A Golfer's Life

by Arnold Palmer

  What a year, what a beginning it had been.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Augusta

  Good players win golf tournaments, but great players win major championships. If you hang around golf long enough, you’ll hear this chestnut of wisdom stated repeatedly in the media tent and the locker room, especially when a phenom like Tiger Woods or David Duval bursts on the scene and starts winning everything in sight. I’d had winning major golf tournaments in my mind almost from the beginning, at least since those days when I used to beat Sam Snead or Byron Nelson for the National Open in the fairways of my imagination. It was a perception reinforced at every turn by my father, who used to tell me, boy and man, whenever he thought I was in danger of getting too big for my britches, “Listen here, boy. Anytime you think you are the best you can be, just remember there is always some guy out there just waiting to beat you. Don’t brag about what you’ve accomplished and don’t tell people what you’re gonna do—keep your mouth shut, keep your mind on your own business, and show them!”

  Pap, in almost every respect, was a modest man, but he burned with a wisdom and intensity about what it took to accomplish great things that was far beyond his own experience. His way of looking at things would prove invaluable to me.

  During the next two years on tour, 1956 and 1957, I won six PGA tournaments and nearly $50,000 in prize money, money that enabled me to pay back my father and Shube Walzer (who slowly came around to the realization that I would, indeed, be able to support his only daughter after all) and pay for the modest six-room house that Lou Pevarnik built for us on that sloping tract of land that overlooks Latrobe Country Club. I wanted a house with a “modern” look and feel, whereas Winnie had her heart set on something colonial in style. We compromised on a style Lou called a “colonial ranch,” with three bedrooms and two baths and a small carport and an extra room for Peggy, our one-year-old, who arrived about the time I was putting out on the 72nd hole at Houston, in late February of ’56. I remember flying home all night a nervous wreck, aware only that Winnie had gone into labor, uncertain of the outcome or any complications, imagining all sorts of frightening first-time-father scenarios. By the time I reached Newark and transferred to another flight to Allentown (in eastern Pennsylvania), the sun was coming up. It was a stunning winter’s morning and Winnie’s aunt Peg (the baby’s namesake) was there to pick me up, informing me that I was the proud papa of a little girl and that everyone, except perhaps for me, was doing just fine.

  Winnie and the baby both looked radiant that morning. When I got to the hospital and finally held my new daughter, I was smiling from ear to ear. But frankly, I was exhausted after my all-night race home from Texas. After a couple hours of sleep and a hot shower, I returned to the hospital even happier about our new prosperity but eventually found myself wondering what to do next. It was Winnie, as usual, who solved the dilemma. “Arnie, you’re driving yourself crazy. Even worse, you’re driving me crazy. Go get your golf bag and go to Baton Rouge,” she told me sternly from her hospital bed.

  So I did just that, and I recall thinking, as I made the lengthy trip, how useful it would be if I had my own airplane that I could fly home at the drop of a hat. It’s no coincidence that at the conclusion of that season, I went out to our small airport at Latrobe to see Babe Krinock about taking flying lessons, the beginning of another of my lifelong passions.

  Through the early part of the Tour in ’57, while waiting for our house to be finished on the ridge, Winnie and I carted baby Peggy and an unbelievable assortment of parenting paraphernalia from one tournament stop to another. Fortunately, we weren’t alone in this nomadic attempt to have a “normal” family life. A number of younger Tour players and their wives dragged an assortment of household goods, babysitters, and playpens along with them; we sometimes filled up motels with these extended Tour families.

  Pleasant as that often was, it was a major relief to finally move into our new house that autumn. Thanks to my four wins that year—including a win at Houston where, fittingly, one-year-old Peggy aped adorably for press photographers while sitting in a crystal trophy filled with prize money—we paid Lou Pevarnik in cash, $17,000 for our house, including all the amenities, like the $600 bay window Winnie simply had to have. That Christmas, we planted the first of a succession of evergreen trees around the house, and every holiday season for many years after that we made a little family ritual of adding another one.

  Finally having a home was a major relief to us all.

  Maybe even more important to our family fortunes, that same year, 1957, I edged a little bit closer to the tournament I perhaps wanted to win as much as any at that time—the Masters.

  As I’ve said countless times over the years, from the first moment I walked onto the property and the golf course of the Augusta National Golf Club in 1955, I knew—because I could feel and even smell it—that there was no place and no other golf tournament quite like Augusta, Georgia, and the Masters. It was where the best players in the game annually convened at the behest of Bob Jones, the club’s cofounder and the tournament’s patron saint. It was a tournament run with such autocratic perfection by New York banker Clifford Roberts, you simply felt privileged to have been invited to play there.

  Which reminds me of a darkly amusing little incident that preceded my first Masters win in 1958. After a win at St. Petersburg a few weeks before, and a loss in a Monday playoff to Howie Johnson at Wilmington’s Azalea Open, I arrived at Augusta in the wee hours of the morning.

