all came together. Getting out of your comfort zone, or in this extreme case, facing circumstances that are frightening, more often than not is one of the best things you can do in your life. Taking that first step can be hard, and maybe it doesn’t turn out as rewarding as it turned out for me, but to my way of thinking, it sure beats living in fear.

  HEROES

  MY FATHER WAS MY HERO, and there was no one else who was a close second in terms of inspiration or influence.

  But there were definitely people that I looked up to and who did have an impact on me in my career, starting with Bobby Jones. Around the time I was ten or eleven I began reading books about golf and picking up ideas here and there. I was naturally drawn to the exploits of Jones, and a biography I read about the great amateur had a profound effect on how I thought about what I wanted for my own career. Certainly his capturing the Grand Slam of his era—the U.S. and British Opens and Amateur championships—got me thinking about what would constitute the modern version, which I began talking about after my wins in the Masters and U.S. Open in 1960.

  And, of course, Jones continued to be an inspiration as I got to know him better once I won my first Masters in 1958. What Jones accomplished in the creation of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament is something that had a profound impact on me from the very first time I visited in 1955. Beyond that, Jones’s courage and dignity in battling that debilitating disease that eventually ended his life in 1971 was truly amazing.

  Because of his flair and style, I put Walter Hagen high up on my list of people in the game who had an impact on me. I didn’t style myself after Hagen in any way, but I appreciated how he went about playing the game and enjoying it along the way, and that is one thing from Hagen I tried to emulate. I first met Hagen at the 1955 PGA Championship at Meadowbrook Country Club in Detroit. We hit it off pretty well, and from time to time we’d talk. It was always a nice conversation. We’d talk about my golf, we’d talk about his golf, we’d talk about what was going on out on the tour. We had a lot of common interests, and we found that we were fairly like-minded about the game.

  When I won my second consecutive British Open at Royal Troon in 1962, Hagen was kind enough to call me in Scotland to congratulate me. We had a special relationship that I enjoyed immensely. When he died in 1969, I served as one of the pallbearers at his funeral in Michigan, as he requested. That was a huge honor.

  The gentleman I held in perhaps the highest esteem of all was Byron Nelson. His writings, his ideas about the golf swing, and the way he came up through the caddie ranks to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game all made an impression on me. Some of the things I did with my golf swing, trying to keep it on plane, those came from Byron Nelson. They worked well for me for a lot of years.

  That we would become friends was something that was very special to me. You can talk about his great swing and the eleven tournament wins in a row in 1945, but the thing that impressed me the most was that he was simply a fantastic person. He did nothing during his long life but make great contributions to the game and to life itself.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been more flattered in my life than when Byron introduced me during a banquet in Dallas and said that, “Arnold has meant more to golf than is really possible to say, especially professional golf.” I was speechless that Byron would say something like that about me when I had always revered him so highly and considered him such an important figure. I guess we were members of the mutual admiration society. It also touched me deeply that he would call me one of his dearest friends. Then he added, “He did the foreword for my book [How I Played the Game] and I know that sold a lot of extra copies.”

  Byron’s passing in 2006 was very difficult for me. I felt like not only myself but also the whole world had lost a great friend. But I was better for having known him personally, and the value in that is beyond the bounds of expression.

 
SOFT SPOT

  WHEN WINNIE AND THE GIRLS and I started to settle in at our new winter home in Orlando, there were many people who helped us feel comfortable and welcome. Folks were incredibly nice and cordial, and that was one of the primary reasons why we loved it so much.

  One of the most important and, as it turns out, influential people was Frank Hubbard, an Orlando businessman, who was involved with the Florida Citrus Open and who was really the force behind my decision to agree to host the event at Bay Hill starting in 1979. A few years later Frank was instrumental in getting me involved in something that has become a very special part of my life. He wanted me to lend my name and financial support to something many folks believed was greatly needed in the Orlando area—namely a first-rate children’s hospital.

  Children are my soft spot, and I was happy to do whatever I could. But I soon decided that I needed to jump in with both feet and use whatever clout I could muster to make a bigger impact after we toured the cramped, outdated children’s wing of Orlando Regional Medical Center. Meeting the courageous children battling cancer and other diseases and seeing so many tiny, frail premature babies on life support touched a nerve like you wouldn’t believe.

  Quickly, we were able to increase the goals of a fund-raising campaign from $10 million to $30 million, and players like Greg Norman and Scott Hoch helped raise awareness and offer financial support. Winnie was instrumental in our decision to make the children’s hospital the principal beneficiary of charitable proceeds from our PGA Tour event at Bay Hill.

  I had quite an emotionally charged sixtieth birthday, but only because of the days leading up to it when we opened the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women. We celebrated a ribbon cutting on August 26 and enjoyed hospital gala activities that day and the following. Even greater was the opening of the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies on May 25, 2006. Just six days later, the first baby was born there.