A Golfer's Life (47 page)

I’d just walked off the course in 1976, buoyant after shooting 64 in the opening round, when my old friend Ernie Dunlevie, the tournament’s president, pulled me aside and said he needed to speak with me privately on a matter of grave urgency.

I didn’t like the way his face looked one bit.

We went into a room and he told me my father had suffered a massive heart attack and died. I was devastated. I sat down in a chair, feeling completely drained. That I was numb is the best way I can describe it. I thanked Ernie and immediately called home. Pap had played nine holes that morning on the Charger Course at Bay Hill, grabbed a quick bowl of soup, and headed out for another full eighteen on the big course with Doc Giffin. Afterward, they’d had a drink and Pap had said he felt tired and decided to go take a nap before he and Doc had dinner and played a hand or two of gin rummy. He went to his room in the lodge and stretched out on the bed. A short while later, Doc returned to his adjoining room and found the door between their bedrooms ajar. He stepped into Pap’s room to investigate and discovered him lying on the floor. Pap apparently got up when the massive coronary struck—and died before he reached the floor.

To say the least, I was stunned beyond belief. This was the news I’d feared hearing, in some way or another, all my life. It simply didn’t seem possible that my father could be gone. He was the man I most admired in the world. He was the man whose hard rules and painful lessons had made me everything I’d become, everything I stood for, everything I was. And now he was gone.

That’s when I lost it.

I won’t even attempt to describe to you what those next few hours and days were like for me. I sleepwalked through them, living in a blur of sorrow and anger and sadness. Pap was such a dominant presence in our lives, and he’d worked so hard for so long with so little material reward. It just seemed cruelly unfair that just as he was able to finally relax and enjoy the fruits of his labors, he would simply stretch out on a bed and pass away. That’s enough to test any man’s faith—in himself, in the fates.

It was Pap’s wish that his body be cremated.

A week or so later, we held a small memorial service at the Lutheran church in Youngstown, where Pap never felt comfortable darkening the doorway. Afterward, the family went to a spot that would have pleased him far more, the place where I think he performed the Lord’s work in his own quiet, dignified, bullheaded way: a small knoll just above the 18th green at Latrobe Country Club.

There, keeping it short and sweet and simple as he would have liked it, with only a handful of friends and family members gathered around, we scattered his ashes near a small red bush above the putting surface, where he could easily keep a wary eye out for anyone who failed to properly repair their ball marks.

A few years later, we scattered my mother’s ashes near the same spot. After that, the little red bush seemed to grow like crazy. My mother, always the life giver and nurturer. I’m convinced
that the two of them are happy there, and I know that I can feel their presence every time I’m on that course—or anywhere else, for that matter. They say that to those who have been given much there is much that is expected. That little truism goes a long way toward explaining why I’ve lived my life the way I have. I don’t care how old you are, you still want to earn your parents’ approval and live up to the example they’ve set. That’s a tall order in my case, but a worthwhile goal.

T
he ebb and flow of life, like a golf match, never ceases to amaze me.

A short time after my father’s death, I got a phone call from Orlando businessman Frank Hubbard. Frank was concerned that the Citrus Open was dying on the vine at Rio Pinar, and he wondered if moving the tournament to Bay Hill and attaching my name to the event might somehow revive what had once been a very popular and prosperous stop on the PGA Tour.

When I thought about it, I realized that this indeed was a way I could give something valuable back to the PGA Tour, which has been so very good to me and my family. A year later, in the spring of 1979, with me playing the host role, the new Bay Hill golf tournament debuted with a strong field of PGA players on hand, including Jack Nicklaus. I don’t remember much about the 70 I shot in the opening round; what I do recall is being incredibly nervous about having the entire golf world, my old friends, and several million network television viewers come to Bay Hill. Needless to say, I hoped to get their stamp of approval on the premises and the new tournament. No Broadway producer ever sweated bullets any larger on opening night of his theatrical baby.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried quite so much.
Among other things, we got rave reviews from the golf press, and appropriately enough, that first Bay Hill event was won in a thrilling playoff by a Wake Forest lad, Bob Byman.