  My pal Dow Finsterwald had arranged for us to team up and play with Ben Hogan and Jackie Burke in a practice round. After my bone-wearying midnight drive across South Carolina (to say nothing of the deflation I felt at losing the playoff) I went out on the course that morning and played abysmally. I felt doubly bad that Dow had to carry us both—he played brilliantly and we collected $35 apiece off the wager. A little while afterward, as we were changing in the club locker room, I heard Ben Hogan remark to Jackie, “Tell me something, Jackie. How the hell did Palmer get an invitation to the Masters?”

  That really stung me. I’ll never know if Hogan knew I overheard the comment. But he certainly was aware that I was nearby and could have heard it. I knew he was probably the most precise shotmaker who ever played the game and no particular fan of my style of play, having once said of my game, “Palmer’s swing might work for him, but no one else should try it.” In any event, the question burned me up and set my mind on showing him why the hell I’d been invited to the Masters. So perhaps I owe Ben a tip of the cap for helping me focus my mind on my business the way Pap always insisted I would have to in order to win a major golf tournament.

  I went out and shot opening rounds of 70, 73, and 68, and arrived Sunday afternoon at the infamous 12th hole, arguably the toughest par 3 in tournament golf, with a one-stroke lead over the field. My concentration was great and my adrenaline really pumping—a bit too much, perhaps. My tee shot carried over the green and embedded in the soft turf between the putting surface and the rear bunker. Walking toward the green, I had no idea the ball was embedded and fully expected to be putting from the fringe. When I saw the situation, I called the rules official over and explained to him that I intended to take relief without a penalty. Because of the heavy rains earlier that week, the tournament was being played under wet-weather rules. This meant that a plugged ball could be lifted, cleaned, and dropped without a penalty.

  The official, Arthur Lacey, shook his head and said, “You don’t do that at Augusta.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I replied. “We’re playing wet-weather rules.”

  “No, sir,” he said. “You can’t do that. You’ve got to play it as it lies.”

  For a moment I thought about my dilemma, trying to keep my growing anger at this injustice at bay. Finally, I told him I would play two balls and appeal his verdict to the tournament rules committee.

  “Nossir,” he said crisply. “You cannot do that either.”

  Now I was really steaming
inside, but I tried not to let him know that.

  “Well,” I said, “that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  I dug the ball out with my wedge, moving it only about eighteen inches, then chipped onto the green and two-putted for a double-bogey five that apparently dropped me from the lead. Then I walked back to the original spot of the dispute and reached for another ball from my caddie, Nathaniel “Ironman” Avery, and dropped it at the same spot on the fringe where my tee shot had come to rest. I chipped the second ball a few feet from the hole and coaxed the putt into the cup for a par 3. I’m sure there were plenty of people in the gallery who were certain they’d just watched Arnie Palmer disqualify himself from the Masters. Ken Venturi, who was contending that afternoon, was among those who felt he’d been cheated by my actions at the hole. But I knew the rule, and I believed I was well within my rights to do what I had done.

  At the par-5 13th, after hitting a good drive to the middle of the fairway, I saw Mr. Jones coming down the fairway in the familiar green riding cart he used in those days to get around the course. That made me nervous as hell, but I also wanted to show him what I was made of, so I took out a 3-wood and smoked my second shot to the rear of the green. I made the twenty-foot putt for eagle and parred 14. Then, in the fairway at 15, I was summoned over to meet with members of the tournament’s rules committee, all of whom had gathered around Mr. Jones’s cart. Jonathon Winters, the committee chairman, said to me: “Mr. Palmer, the committee has ruled in your favor. You will have a three at the twelfth hole.”

  That was music to my ears, and I finished 18 with a birdie, for a final-round 73 and a four-round total of 284. To be honest, I was so tense and focused, I don’t even remember the walk up 18—and hardly remember the birdie putt that gave me the one-stroke victory. I left the green and went into the clubhouse to be with Winnie and have a Coke and a calming cigarette, while a dozen players still on the course had a run at my posted total. I remember telling Winnie that I’d done all I could and she gave me her usual kiss and hug, win or lose. Doug Ford and Fred Hawkins both finished strongly, but they missed tying putts on 18, and my 284 held up. I’d captured my first major golf tournament.

  Curiously, there wasn’t a lot of hoopla and ceremony surrounding the presentation of the coveted green jacket at Augusta in those days. As the spring darkness gathered around us, the club’s members assembled on the practice putting green, and Mr. Roberts made the official presentation of the trophy, the green jacket, and the first-place check of $14,000. My parents weren’t there to enjoy this breakthrough moment, and even the galleries had pretty well dispersed by the time I went off to fetch the Chrysler. Winnie, our traveling secretary and accountant, paid Ironman his wages plus an extra percentage for the win. A group of us, including several people from Wilson Sporting Goods, drove downtown to the Town Tavern for an impromptu victory dinner. The festivities were interrupted a short while later, though, when someone from the club tracked us down and informed me that there was a bit of a “problem” with the check Winnie had written Ironman.

  In all her excitement, instead of writing out a check for $1,400, she had written him a check for $14,000!

  We still laugh about that slipup.

