And now that fate had come to pass. As if taking a U.S. Open trophy out from under me and my Army at Oakmont wasn’t enough, Jack Nicklaus now had the temerity to stroll onto the hallowed grounds of Augusta National as a Tour sophomore and simply lay waste to the course in a devastating display of shotmaking not seen in that part of Dixie since a fellow named Sherman made his way from Atlanta to Savannah.
In all seriousness, if there was ever a course that was built to suit Jack’s power-fade game, it was Augusta National. The way that he made his mark on the place, not to mention the game itself, so convincingly in 1963 stands as one of the great stories in golf this century. But, as I keep saying, more on him—and us—in a bit.
Curiously, a few of the same observers who only a year or so before had predicted that I would win seven or eight Masters titles now openly wondered if I had reached my peak of performance and would probably begin a slow decline. I suppose thanks to Jack it may have looked as if I was contemplating early retirement, but nothing could have been further from the truth. In the first five months of 1963, Jack won a couple of tournaments I’d won the previous year, prompting some wag in Time to reflect, “Whatever Arnie wants, Jack gets.” Doug Sanders, the flamboyant one, commented to the press that “Baby Beef” (his name for Jack) was doing to me what I’d been doing to the rest of the PGA Tour for several years.
The truth is, for the first time in my career, I was nagged by an inability to mentally focus the way I had been able to do. As a result, my putting stats declined and even my drives lost some of their customary zip. Because of these problems, combined with an unexpected bursitis pain in my shoulder, I decided to do something I would previously never have considered doing at the height of the tournament season. I decided to take a month off. I went home to Latrobe and hung around the office, went swimming with the girls, and just basically tried to rest up for the U.S. Open at Brookline. The rest clearly did me good. A week before the Open, I beat Paul Harney in a sudden-death playoff to win the Thunderbird and went on to Brookline feeling like my old self, fashioning good enough golf to make a playoff with Julius Boros and Jacky Cupit. The popular story is that a stomach bug cost me a second Open championship title (I fired a miserable 76 in the playoff, and it’s true I did feel woozy at times), but the real culprit was a foolish attempt to hit my ball from a tree stump. That’s what cost me a chance to win in regulation.
Despite my roller-coaster ups and downs that year, counting a victory at the Australian Wills Masters and my team victory with Nicklaus in the Canada Cup, I collected nine wins on tour, six top tens, and enough prize money—$128,230—to make me, once again, the Tour’s leading money winner. Not to put too fine a point on it—for a man some feared was in decline—becoming the first player to break the $100,000 earnings barrier that year was the kind of “decline” most players would hope for. Still, what weighed most heavily on my mind, and everyone else’s, was that I hadn’t won a major golf tournament in 1963.
Against that backdrop, Winnie and I arrived at our rental house off Berckmans Road in Augusta in 1964 with more than a little resolve churning in my gut to make up for my poor performance at the previous Masters. During a week of nearly perfect spring weather, the press wrote glowing accounts about the “Big Three of Golf”—Gary, Jack, and me—seeming to imply that the winner of the $20,000 first-place check and accompanying jacket was a foregone conclusion. One of us was bound to win it, and the serious betting was on Jack, the defending champion, as it probably should have been. That was fine with me, because one thing I’d finally begun to realize was that I almost always played sharper and more consistent golf when cast in the underdog role.
I was as determined as I’d ever been that Jack wasn’t going to get the 1964 Masters, and I suppose some of my Army was, too. That year, and the year preceding it, our rivalry was plagued by a few unfortunate incidents where overzealous Palmer fans, in a foolish attempt to somehow boost their hero’s chances, expressed themselves in a most unsportsmanlike manner. The worst instances came from among the hometown partisans at Oakmont in ’62—as I’ll talk about later. Needless to say, Clifford Roberts wanted no part of such shenanigans at his golf tournament and rightly responded in 1964 by printing an expected code of spectator conduct on the back of every Masters pairing sheet, as is done to this day.
Attempting to ignore a number of distractions, including a small airplane droning over Augusta National pulling a “Go, Arnie, Go!” banner, I opened with a 69 and a 68 to take the 36-hole lead, and a third-round 69 moved me five shots ahead of the field—one of the best fields, I might add, in the history of the Masters.
I can’t emphasize enough that one private thought was propelling me: I wanted to walk up 18 knowing there was no way I could lose the Masters championship. Thanks to a strong front nine on Sunday, I sensed that not only was that long-held ambition within my grasp, but so was Ben Hogan’s tournament record of 274. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to be thinking about Hogan’s record, even for an instant. With that kind of lead, most players would have been attempting to get to the clubhouse—and a green jacket—as quietly and safely as possible. But that wasn’t my style, and this didn’t seem like the place to try to alter my personality.
Consequently, at 15, with the sun beginning to sink low in the Georgia pines, my playing partner and good friend Dave Marr looked at me as if I’d lost my mind when I pulled a 3-wood from the bag and decided to go for the green in two. I bore down and really crushed the ball but lost it flying into the glare of the sun. For an instant, I felt a true surge of panic. I glanced anxiously at Dave, and asked if my ball had safely cleared the dangerous pond in front of the green. Dave looked at me with that wonderful laid-back Texas smile of his and said dryly, “Hell, Arnold, your divot got over.”