Over the next twenty-odd years, I’m happy to say, even as the names of the tournament’s title sponsors shifted from Hertz to Nestlé to Office Depot to Cooper Tires, the list of Bay Hill champions included the best and brightest of the PGA Tour: Andy Bean, Tom Kite, Gary Koch, Fuzzy Zoeller, Payne Stewart, Paul Azinger, Robert Gamez, Dan Forsman, Andrew Magee, Fred Couples, Ben Crenshaw, Loren Roberts, Phil Mickelson, and Ernie Els. Not a bad collection of trophy winners.

Best of all, the players themselves made it abundantly clear to me how much they looked forward to coming to Bay Hill each spring, sometimes bringing their families along and making “working vacations” out of the festive week. Orlando is a great place for family fun. Amid all the drama of golf, there were some great parties and a lot of laughs and deepening friendships with younger guys like Curtis Strange, Peter Jacobsen, and Mark O’Meara, to name just a few. I’m especially pleased that all this has taken place at a spot my family, Pap included, has always been so fond of.

Since I’m being a little sentimental about it, I should point out that it was the same Frank Hubbard who asked me to get involved in the tournament who, a few years later, approached me with another proposition. This time he wanted me to lend my name and financial support to something he and many others believed was greatly needed in the Orlando area—a first-rate children’s hospital. In the beginning, all Frank wanted was to use my name and maybe get a financial donation from me toward the announced fund-raising goal of $10 million.

I was more than happy to do that. Children are my soft spot, and the idea that I might be able to do something to help a lot of sick children, well, that was essentially a “no-brainer,”
as my own grandchildren would say today. Winnie and I enthusiastically signed on.

Then, after we toured the cramped, outdated children’s wing of Orlando Regional Medical Center, meeting brave little kids battling cancer and other illnesses, seeing all those shockingly frail and tiny premature babies on life support, by golly, the floodgates in me opened. I used whatever clout I had to get that new hospital project up and flying. Pretty quickly, the campaign target had swelled from $10 million to $30 million, and a bit further along the line, I was pleased that other prominent tour stars like Greg Norman and Scott Hoch gave their time and financial support to the institution. Upon winning the Las Vegas Invitational in 1989, Hoch presented the entire first-place winner’s check to the hospital, a gesture that touched thousands of lives and a guy named Arnold Palmer very deeply.

It was Winnie’s idea to make the children’s hospital the principal beneficiary of the charity monies created by the Bay Hill tournament, a tie-in that has been a perpetual source of income to a project near and dear to our hearts. Eventually, I signed over all of my stock in the tournament to my two daughters, Peggy and Amy, and their families, and today my primary function with respect to the tournament is to serve as host, make sure things get done right and everybody has a good time, and do whatever I can to lobby on behalf of the charitable beneficiaries.

August 23, 1989, is a day I’ll never forget. Thousands were on hand for the opening and dedication of the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women. There was a host of young entertainers and singing characters from Disney World, a marching band, various area dignitaries and friends, and the press.

It was just days before my sixtieth birthday, and I guess I was in a pretty reflective mood. The hospital project had grown to mean so much to both Winnie and me and our
family—the ultimate pet project in some ways. As speeches were made and thousands of balloons were released, I was feeling fine and in control. That is, until six-year-old Billy Gillespie, a new patient at the facility, held the microphone and spoke to the gathering—and to me personally. Billy thanked me for making a “dream come true.”

I remember glancing at my daughter Amy, with her husband, Roy, and her four healthy children gathered around her, and feeling a knot of gratitude tighten my throat and chest. Though we couldn’t possibly have known it then, Amy would soon go through her own ordeal with cancer—and come out on the other side, wiser and healed, thanks to a world-class treatment center like the hospital we had just helped create. When I saw the tears of pride and thanks forming in Amy’s eyes, that’s when I lost it.

Once again, I was crying in public.

