A Golfer's Life

by Arnold Palmer

  Eventually, a large and well-known corporation proposed a guarantee of $4 million in seed money to sponsor a tour of the game’s top thirty players, the only stipulation being that three of them would be men named Jack, Gary, and Arnold. While some of the game’s other top players might have turned down such a deal, it was believed that an overwhelming majority of the game’s best players would enthusiastically sign on.

  If you’re thinking that in theory this sounds a little like Greg Norman’s ill-fated attempt to start a world tour a few years back, you’re right. There are distinct similarities in the concepts, and permit me to say here that in another twenty or thirty years, as golf continues its explosive growth worldwide and corporate interests increase, I fully believe that competing commercial golf tours will evolve. We may eventually see all kinds of new tours springing up. My greatest hope is that the various existing tours and governing bodies of the game will realize how imperative it is for them to work in concert now—as I believe they are doing—to handle the change properly, lest golf go the route so many other big-time sports have in the past twenty years. Lockouts and strikes and feuds only make players appear as nothing more than greedy bandits and harm everybody in the end.

  At any rate, in 1964, like Greg Norman, I was attacked by some in the PGA establishment who circulated rumors that I was simply serving as a front man for Mark McCormack’s secret plan to start a new world tour.

  That simply wasn’t the case. But unlike Greg, I mulled over the idea for six or seven weeks and decided the time wasn’t right, and that this was not the proper way to go about gaining our freedom. Despite its arrogance and foolish attitudes, and its history of excluding the handicapped and minorities, I simply couldn’t turn my back on the PGA of America. I knew the revolution had to come from within the palace walls.

  In a nutshell, when Jack and Gardner’s coup d’état happened four years later, at a time when I really did have some clout with PGA members, I saw an opportunity to serve as a bridge of sorts to a better world for everybody. But I chose a role that was far more in keeping with my values and personality.

  Leo Fraser, a lifelong club professional who had many close friends, including me, on the Tour, had just taken office as the president of the PGA. Leo was far more open-minded to the idea of compromise and accommodation, and as much as anything else, his more flexible attitude stalled the alternative APG tour before it ever really got rolling. I remember going to see Leo at Atlantic City in late 1968 for a lengthy meeting, during which we discussed an idea that had been steadily growing in popularity. I was a leading proponent of a proposal to create a new players organization, a separate entity formally called the PGA Tour that would operate autonomously with a board composed of four players elected by the Tour, three businessmen, and the top three PGA of America officials.

  Months of sometimes lively debate ensued, but Leo’s essential fairness, good humor, patience, and determination to serve the best interests of the professional game eventually won the day. The rebels abandoned their cause, and the crowning touch came when Joe Dey, the longtime executive director of the United States Golf Association and a man of impeccable credentials, was named first commissioner of the new Tournament Players Division of the PGA—which would soon evolve into the PGA Tour.

  Joe’s presence gave the fledgling tour organization the instant credibility it needed. But more important, the birth of a new organization devoted expressly to fulfilling the needs and desires of professional tournament golf brought years of bitter feelings and acrimony to an end. We could finally get back to playing the game we all loved to play—instead of bickering about it. And, despite all the bickering, no one could ever do anything to completely diminish my sheer enjoyment at playing this marvelous game. I’d do it even if there was no money involved, and a lot of players share that view, as participation in the Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup, and, to a lesser extent, the World Cup suggests.

  Whatever hard feelings I privately nursed about being ineligible for the Ryder Cup of 1959, they vanished in 1961, the moment Winnie and I and the other members of the American squad and their wives walked onto the quiet, hushed grounds at Royal Lytham and St. Annes Golf Club for the opening ceremonies of seed merchant Sam Ryder’s biennial match between the best players of America and Britain and Ireland. What I remember most was standing with my teammates near the first tee and feeling a lump rise in my throat and tears fill my eyes as the brass band played the “Star-Spangled Banner” followed by “God Save the Queen.”

  There is simply no experience in golf quite like being part of your first Ryder Cup opening ceremony, unless perhaps it’s the closing ceremonies after your side has won.

