Arnold Palmer’s golf swing was no languid thing of beauty. He hit the ball like he was mad at it, and in his follow-through he looked like he was hanging on for dear life. The swing was unique. Like the man.
He was an improbable champion in his sport, and when he first arrived on the scene, you might have guessed him for a football player, not a golfer. Palmer was from Pennsylvania and working class parents, the kind for whom the country club was where you worked, not where you played. There was a guileless quality about him and the way he approached his craft and his fans. There was no hauteur. Nothing of the temperamental, unapproachable star. He said of the vast galleries—called “Arnie’s Army”—that followed him, “I feel the strength of the gallery, especially on a critical shot. Silence is louder than any noise on a golf course—the deathly silence that I sometimes feel and hear when I’m out there. That will tell you how powerful the galleries really are. They have an appreciation of what you’re going through, of what’s happening, and they understand.”
Palmer brought an aggressive attitude to the game of golf and his fans loved it. He didn’t play the course, it was often said; he attacked it. He was in competition with it, with the other players and with himself. And he plainly loved the competition. He could hit the ball a long way and when he got in trouble, he inevitably went for the high-risk shot instead of playing safe. “Go for it,” might have been his mantra.
The excitement and drama that he brought to the game made it into something that millions found themselves following on television. Not because they cared about golf or played the game. They watched because of him, much the way millions watched NBA basketball games when Michael Jordan was playing: to see him play, because of that thing that he brought to the game.
Palmer could blow a seven shot lead with nine holes to play in a U.S. Open or win it from 15th place, seven shots back, on the last day of the tournament with a round of 65. You didn’t watch Palmer to admire his consistency and prudent shot making. You wanted to see him catch fire and charge.
He had a fine career. Won seven major titles. His 62 wins on the PGA Tour puts him fifth behind Sam Snead, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan. He also won a lot of money but nothing close to what he made in business. Palmer became a one-man conglomerate on the force of his personality. There was no stronger brand; fewer more recognizable names or faces. As Dan Jenkins wrote, “I don’t suppose anybody’s ever enjoyed being who they are more than Arnold’s enjoyed being Arnold Palmer.”
He was the opposite thing from the athlete dying young or living long and unhappily off old glories. He never went away, and his fans remained his fans right up until the end. Which came, Sunday, at 87 years.
