Remembering Young Palmer
by Nelson Hultberg
November 20, 2005
It was during those free and easy years of the fifties when he started.
He was like the America that had spawned him -- bold, rugged, self-assured,
kind of a blacksmith and riverboat gambler rolled into one. What
a remarkable time that was. Arnold Palmer had come out of nowhere
to conquer the sporting world and electrify the nation with a frenzied,
corkscrew swing, a story book appeal, and the courage of a young
lion.
It is now 50 years since Arnie's first PGA tour win -- the Canadian
Open in 1955. And for the first time in half a century, he will not
play a single PGA Tour event during the year. Has full retirement
finally come? If so, then it is important we pay tribute to the man
and the miracle that he was.
Do you remember those incredible "come from behind" finales? Arnold
Palmer was not just an athlete. He was a knight of Camelot in spikes
and splendor. Fear was unknown to him. He came at a course with brazen
haymakers, charging every flag and seeking always the winners circle.
Even on monster holes where those more trepid cringed and gladly
settled for par. He played like a windstorm, hectically and furiously.
His was never to romance a course; he ripped at them and dismantled
them. He didn't know how to compromise; he was a bodacious scrambler
and knew the rough only too well. But then he knew only one way to
play, and the rough's the price the brave must pay when their drives
turn errant. He couldn't play it safe. He bludgeoned out his sixty-sevens,
while those more conventional plotted and maneuvered theirs.
Yet Arnie had a touch like a safe cracker. His putts came out of
a magic show, his chips out of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and his
runs at first place right out of an MGM script. He took mighty Oakmont
in '62 like it was the local Municipal, but alas, that was also the
day Nicklaus took him. Those of us in Arnie's Army never forgave
the Golden Bear, and we never forgot that dark day.
The British highlands and its jungle rough awed them all. But not
Arnie. He bagged his eight birdies there like everywhere -- with
bursts and flurries, a game full of grimace, and that famous give
her hell, full swing ahead style. He was truly a general, a fighting
man, a man's man. He crashed his way to all his wins, and they were
many.
Arnie drew multitudes, while others merely attracted galleries.
I well know; I was a member of that army. With a couple of childhood
friends, I treked faithfully to his tournaments whenever he was playing
near our home town. Four days of consummate joy seeing this young
lion perform was overwhelming to a teenager.
To us, Arnie was a god. Yet he took 12s, and frowned and groaned
like a Sunday hacker. His swing was hardly effortless -- hardly beautiful
even. Yet it exploded down every fairway. And on the green, his putts
dropped like rain. More times than any mortal dared ask for. But
then he wasn't like the rest of us. His kind comes along about once
every century, and it'll be a while of a wait before we're blessed
again.
Tigermania consumes us now, and young Mr. Woods is certainly a great
one. But he'll never match the Stanley Kowalski machismo of Arnold.
He's too smooth and machine-like. There aren't any rough edges to
him. He's like a Wall Street broker. Arnie was like a dock worker.
You half expected to see him carrying a lunch pail to work. That
is what made him a once-in-a-century happening -- that brawny, blue
collar persona mixed with genteel bearing and a gambler's chutzpa.
To me, it's impossible to envision golf without Palmer. It would
be like Casablanca without Bogart, or New York without a skyline.
What can a Masters possibly be without Arnie? He came through Georgia
like a modern Sherman to bring Augusta to her knees four times. He
laid Cherry Hills out in sixty-five strokes that last day of the
1960 Open, coming from eight shots back to win, and a legend was
born.
Arnold became easily known all over the world, yet unlike Ali and
McEnroe he never had to open his mouth. But then his type never needs
to smart off. It would have been beneath Arnie to slop out braggadocio
when he was winning all those tournaments. He was too much of a champion.
Perhaps the greatest America has ever seen. Besides, his courage
did his talking for him.
I remember as I was growing up, my father telling us stories of
the fictional hero of his younger days, Frank Merriwell. Frank had
been popularized through the dime novels of the early 1900's and
was the epitome of what all boys wanted to be back then. He combined
great athletic prowess with a colorful personality and the highest
of character to mesmerize the youth of that era. The first time I
saw Palmer in 1958, I thought here was magnificent Merriwell himself
stepping from the pages of books into the real world.
Color? When Arnie first arrived on the tour, he wore drab and baggy
pants, and monotone shoes. But he lit fire to the galleries with
his mythic presence, his sonic drives, and his searing putter. Like
Frank Merriwell, his color didn't come out of his closet; it came
out of his cells. It oozed from his mien, his mettle, his every dramatic
move.
He drove greens in one, and was never down till he was out of holes
to play. Strong? His one iron shots would have torn through barbed
wire. Deathly drama was ever his fare, every tournament in doubt
till the end. Always our stomachs were knots for hours after his
eleventh hour runs. It was the way he rolled up his sleeves and tugged
at his pants as the pressure of the final round mounted. In an earlier
time, he would have been leading Green Mountain Boys, or soloing
across the Atlantic.
For a brief shining moment there in the early sixties, Arnold Palmer
stirred in the American soul what Dempsey, and Lindbergh, and all
the heroes through all the ages have inspired in those around them.
He gathered up the people of this country in all his knightly manner
and showed them what life could be for the ones who dared. Even those
who had never been on a golf course and couldn't tell a brassie from
a door knob. Shopkeepers, tycoons, bookish professors, old maids,
and stately kings -- the whole world got caught up in Arnie's Army.
We wept for him. We cheered for him. We lived for him. And when he
took six on the final green at Augusta in '61 to blow it all, our
year was over. It was only April, but we fell into despair, to await
the next Spring and another charge.
Maybe there's another strong and staccato swinger out there somewhere,
with the muscles to match, the velvet touch, the bullet drives, and
the knack of pulling off the unbelievable. But down deep one fears
not. Never again in our time like Arnie. His kind only appears seldom
and salient -- like Everest, or MacArthur, or the Babe.
When Arnie was in the thick of a tournament, when that famous final
charge of his was mounting, the world was somehow right -- fear conquered,
courage crowned. It was that fiercely determined "I can win this
thing yet" expression on his face as he came down the fifteenth four
shots behind. That's what all of America fell in love with back in
the early sixties; that's what is so crucial to our breed. It was
that indomitableness and ceaseless will to victory of Arnie's that
instilled into us the drive and desire to never say die in our own
life's challenges.
When future historians dig back into our times to try and uncover
the secret of Arnold Palmer's overwhelming appeal, they will find
it down deep in the psychology of the country from which he came.
He was, is still, and will always be the quintessence of American
man.
Arnold Palmer lured millions to the game, and now he's leaving us.
Who can possibly fill the void? Is there a giant out among the countryside
willing? Come quickly if you dare, for golf needs a general. It needs
to be charged at, and charged up. It needs to be ever stirred, or
it'll go to sleep. It's a lazy slow game, and men are machines when
they finally master it. Mortals who flirt with par are tight-lipped
and placid. Only a superman would dare to stalk a course like Arnie
did, with such joy and ebullience lighting up his face. But then
he was truly a happening, bound from the start to carve mastodonic
marks upon his time. Centuries will pass, and they'll still whisper
his name in awe.
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This article first appeared in July 2005 in Golf
Punk Magazine, www.golfpunkmag.com Brighton, UK.
© 2006 Email Nelson
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