  In any case, my second-most-powerful memory from that weekend on the Lancashire coast, just up the road a bit from where I’d won my first British Open at Birkdale in July, involves Peter Alliss, who was my first match in the singles competition. Peter was an elegant man and an accomplished player. As most of the British players did, he shaped his shots for control purposes, from left to right in a controlled fade. I greatly admired the way Peter played the game, with such precision and accuracy, which was almost nothing like my style. And it says something nice about the man’s quiet tenacity that I had to work my tail off simply to halve the match with him. Cordially shaking hands at the match’s conclusion, I think both of us knew we’d been in a dogfight—and would probably be in a few more before things were over.

  The highlight of my week came when Bill Casper and I teamed up in the foursomes to defeat Dai Rees and Ken Bousfield, 2 and 1. Counting my singles win over Tom Haliburton, a lovely gentleman, I departed Lytham with three victories, one tie, and 3½ points contributed to my team’s winning total of 14 points.

  For Winnie, the week proved almost as special. Even then, the unique social intimacy of the Ryder Cup—the lively and fancy dinners held in our behalf, the laughs and drinks we shared after the matches were through each evening—enabled her to get to know a number of the British players and their wives, as well as various members of the British press and various golf officials from their side of the pond. The sponsoring British PGA made certain the visiting wives had plenty to do, including arranging tours of great local homes and castles and scheduling shopping excursions to area woolen shops. As she said to me later, Winnie loved every minute of those side trips, mostly because of the many treasured friendships that were begun at Lytham.

  Our departure from Lytham, however, was comical. I had arranged for a private motorcar to pick up our group of four at the hotel before dawn, the morning after the team victory celebration. Traveling with us were Martha and Bronson Ingram, old friends from Nashville, and the plan called for the four of us to drive from Lytham to London and from there slip away for a little end-of-season vacation in Rome, Italy.

  So much for well-made plans! The first clue that the day was going to be a long one came when I discovered, to my profound displeasure, that the car I’d reserved had been commandeered by another American only minutes before. As it turned out, flamboyant Chicagoan Joe Jemsek (who owned several golf clubs in the Chicago area) was in a rush to make the morning train to London and had simply taken our car. Boy, was I boiling mad at his nerve!

  Hurrying back inside to the hotel front desk, I arranged for a taxicab, which had to take its bloody time getting to the hotel because of a heavy fog. A short while later, we were informed that all flights to London would be delayed indefinitely because of the pea-soup fog, so we decided to sprint for the train station, hoping to catch the same train Joe Jemsek was taking. The fog was so thick we proceeded down the road at about the speed of an elderly caddie. I’ll never forget the sight of our taxi driver with his bald head poked out the side window, squinting to see if we were still on the road.

  We made it to the train with seconds to spare and discovered Dow and Linda Finsterwald settling into a compartment. We joined them and decided to have a little morning-after-the-victory-party victory party, buying up all of the train�
�s grapefruit and orange juice and whatever they had in the way of muffins or snacks. We pulled out our Scotch and Irish whiskey bottles and made a few more toasts to Sam Ryder as the train slowly clanked out of the station, headed for London.

  Ten or eleven hours later, we somehow found our way through the even denser fog of London to the Savoy Hotel, where we settled in and had dinner. There we made the unanimous decision to still try to go on to Rome if and when the weather finally cleared.

  Wouldn’t you know it, the next morning the fog was even thicker! It was like the whole city was wrapped in a thick wool sweater. Winnie looked crushed as we learned that no planes were being allowed to take off from or land at London’s major airports. Trying unsuccessfully to keep her grave disappointment from showing, my wife jokingly accused me of arranging the foggy weather simply to avoid the danger of having to go on a real vacation! Even so, we wandered around London for a couple more days, seeing the fog-covered sights, taking in a play in the West End, and buying gifts for the girls and other folks back home. As I recall, we had a pretty nice time, all things considered.

