Arnold Palmer revolutionised professional golf with heart, thunder, manliness and muscle

James Lawton26 September 2016

The old but still combative heart finally gave out last night but it was so many years after its blazing rhythm and power had made a new and vibrantly popular game of golf. Arnold Palmer didn’t so much transform as redefine professional golf. He gave it the kind of manliness and muscle which is not to be seen dead in a pair of plus fours.

He did not have the finesse of a great artist of the fairways he invaded with his army of passionately committed followers. His swing was not elegant. It was as elemental as a roll of thunder and flash of lightning.

He gave the little white ball a pulverising wallop, quite often into a patch of rough or a stand of pines. And from that explosive starting point this son of a club pro and greenkeeper born in the blue-collar state of Pennsylvania in 1929 took his game away from the genteel dry Martini terraces of the country clubs and into the mainstream of American life.

He also brilliantly enlivened golf in its very roots, putting The Open back in a prime position on the world golf map with superb victories at Birkdale in 1961 and Troon a year later.

The grand old institution might have been pushed further into the margins had Palmer not made it a powerful lure of personal ambition and an integral part of the Grand Slam. Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus accepted the challenge and no one who followed down all the decades could forget the legacy of the man with the rolling gait and formidable physicality of a professional fighter or gridiron star.

That much was evident in the tributes that greeted the news Palmer had died in the course of heart tests at a Pittsburgh hospital. Inevitably, the chief and most eloquent mourner was the most relentless winner in the history of the game, Jack Nicklaus, but no less touching were the regards of such contemporary figures as Tiger Woods and Jason Day.

Today’s players have a particular and pecuniary debt. It leaps from the Major tournament accounts of the game Palmer did so much to turn into a multi-million business. When Palmer beat Kel Nagle by six shots at Troon, his reward was a cheque of £1,400. This summer Henrik Stenson picked up one for £1.175m.

In Pictures: Arnold Palmer remembered

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But then if Palmer helped make the fortunes of so many of his successors, and if he had a notably sharp eye for a dollar, his achievements long before their end had to be seen in another and more deeply thrilling light.

The fact was, and as Nicklaus was so quick to point out this week, Palmer did so much more than recognise business opportunities. He saw golf as a brilliant, in some ways unique expression of a man’s nature. It was a game, no doubt, of many demands, both physical and psychological, but for him there was always an abiding necessity. It was to play the game in a certain bold and celebratory way.

The result was that he covered terrain occupied by only the greatest of sportsmen. He achieved the feat of Muhammad Ali, Pele and the man who eventually dwarfed his major-winning performances on the golf course, Nicklaus, the Golden Bear. He stretched beyond the limits of his chosen discipline. And as did so he touched large swathes of people hitherto untouched by the splendours of what he found in himself when he went out to play.

Nicklaus for a while had an uncomfortable time in his shadow. “It’s true,” he once told me. “Arnie’s people in the gallery gave me a hard time.” Most notoriously, one stood in thick rough waving the placard, “Hit it here, Fat Boy”. But Nicklaus’s respect for a superb competitor — and exemplar — was never in question, even as he pushed his haul of Major title wins to 18 against Palmer’s seven.

“Arnie,” said Nicklaus, “was the man out in front, always blazing a trail and if I ever had to look at myself — and there were times when I had to after realising I’d reached a crossroads — he was always the first in my thoughts. Arnie, after all, had made anything seem possible with the way he played.”

Arnold Palmer, circa 1975. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

This week, Nicklaus’s praise was that which comes when a race is run — when all of a man’s competitive nerve and achievements can be put in place. Nicklaus reviewed a career which included 90 tournament wins, the four triumphs at Augusta and the US Open to add to the two Opens, and said that of course his great compatriot had gone beyond the boundaries of his sport. “For me he was both a friend and a legend — when I was young he gave an impetus to everything I tried to do.”

In Augusta, where he won the Masters in 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1964, his passing creates a special poignancy. This year he was unable to hit his usual lashing tee shot, but when he took a seat at the first, the applause, as ever, was loud as it rippled through the pines. He played, ceremonially, as long as he could and no eager politician ever sought to press so much flesh as the great man of golf when he made his rounds of an empire he had made his own. It was once said there were times when you might have to go deep into a Georgian forest to avoid a bristling bear hug from Arnold Palmer.

But who would do that who cared for the game he had carried to such an unimagined dimension. Palmer’s greatest regret was that he had to grow old. But then nowhere along the way did he lose his passion to be within earshot of the thwack of a golf ball. As Nicklaus observed, he was in hospital to see if he could make himself a little better. Well enough, at least, to hit another golf ball. To remind himself, no doubt, of the vital meaning of his life.

ARNOLD PALMER'S TIMELINE

1929: Arnold Palmer is born in Pennsylvania. Four years later, he picks up a golf club for the first time from his golf pro father, Milfred.

1954: Palmer wins the US Amateur Championship and marries his wife Winifred — they remained a couple until her death in 1999.

1955: Claims his first professional victory at the Canadian Open in his debut season in the pro ranks.

1958: Major No1 comes in the form of the Green Jacket at the Masters, an event he became synonymous with.

1959: Cards the lowest round of his career, a 62, to win the Thunderbird Invitational.

1960: Proves victorious in the Masters for a second time and wins the US Open two months later.

1961: The Open is added to his list of Major triumphs after sealing the win at Royal Birkdale.

1962: Augusta bows down to him for a third time as he once more dons the Green Jacket. There is a second Open win in 1962, one of 10 titles that year.

1963: He captains the US team to victory at the Ryder Cup.

1964: Claims his fourth Masters victory and the seventh and final Major success of his career.

1968: The wins keep on coming elsewhere as he becomes the first player to pass the $1million earning mark in his career with victory at the Bob Hope Desert Classic.

1970: He acquires the lease with associates at Bay Hill Club, an event which later carries his name and prestige on the PGA Tour.

1973: The last PGA Tour success comes in the form of the Bob Hope Desert Classic.

1975: He captains the US to success at the Ryder Cup at Laurel Valley Golf Club.

1980: Entering the senior ranks, he picks up a first senior PGA Championship win.

1994: Makes his final appearance at the US Open and also the PGA Championship.

1995: He bids farewell to The Open at St Andrews.

2004: He makes his 50th and final start at the Masters and is presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W Bush at the White House.

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