M
y own children, as you might expect, mean so incredibly much to me. Sometimes I indulge in wishing I’d also had a son, but upon further reflection, given what I’ve learned about my own obsession to please my father and ultimately outdo him, I realize that a son might have had a difficult time growing up in my shadow. I look at Jack Nicklaus and his four boys—Jackie, Steve, Gary, and Michael—and realize not only what a challenge it must have been for them at times to be Jack’s sons but also what a terrific job Jack and Barbara have done in shielding and raising them. Jack and Barbara also have a spirited daughter, Nan, so Jack knows a bit about what it’s like to live in my house. Even if destiny had given me a son, I realize that even a son who chose to follow me into the greatest game on earth couldn’t possibly have pleased me any more than have my two wonderful daughters, Peggy and Amy. As I’ve said, with all due respect and affection, I think
Peg and Amy get their love of books, the arts, all things beautiful and creative, not to mention their maddening streaks of hardheadedness,
entirely
from their mother. The apple doesn’t fall far from that tree, I suppose, and though we’ve had our share of lively dinner-table debates and father–daughter battles over everything from boyfriends to women’s rights, the joy and pride I’ve taken in both my daughters has never wavered, and has simply increased over time.

As I look back, though we’ve never really discussed the subject, I realize how difficult it was for them to grow up being Arnold and Winnie Palmer’s children. In the early days of their school lives, for example, we were dead set in our conviction that Peg and Amy should attend local public schools. They were no different from any other kids, so why should they be treated as such? When you have significant money, as we did about the time they were old enough to notice the differences between people’s circumstances, it’s easy to spoil a child but difficult to instill discipline and values.

Our aim, Winnie’s and mine, was to make sure our daughters didn’t feel more privileged or more fortunate than any other child. Maybe we erred a bit in that thinking, because the truth was that, like it or not, through no fault of their own, they were privileged. And even if they didn’t quite feel and act that way, lots of other kids in the public schools simply assumed the girls came from a privileged background and felt it was therefore their duty to make things rough on them both at times.

Regrettably, we eventually had to place the girls in a private school where presumably their father’s name wouldn’t mean so much, or if it did the schools simply wouldn’t tolerate the kind of harassment Peg and Amy had faced. Even then, Winnie and I were determined that our girls should essentially make their own ways through life. We are, by nature, frugal people—always saving for next year’s crisis. Through
their high school and college years, Peg and Amy both worked jobs like any other teenagers. In college neither one had the benefit of a personal automobile. I suppose this was a source of embarrassment for them because of the attitudes and values of some in their intimate social circles.

In any case, under the circumstances I don’t think we did so badly as parents. After her marriage to Doug Reintgen amicably dissolved, Peg entered the financial world and came down to Orlando to join our organization as an executive with Arnold Palmer Enterprises.

Fortunately, as all sides can confirm, it was a mercifully brief business association. Peg had her own bold and creative ideas about how a business venture should be run, and I think the year she ran some of the Bay Hill operations cost me, conservatively speaking, at least a million dollars.

I’m sure Peg would have her own take on our challenging year in business together. In fact, I’m sure that she would point out that I drove her nuts, and that if that complicated relationship revealed anything at all it was that going into business with her old man was a really bad idea. By nature and temperament, Peg is a strong woman who likes to do things her own way, a quality I greatly admire. As I think of it, maybe she’s more like her old man than I’d first imagined.

Anyway, she eventually went back out on her own and found a far better niche, in the investment business. She married Peter Wears, a fine man and successful stockbroker, and they’ve built a family life with their two children and his daughter in Durham, North Carolina. That makes me very pleased and proud.

Peg’s big adventure in management came at a difficult moment in the life of Bay Hill. Sometime in the mid-1980s, we were approached by a large Japanese concern that was anxious to purchase the whole two-hundred-acre complex,
and the money they were offering was, to say the least, eye-opening—roughly $50 million.

From just about every standpoint, it was a public-relations nightmare. To begin with, when it was widely reported that we were planning to sell Bay Hill to Japanese investors, we received an avalanche of criticism from the public and local newspaper columnists and even some of our neighbors that was, in my mind, only partially justified. Winnie herself was considerably displeased with the prospect of giving up the club and lodge, which she had spent more than a decade fussing over and improving with her crack decorator’s eye. She also accurately reminded me that the community was home to a number of World War II–era veterans who considered the idea of Japanese owning Bay Hill a slap in the face.