  Ryder Cup participation came to mean an awful lot to me. At East Lake, in Atlanta, two years later, I narrowly defeated Dow Finsterwald in a close team vote for captain. I was honored to be chosen to head the American squad. Actually, I became the last playing captain in the matches. This time I lost a close singles match to that elegant swordsman Peter Alliss, who, for a man whose Rolls-Royce bears the license plate “3 PUTT,” certainly made his share of fine strokes at East Lake. On the other side of the coin, though, I won four other matches against two defeats and contributed four points to our team’s winning total in a lopsided romp, 23–9. Peter was one of their few bright spots—and don’t believe a word of it when he claims he can’t putt.

  In 1965, returning to Royal Birkdale, old friend Dave Marr and I teamed to split foursome matches with Dave Thomas and George Will, followed by a similar split in the four-ball matches against my old nemesis Peter Alliss and Christy O’Connor. I captured both my singles matches, though, and left Birkdale with a 4–2 record. We retained the Cup, 19½ to 12½. Another rout by the Yanks.

  A funny thing happened en route to another lopsided American win at Houston’s Champions Golf Club in 1967. Julius Boros and I were getting trounced early in the four-ball matches against Hugh Boyle and George Will when I glanced up and saw Jackie Burke looking on. Jackie was the host professional at Champions and a longtime friend who loved to pull my chain whenever he could.

  “Well, Palmer,” he drawled slyly as we walked off the green where Julius and I had gone three down. “Looks like you two have gotten yourselves into a real mess.”

  I glanced at him as if I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “What do you mean, Jackie?”

  He grimaced. “I mean, I don’t think even you will be able to get your team out of this one.”

  “Jackie, I’m sorry you don’t have any faith in us.”

  “Sorry. Not this time.”

  “Well, if that’s the case,” I proposed thoughtfully, “you wouldn’t care to put a little something on it, would you?”

  Now the old rascal smiled.

  “I tell you what. If you somehow get out of this mess and win this match, I’ll make you a clock.”

  “A clock?”

  “Not just any clock. A beautiful handmade clock.”

  So a clock it was. On the very next hole, Julius and I started a rally and went on to secure a come-from-behind 1-up victory. That momentum propelled us through the rest of the weekend. I won five matches, gave the Brits a joyride in my airplane that brought the wrath of the FAA down on my head, and scored five points, contributing to one of the largest American margins of victory in the history of the Ryder Cup.

  That handmade clock, incidentally, which has the twelve letters of my name where the numbers usually are, sits on a shelf in my office workshop. That’s a place very special to me—the place I really love to go and work on clubs and be alone with my thoughts. So it’s only fitting the clock is there, reminding me of a wonderful moment in my playing career and how much fun it was to take that clock off Jackie Burke’s hands.

  On a more serious note, permit me to set the record straight on a matter that has circulated erroneously for years—namely, that Ben Hogan, the American team captain that year, chewed me out at one point for assuming I would be playing every match. While I was hardly a favorite of Mr. Hogan, no such heated conversation ever took place. Ben conducted himself with his usual cool dignity, and I did my job, and the results of his captaincy and my team play pretty well speak for themselves.

  In 1971, at Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis, Jack Nicklaus and I teamed in the first of several Ryder Cup collaborations, defeating Peter Townsend and Harry Bannerman in a closely contested 1-up four-ball match. Gardner Dickinson and I proved even more formidable as a team that year, however, winning three of our team matches to give me a record of four wins against one loss and one tie, in another romp by the hosts, 18½ to 13½.

  Two years later, Muirfield, Scotland, happened to be the setting for my poorest performance in Ryder Cup competition. Jack and I beat Maurice Bembridge and Eddie Pollard, 6 and 5, in the first foursomes match, but turned right around and dropped the four-ball to Bembridge and Brian Huggett, 3 and 1. For the first time, I failed to win a singles match and my losses outnumbered my wins, 3 to 2. On the plus side of the ledger, Winnie was utterly charmed by the chef’s lamb and the cozy elegance and staff charm of the small hotel where we stayed during the competition.

