Indholdsfortegnelse for Arnold Palmer Tribute Special Issue i Golf Digest

we’ll never forget arnold palmer, a legend who loved people & his life in golf ARNOLD PALMER was not the greatest golfer who ever lived. He did a more difficult thing: He lived the greatest life any golfer ever lived. By his decency, generosity, integrity, power of personality and grace under pressure, he won the admiration and respect of people around the world. It is a sportswriter’s cliché to assign immortality to athletes, but a few of the heroes have earned the designation. Babe Ruth did. Muhammad Ali. Arnold Palmer. End of list. ▶ I love this photograph of Palmer kissing his wife, Winnie. He met her in September 1954, he proposed within a week, and they eloped before Christmas. On April 10, 1960, after winning the Masters a second…

MY WHOLE CAREER, I never missed a tee time. Not once, which I suppose is saying a lot for a career that’s spanned 60 years and thousands of rounds of golf. Now, for many years I’ve had a recurring dream that I miss my tee time. In the dream there’s no consequence, because I wake up abruptly. You can’t imagine the relief, realizing that it was just a dream. Now that I’m retired, I’m hoping to hell that dream will go away. IT INTERESTS ME how Phil Mickelson is perceived as being too aggressive. It interests me because Tiger is every bit as aggressive as Phil. Look at some of the shots Tiger hits into the green from the wrong fairway, the long shots over water, the tremendous shots he…

1 MEASURE RISK AGAINST REWARD. When I drove the first green at Cherry Hills in the final round of the 1960 U.S. Open, many people thought it was a risky, heroic effort. I didn’t see it that way at all. It’s a narrow hole with a creek running along the right side, but I figured even if I drove into the water, I still could get up and down for par. The reward—a sure birdie and possibly an eagle— outweighed the risk. The easy birdie I made got me started on my 65 and a career-defining U.S. Open victory. Always measure worst-case scenarios with the best that can happen, and have a biased eye toward the best. 2 THINK TWICE BEFORE REACHING DEEP. When Jack Nicklaus came on the scene…

Many of the best golfers keep their feelings in check, carefully hidden from view. But that was never Arnold Palmer’s style. From his earliest days, he laid his emotions bare. A putt that dropped might produce an exultant leap, the face of a roaring lion. A near miss could draw a tight-eyed grimace, Palmer’s back hunched as if he’d absorbed a body blow. There was nothing boastful or “in your face” about his expressive body language. No whiff of real anger, petulance or whininess, either. His unspoken message was simply, I care. Fans, who saw in Palmer their own passion for the game, loved him all the more for it.—PF…

‘YOUR HOMETOWN IS NOT WHERE YOU’RE FROM. IT’S WHO YOU ARE.’ When Arnold Palmer won a second state high school golf championship in 1947, his Western Pennsylvania homeland was a hotbed of sports. Arnold added golf to the mix, taking the game out of the country club and bringing new players to public courses. An area that produced Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Lujack and Hall of Fame first baseman Stan Musial now had a golfer to brag about. Arnold made golf cool in a rough-and-tumble world. By doing so, he inspired a generation of kids to follow his footsteps. —RON SIRAK…

HOW BOB DRUM & I INVENTED ARNOLD PALMER The first time any of us ever actually noticed a guy named Arnold Palmer it was on the veranda at Augusta around 1957, and we wondered who that vacationing longshoreman was talking to Bob Drum, the writer. Later, Drum said, “That’s Arnold D. Palmer of Latrobe, Pa., the next great golfer.” “Yeah, sure,” one of us said. “And I’m the next Steinbeck. But first I got to get me some of those maroon pants with the cuffs turned up, and a green shirt, and an orange alpaca, like your pal over there. Arnold who?” There were only two golfers then, we liked to joke. Hogan and Snead. Well, maybe there was a Middlecoff occasionally. Writers are very strict about touring pros having…

I’ve seen a lot of changes during my time in golf, and one is that the teaching of the game has gotten complicated. If you do a handful of things correctly—like take the club away without breaking your wrists and keep your head still throughout the swing—you can play pretty well without too much thought. When I was 3 years old, my dad took my hands and set them on a club and said, “Now don’t you ever change that.” And basically I haven’t. With all the ways we have now of analyzing the swing, you can make the game very difficult—and not much fun. Here you’ll find my favorite tips from my old books and articles. I believe they’re as true today as the day I first used them.…

BY ▶ Putting, of course, is the part of the touring golf professional’s game that is most often responsible for his losing or winning a tournament. ▶ Many of us do quite a bit of experimenting with putting methods and with different types of putters. I am the first to admit that I have been a very active experimenter. ▶ What it all boils down to is finding and retaining a putting stance, stroke and putter which give the greatest confidence when we’re faced with an important putt—and what putt isn’t important? Confidence is an elusive and flighty maiden, but we all know she is worth seeking. ▶ Right now I have settled on a style of putting and a putter which feel great to me. I am confident that…

He flew for the first time in 1956 and for the last in 2011, at 81. In between, Arnold Palmer logged more than 18,000 hours in the cockpit. Along with golf, aviation became an essential part of his image. He was the ultimate jetsetter, racking up wins and thrilling fans with“fly-bys” on his way out of town. Palmer bought his first plane, an AeroCommander 500, in 1961. Within five years he owned a Rockwell Jet Commander capable of reaching 500 miles per hour. And he was no less a competitor in the air than on the course. Piloting a Learjet 36, in 1976 Palmer and two colleagues set a round-theworld speed record for a business jet: 57 hours, 25 minutes, 42 seconds. —PF…

During one of my regular games at Latrobe Country Club this past summer, I suddenly started putting better than I have in 25 years. My touch on the greens, which I thought had disappeared forever, came back in an almost magical way. Now I’m making them from everywhere with that wristy old stroke of mine, and I love that I’m shooting some pretty good scores and winning a lot of bets. But a part of me also wonders, Why couldn’t I have putted like this during my career on the Champions Tour? All I can do is smile and shake my head. Feel is the most perplexing part of golf, and probably the most important. Beginning in the mid-1960s, my touch would mysteriously leave me, especially with my putter, and…