This is not an unimportant point to address. My reputation had been made pulling off gutsy shots like that, and it’s reasonable to think somebody watching me go for the 15th green in two, while enjoying a five- or six-shot lead, would wonder why in hell I would risk everything on a gamble of that nature.
The simple answer, if there is one, is that that’s the way I’d always played the game—or at least the way I played the game when I played it best. There’s no question that my refusal to play safe or lay up cost me the opportunity to win scores of tournaments, including, by my calculation, three or four U.S. Opens, perhaps a Masters or two, and the PGA Championship on at least two occasions. Critics who have said that a safer shot here or there would undoubtedly have won me a few more tournaments are probably correct.
But the other side of that proposition—seldom mentioned by some of those critics—is equally true: if I hadn’t had the instinctive desire to attempt those shots, regardless of the outcome, almost without thinking, I wouldn’t have won half the tournaments I did win. Going for the green in two was who I was as a boy—and it’s who I remain as a man. Asking me to lay up was like asking Jack to play a low hook or Gary to go a week without doing his morning workouts—it just wasn’t in our constitutional makeups.
On the 18th tee, Dave Marr remarked to me that he really wanted to make a birdie and tie Jack Nicklaus, and I asked him kiddingly what I could do to help.
He gave me that sly flatland smile again.
“How about making a twelve?” he said.
Dave’s joke came at just the right moment. It relaxed me and helped me keep my focus and hit a good drive and finally walk up Augusta’s famous 18th fairway, basking in the pleasure of knowing I didn’t have to make a putt to win or tie. I cannot emphasize enough how important this feeling of accomplishment was to me.
Dave, as it turned out, didn’t require any assistance from me. He drained a bending thirty-five-foot downhiller to tie Jack, and at 5:26 in the afternoon on Easter Sunday, April 20, I sank a twenty-five-footer to miss Hogan’s record by a stroke but become the first four-time winner in the history of the Masters.
In the hushed and crowded media room afterward, depleted by the power of m
y own gathering emotions, I told the assembled reporters that I felt this was my greatest achievement in professional golf.
Someone once said you should never speak too openly of your dreams—especially when they come true.
Perhaps that was the case that afternoon in the lengthening shadows at Augusta. I couldn’t have known it then, but this was my last Masters win and the final time I would face the media to explain how I’d won a major tournament championship. The next year, in 1965, Jack shattered Hogan’s old mark by three and won the second of his record six green jackets. I finished second, but nine shots behind. The next two years, I could do no better than fourth place. And as the decade drew to a close, so too, apparently, did my opportunities to win another Masters.
Perhaps it was because my “major” dreams had begun and ended at Augusta National, in golf’s pine cathedral, that I’ve never stopped faithfully going back to Augusta and the Masters golf tournament each spring with a renewed feeling of gratitude in my heart.
In some respects, no gesture touched me as deeply as a ceremony on the Tuesday afternoon of Masters week in 1995. A big crowd was on hand as Jack Stephens unveiled a bronze plaque commemorating my four wins at the Masters. I became only the fourth player in history to be so honored. Sarazen, Nelson, and Hogan all got their own bridges. My plaque was mounted on a drinking fountain behind the 16th tee.
I’m really pleased by that. Take it from me, a walk up and down Augusta National’s gorgeous rolling hills can be a draining experience. The fountain at 16 is a perfect spot to pause and have a refreshing drink of water.
CHAPTER EIGHT
D.D.E.
October 2, 1958
Dear Mr. Palmer,
Because of the general confusion the other day, I failed to realize when Ben Fairless introduced us that you were Arnold Palmer of 1958 Masters fame. I hope you will forgive my lack of reaction and accept, even this belatedly, my warm congratulations on your splendid victory.
Ben suggests that sometime we might have an opportunity to play at Augusta. This I should like very much though, judging from the brand of golf I have recently been displaying, I would be more than embarrassed.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Winning my first Masters gave me the thrill of a lifetime, but receiving this letter six months later out of the blue, from the president of the United States, typed and signed on his own personal stationery, just about put me over the moon. The framed letter still hangs in a place of honor in my Latrobe offices.
A casual student of military history and a slightly more than curious spectator of the brawl of American politics, I’d long been fascinated with President Dwight Eisenhower’s long and distinguished career, initially as a military leader of the first rank, and later as president and leader of the free world through some of its most challenging days. I was deeply pleased when I learned that President Eisenhower was exceptionally keen about playing golf, so much so that he had the first putting green installed at the White House. He was also a member of Augusta National and had made over a hundred trips to Georgia during his two terms as president, to play golf and socialize with his close friend and adviser Clifford Roberts and other members of the club.