  With my Ryder Cup career clearly waning, I pulled just about every string available with the sponsoring PGA of America to arrange for the Cup to come to Laurel Valley in 1975. Perhaps someone high up in the organization thought of it as a suitable reward for my decision a decade before not to bolt from the organization when temptation was so strong. Whatever their reasons, I was very pleased that the Cup was coming to my place at Laurel Valley for what would clearly be my fare-thee-well to Ryder Cup participation.

  I’d hoped to play my way onto the team, but it wasn’t meant to be. Everyone knew that my selection as team captain was a deeply symbolic and sentimental choice. My record as a player in the event spoke for itself in that regard. At that point in time, no American had a better win-loss record in Ryder Cup competition than me. But it was obvious that my better days on tour were behind me—as my mediocre tournament record from that year indicates.

  I was deeply honored to be selected captain, and what a team I had that year. Golf’s equivalent of the Dream Team. Maybe the best Ryder Cup squad ever.

  Nicklaus. Littler. Trevino. Miller. Weiskopf. Floyd. Casper. Irwin. Geiberger. Dave Hill. J. C. Snead. Lou Graham. Bob Murphy. If ever there was a stronger and more talented American team, I challenge you to name it.

  I suppose the outcome was a foregone conclusion. In retrospect, the most interesting drama centered around the efforts of Jack Nicklaus, who had a devil of a time with big Brian Barnes. It’s kind of funny now, but it was no laughing matter then. In their first singles match, Brian shocked everybody—and probably even himself—by upsetting Jack. During the lunch break, everyone was buzzing that I should engineer a rematch with Barnes so Jack could get his revenge. I could see that even Jack was itching for a rematch, so I pulled it off.

  They met again a little while later on the first tee.

  “Well, Brian,” Jack said to Barnes. “You beat me this morning. You’re not going to beat me again.”

  I don’t think anybody there would have disagreed with that assessment. Certainly not a Ladbrokes bookie. That season Jack had already won six tournaments, including two majors, was the Tour’s leading money winner, and was en route to PGA Player of the Year honors. He was the game’s presiding master, at the top of his game.

  But Barnes beat him again, 3 and 2.

  All that proves in my book is what splendid unpredictability match-play golf provides. It’s a reason I wish the PGA Champion
ship would consider returning to its original match-play format.

  I loved the Ryder Cup, because it simply wasn’t about playing for money. It was about playing for something far grander and more personal than income and money lists. It was all about playing for your country, your people, and therefore yourself, and it was pure joy to try to beat the best of Britain and Ireland in an honorable game almost as old as the Magna Carta.

  I’m proud of what the Ryder Cup did for me—and for what I contributed to my teams in six Ryder Cup competitions. I won 22 matches against 8 losses, with two ties and a total of 23 points.

  That was a record that stood until Nick Faldo entered the Ryder Cup at Valderrama Golf Club in Spain in 1997 with a record of 21–16–4 and 23 points. Nick won two matches and lost three, pushing his point total to 25. The Ryder Cup record is now his alone.

  That’s how it should be, for records are not meant to stand forever. Someday not too distant, I feel confident in predicting, considering the way the game is growing by leaps and bounds here and abroad, some former dashing young phenom like Tiger Woods or David Duval will nip Nick’s record. The game brings out the best in us, and the best will always bring out their games at the Ryder Cup.

  That same explosive international growth fittingly gave rise, in 1994, to the PGA Tour–sponsored Presidents Cup. From the moment I heard about the proposed Ryder Cup–style team competition I thought it was a great idea. It was a way to bring the finest players from the world’s other major tours (Australia, Japan, and southern Africa) into the spotlight of international match-play competition.

  For all the tremendous pride and pleasure I took in being part of seven Ryder Cup teams, I must say being selected to serve as captain of the second American Presidents Cup squad in their 1996 contest against the Internationals, as they’re called, at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in suburban Washington was a thrill that almost stands by itself. Suffice it to say, it was one of the most enjoyable weeks of the past decade for me. And as the drama of the close finish indicated, the quality of the competition was extraordinary. If Freddie Couples hadn’t run in that monster putt on 17 to win his match and cinch the Cup for the Americans, 16½ to 15½, I don’t know if my old heart could have withstood any more drama.