Arnie’s Army no longer has its general.
Arnold Palmer died Sunday of complications from heart problems, decades after winning seven majors and helping popularize golf as a TV spectacle. He was 87.
“I was shocked to hear that we lost a great friend — and that golf lost a great friend,” rival Jack Nicklaus posted Sunday night on social media. “My friend — many people’s friend — just wore out. I know that he was in Pittsburgh trying to find out how to make himself better.”
Alastair Johnson, CEO of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, told reporters that Palmer was hospitalized Thursday for some cardiovascular work but his condition deteriorated over the weekend.
The Latrobe, Pennsylvania, native was nicknamed “The King” and had a hard-charging style and star persona reminiscent of athletes in more obviously physical sports.
NBC even broke into its broadcast of Sunday Night Football, the biggest sporting event of the week, to tell its viewers about Palmer’s death. “Just one of the classiest and most genuine men I ever met,” host Al Michaels said. Halftime host Mike Tirico said, “Arnold Palmer grew his game like few ever have.”
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Between his dominance of the PGA Tour at the start of the TV era and his later “Big Three” rivalry with Nicklaus and Gary Player, he was credited with making golf a sport in the public eye and not merely a country club pastime, a point noted by the most popular golfer since the “Big Three” era.
Tiger Woods said in 2004 that “if it wasn’t for Arnold, golf wouldn’t be as popular as it is now. He’s the one who basically brought it to the forefront on TV.”
Woods noted Palmer’s “excitement, his flair, the way he played. … That’s why he’s the king.”
An inaugural member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, Palmer won 62 events on the PGA Tour — fifth most all time. His seven “major” titles, all from 1958 to 1964, included four wins at the Masters, one at the U.S. Open and two at the British Open.
The only major he failed to win was the PGA Championship, where he was the runner-up three times, including in 1968 and 1970, denying him a career grand slam.
That aggressive style had both ups and downs — Palmer could rally from seven shots back in the last round to win a U.S. Open, as happened in 1960, or, as happened in 1966, blow a seven-shot lead on the back nine to fall into a tie with Billy Casper and lose a playoff the next day.
“I’m pleased that I was able to do what I did from a golfing standpoint,” Palmer said in 2008, two years after his last competitive round. “I would like to think that I left them more than just that.”
Born in 1929 to father Deacon Palmer, the greenskeeper and later club pro at Latrobe Country Club, Palmer took to the golf course quickly but with the strength of a manual laborer.
“When I was 6 years old, my father put me on a steel-wheeled tractor,” he told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview. “I had to stand up to turn the wheel. That’s one thing that made me strong. The other thing was I pushed mowers. In those days, there were no motors on anything except the tractor. The mowers to cut greens with, you pushed.
“And it was this,” he said, patting his arms, “that made it go.”
In 1960, Palmer was Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year,” and by 1967, he had become the first pro golfer to win $1 million. Throughout the decade, he inspired a loyal legion of touring fans, known as “Arnie’s Army.”
Palmer joined the Seniors Tour in its first year, 1980, and the same mix of looks, affability and aggressive play made him one of its marquee stars. He won 10 events there, including five majors.
His first wife, Winnie, died in 1999. They had two daughters, and grandson Sam Saunders plays on the PGA Tour. Palmer married Kit Gawthrop in 2005.
Even apart from his playing, he continued to be one of the faces of the sport — negotiating the first golf course in communist China; helping found The Golf Channel on cable TV; serving as honorary starter for the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, for the past several years; and starting up the Arnold Palmer Design Co. to build courses worldwide.
One measure of his popularity and smarts as a self-marketer came from Golf Digest in 2011. That year — his last PGA Tour win came in 1973 — he earned $36 million, trailing only Woods and Phil Mickelson.
In 2007, the PGA Tour changed the name of the tournament in Orlando, Florida, to the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
He even had a drink named for him — one he actually asked be concocted for him at country clubs. The Arnold Palmer is a (nonalcoholic) mix of lemonade and iced tea.
Sportswriter Steve Politi, covering the Masters tournament in 2013, wrote an article that described the extent of Palmer’s stardom and his modesty surrounding it. He learned from an Augusta waitress how the man himself ordered an “Arnold Palmer.”
According to the waitress, named Kelsey, “He leaned over and said, ’I’ll have a Mr. Palmer.’ Then he winked.”
⦁ This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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