Though my father was a devoted Roosevelt man and lifelong Democrat, and I hailed from working-class stock in the heart of what might rightly then have been considered a Democratic stronghold, I suppose in my heart I always knew I was a middle-of-the-road Republican. What I mean by that is that the ideals President Eisenhower, Lincoln, and other leaders of the Republican Party seemed to represent—a passionate belief in the limitless benefits of personal freedom, governed by an equally strong sense of personal responsibility—were part of a belief system with which I was more comfortable.
Pap and I had more than one vigorous debate on the subject. After my first Masters win, President Eisenhower and I shook hands at Laurel Valley Golf Club in nearby Ligonier. (This meeting took place a few months before that club opened, and I began representing it on tour.) Subsequently, my father grew to wholeheartedly agree with me on one thing: there were few men walking the planet who could match the character, charisma, and unpretentious charm of Dwight David Eisenhower.
From the beginning, I noticed that many of his intimates affectionately called him Ike, an indication of how comfortable President Eisenhower made people feel in his presence. He was a soldier’s general and the president of the United States, though, and I never felt comfortable addressing him that way. To me, regardless of how close we grew over time, he was always either Mr. President or President Eisenhower. He once suggested that I feel free to call him Ike, but he didn’t raise the subject again when, out of respect, I declined to do so. Instead, he always signed his frequent and warm notes of thanks and congratulations to Winnie and me exactly the same way—with his initials, D.D.E. I suppose that’s about as casually as I could think of the man.
The day after I won my second Masters in 1960, we shook hands again, and he congratulated me on my big win, giving me that broad, easy, gentle and genuine Kansas smile of his, a smile that a decade or so before had bolstered the hearts of young men headed to the beaches at Normandy. “I hear you’re a pretty good putter,” he said with classic understatement.
I blushed and told him I was eager to see his game. “Well,” he said with a laugh, “you won’t be for long.”
In fact, I was so in awe of the man I was almost shaking with nervousness, but he was so gracious and attentive he quickly put me at ease. President Eisenhower, as it turned out, swung a golf club with great conviction, if not tremendous dexterity, and it quickly was apparent that even as he was retiring from public life his interest in playing the game was growing.
President Eisenhower loved golf for the social and recreational aspects of the game, but he clearly also took it very seriously. He dearly wanted to be a good player, so he carefully watched, didn’t hesitate to ask intelligent questions about the mechanics of the swing, and doggedly attempted to apply any tips I invariably gave him about improving his own golf swing—sometimes with alarming results.
A couple of weeks after I won my last Masters in 1964, President Eisenhower, Ray Bolger, Jimmy Demaret, and I played an exhibition at Merion Golf Club outside Philadelphia for the Heart Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania. As it turned out, this was President Eisenhower’s only public golf performance on record. But it remains memorable to me for the sudden horror I felt when I looked over and saw blood all over the retired president’s golf shirt. Prior to the match, I’d noticed how his right elbow “flew” away from his body on his swing, a common habit of high handicappers attempting to generate club-head speed, so I counseled him to always try to keep his right elbow tucked “as close to your body as possible” to generate more power and hit the ball straighter.
Even playing golf, the president preferred to wear a rough military-style belt with metal buckles and adjustments. Bless him, like the good soldier he was, in his determination to keep that right wing tucked as ordered, he’d actually rubbed the skin off his arm and was bleeding! When I pointed it out to him, he acted as if it were nothing but a scratch and completely dismissed my concern.
After that first encounter at Augusta in 1960, our meetings on the golf course became more frequent and our playing companionship deepened into a genuine friendship that, for me at least, eclipsed any relationship I’d ever had with an older man besides my father. He loved to hear me talk about tour life, and I loved to hear him reminisce about his wartime experiences and reflect on current events. He was so down-to-earth and unassuming about his many accomplishments, I sometimes almost forgot who he was. I had to pinch myself sometimes as a reminder that I was interacting with not only a beloved figure in American history, a man who had been leader of the free world and a critical part of so much human drama, but someone virtually every American admired.
Being close to a president in this intimate manner is a thrill and an experience you don’t take lightly, bel
ieve me, but in this instance I’m happy to report that the deep pleasure of our friendship seemed to work both ways. For years we would meet at Augusta or I’d drop by his cottage at Eldorado in Palm Desert, and we would either sit and talk for hours after his round of golf, or play cards and have dinner, conversing well after evening turned to night. I liked the way President Eisenhower looked at the world, his endless reservoir of stories, his boundless optimism, which was firmly grounded in humility and an abiding sense of personal honor. Among other things, Winnie and I both came to deeply admire the highly ethical and almost humble manner in which the president and Mrs. Eisenhower applied their own sensible Midwest values to their public lives. Perhaps because they both hailed from farming stock and working-class families, the idea of wasting anything or abusing the privileges of their positions weighed constantly on their lifestyle choices.
It’s perhaps a small thing, but, for instance, they declined to serve liquor at public functions and were even meticulously careful to use stamps they’d purchased themselves for personal correspondences. It never would have occurred to either of them to ask a favor of someone, and their gratitude for the smallest kindness rendered was instantaneous and the gesture graciously returned. President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, were, in my book, the epitome of American graciousness and civility.
A Golfer's Life Page 17