  Another amusing sidelight from that first major victory: That was the year Winnie, who didn’t have much in the way of nice jewelry, got to be friendly with the owner of a fine jewelry store on Broad Street, not far from the old Richmond Hotel where we were staying in Augusta. Earlier in the week, she had picked out a single-link golf bracelet that cost $75—far above our budget—but didn’t tell me about her “extravagant” purchase until that night at the Town Tavern.

  An amusing kind of superstition set in then and there, I guess. Every year we returned to the Masters Winnie joked that she really had to purchase something we couldn’t afford or else I wouldn’t have a chance of winning the tournament! She devotedly did her part, and for more years than I care to remember we left town on Masters Sunday with expensive new shoes and outfits. I’m happy to say we still have a laugh about that, too.

  Winning that first Masters was a real shot in the arm in several important ways. First, it meant that I was now playing in a whole new league of golfers—winners of major golf championships—and the opportunities that newly forged status would suddenly bring my way would inevitably lead me to Cleveland attorney Mark McCormack. Mark became my lifelong business manager, friend, and agent shortly afterward. That mercifully relieved Winnie of many of the accounting and management tasks that threatened to overwhelm both her and the small guest room in our house where she kept the books and arranged my schedule.

  But perhaps more important, on a deeper psychological level, winning that first of my seven majors as a professional told me something I needed to know about myself—that with the right kind of focus and hard work and maybe a little bit of luck, I could be the best player in the game. What a dizzying thought! Before slipping on that first green jacket, I must admit, I used to privately quip to friends that winning golf tournaments was really the most important thing to me—that winning major golf tournaments, for goodness’ sake, wasn’t everything.

  In some respects, I still believe this. The game of golf, after all, is far bigger than one individual’s achievements or even the prestige of winning major tournament championships. Even then, I suppose I sensed that nothing I might ever accomplish in professional golf would match the excitement and provide the kind of satisfaction winning the National Amateur had done for me. That was a tournament I never expected to win—and it changed my life in ways I couldn’t have even imagined.

  In contrast, as strange as it may sound, I always had a gut feeling that the Masters title would eventually be mine—that is to say, it was simply a matter of time before I won the tournament. Part of that came from the way, year after year, I studied the course and learned how to play it, and part of it came from the almost childlike excitement I always felt going up Magnolia Lane each spring at Augusta National. Perhaps there are moments in life when we can feel destiny’s invisible hand brushing our shoulder.

  I always felt something powerful in Augusta, and I knew my time would come.

  It’s funny how stories, once they enter the public domain, get changed around and sometimes transformed into myth. One such tale concerns my first meeting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. A persistent myth tells how we met and played golf after that first Masters win, but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, I met President Eisenhower later that year at Laurel Valley Golf Club (the golf club in Ligonier I helped found in 1958 and have represented on tour all these years), and we didn’t actually play our first round together until after my 1960 Masters win. I’ll get to that in a bit.

  At Augusta in 1959, it’s fair to say, I suffered the first of my major stumbles, resulting from the same aggressive style of play that seemed to endear me to the press and so many golf fans. I once quipped to a reporter who asked about my “patented” final-round charges that perhaps the reason people enjoyed watching me play so much was that they could relate to my predicament: I was often where they were as I came down the stretch, in the rough, the trees, or up the creek. The same go-for-broke kind of play that won me seven majors perhaps cost me at least that many more. But that’s life and that’s golf.

  Fittingly, it was a creek—infamous Rae’s Creek in front of good old number 12—that sank my hopes at the 1959 Masters. Leading the tournament with seven holes to play, I plunked my tee shot in the water and staggered off the hole with a triple bogey. I recovered with a birdie at 15, briefly retaking the lead, but then missed an easy three-footer for par on 17, and failed to make a four-foot birdie at 18, missing at the worst possible moment. Art Wall, on the other hand, executed one of the most brilliant finishes ever at Augusta, with birdies at five of the final six holes, and rightly donned the green jacket, nipping Cary Middlecoff by a stroke. My disappointment was immense. I’d had the tournament in my grasp but had been unable to close.

  On t
he positive side, though, if I fondly recall anything about that Masters, it is my growing awareness of how the galleries enjoyed watching me perform in the clutch, their hopes sometimes living and dying on every shot. In those days, the Masters was still a wide-open golf tournament for spectators and a pretty low-key affair. As unimaginable as it may sound now—especially if you’ve tried to get tickets to the event recently—you could stroll up to the gate off Washington Road and pay five bucks for a day ticket and walk just about anywhere behind the greatest names in the game. There was a relaxed but almost reverential calmness about the place. Women often wore dresses and men sometimes wore neckties, out of respect for the tournament created by Bob Jones and Clifford Roberts, but the genteel atmosphere only made the final acts that much more dramatic. A brilliant management stroke on Mr. Roberts’s part was using volunteer soldiers from nearby Fort Gordon (in those days it was called “Camp” Gordon) to man the scoreboards. It may have been in 1959, the second year that the tournament was televised, that I first looked up and saw one of the scoreboard GIs holding a small sign announcing the presence of “Arnie’s Army.” That gave me an electric thrill, I can tell you, as I acknowledged the tribute, to think that in just five years’ time my fans had grown from a few hometown folks following me around the Country Club of Detroit to a whole army politely rooting for me at Augusta.

  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.