A Golfer's Life (48 page)

The truth is, the decision wasn’t mine alone to make. I had numerous partners in my businesses who believed we couldn’t rebuff the Japanese simply because of hostilities that took place half a century ago. Besides, from a purely business standpoint the proposed deal was almost too good to be true (and, in fact, turned out to be just that). Under the deal’s proposed terms, I would continue to run the day-to-day operations at the club and keep our longtime association at Bay Hill fully intact. In theory, nothing would visibly change. It might even be better—thanks to the windfall of cash I would be able to plow back into various operations in and around the premises.

That was the theory, at least.

Perhaps because of the intense controversy and the panic of the club’s members, or perhaps because their own financial situation wasn’t nearly as solid as we had at first thought, the Japanese concern balked and the deal ultimately collapsed under its own weight. The would-be buyers used a loophole vaguely related to environmental issues (asbestos insulation
was discovered in some of the lodge’s oldest rooms) to back out of the proposed agreement—costing each side at least a couple million dollars in lawyers’ fees and other expenses.

Given half a chance, I’ve decided, things usually work out the way they should.

Later on, Roy Saunders, Amy’s husband, came to work for me, and soon Amy herself was growing more and more involved in the day-to-day operation of the club. I’m happy to say that since that rather difficult time (which also included the Isleworth fiasco and O’Neal episode, I might add), Amy and Roy have worked hard and had a wonderful impact on the quality of life at Bay Hill, for both members and lodge guests. We’ve recently undergone a $7 million face-lift of the golf course and grounds, refurbished the lodge’s forty-eight guest rooms and six suites from top to bottom with Lexington’s Arnold Palmer Collection furniture, and taken the wraps off a splendid new pool and spa facility.

For all the dramatic changes that have altered the landscape around us in central Florida (Disney isn’t our only neighbor; we also have Universal Studios now on the opposite side, and the largest convention center in the Southeast not much more than a few good pokes with a fairway wood away), Bay Hill remains, by and large, a tranquil residential oasis that most of us are very happy to call home.

Like the comfortable lobby furniture or the famous green clock on the putting green, I guess I really am something of a fixture around the place. It pleases me to be able to go into the club grillroom every morning before seven, greet some of the same staff members I’ve said hello to for ten or fifteen years, have my breakfast of fruit and toast, and greet any early-rising lodge guests who happen to be about.

It also pleases me to be able to finish up a morning’s work in my office just up the stairs from Jim Deaton’s handsome pro shop, then mosey out to the range and hit warm-up balls
from my little corner of the range. I don’t mind it a bit when strangers come up and politely speak to me. On the contrary, unless I’m preparing to play in a tournament or have some other pressing obligation, I relish the opportunity to say hello to a visitor, pick their brains about the lodge and the course, and maybe sign an autograph or two.

It seems to me that autograph seekers have gotten out of hand in American sports, even around the PGA Tour, where entrepreneurs, I’m told, now pay kids to collect famous signatures on photographs and hats and other collectibles. That practice distresses me, and I must confess that there have been times when I simply refused to sign my name. Not long ago, for instance, someone sent a pile of glossy photographs of me waving farewell to the gallery from the bridge at St. Andrews with the instructions to “just sign your name.” There must have been two hundred photographs, and no “please” or “thank you” attached. We sent the package back with the photographs unsigned. Whoever sent that package, I suppose, will think Arnold Palmer is a jerk for not signing his pictures. Well I think that he’s the kind of “fan” I don’t really care to have—someone who was clearly aiming to make money off my signature.

At my offices in Latrobe and Bay Hill, we get literally many thousands of requests from people each year. In Pennsylvania, Doc Giffin, Gina Varrone, and Debbie Rusnock have become pretty good at spotting true fan requests, as have my secretary, Pat Boeckenstedt, and receptionist, Janet Hulcher, at Bay Hill. They know chapter and verse my policy on signing autographs: I’ll happily sign anybody’s personal photo or hat or scorecard, whatever they choose, as long as it’s a personal request. I won’t sign golf balls, though. That’s an unwritten policy designed to combat forgeries on the market. I try to do as much signing for genuine charity events as the strength in my right hand will allow.

I feel it’s important for an athlete to sign autographs, and I get riled up when I see some younger Tour player blowing past a group of kids who merely want him to pause and acknowledge their presence. Where, I wonder, does that fortunate young man think the next generation of golfers will come from, to say nothing of the game’s fans? In my mind, it’s all about giving back whatever you can whenever you can.

In any case, signing autographs at Bay Hill keeps me connected with what’s taking place around there and, well, it’s pretty widely known that I will talk to just about anybody who happens to be breathing. Especially fans and paying customers.

You may have heard tales about my dentist, Dr. Howdy Giles, described by some accounts as the Ultimate Arnold Palmer Fan. I’m certain Howdy wouldn’t take the slightest exception to that designation, and the way we met and became close friends, I think, says a great deal about us both.

Once upon a time, Howdy Giles was a golf-crazy dental school student in Philadelphia, who used to get ribbed by his classmates for always wearing Arnold Palmer logo sportswear he purchased at Wanamaker’s department store in Philly. To mark their engagement in 1966, Howdy’s fiancée, Carolyn, presented him with a new set of Arnold Palmer irons. Howdy and Carolyn attended their first Masters in 1968, but we weren’t introduced until an exhibition in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1970. After that, the Gileses began coming to Bay Hill on vacations and soon purchased a condominium there. Through the club, we became good friends socially, and I didn’t mind a bit that Howdy was always snapping photographs of me in action. In addition to being an excellent dentist, he’s a crack photographer. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen his photographs of me, because scores of them have wound up in books and magazines. By Howdy’s count, he’s taken a staggering half a million photographs of me, displaying every mood and emotion I’m capable of.

What you may not know about Howdy is that he’s also become
a top junior golf and rules official for the United States Golf Association, having served field duty at both Senior and U.S. Opens, and has two lovely daughters, Robin and Julie, who attended Wake Forest University.

Now I call that a
fan
. But more important, I also call that a friend. Howdy and Carolyn are two of the nicest, most down-to-earth people, a pleasure to know in every respect. Only in America, as Howdy likes to say to anyone who will listen, can a kid grow up to meet his hero—but also become his hero’s friend. Even though I sometimes have tell Howdy to
quit
taking pictures, I remind him whenever I can that the gift of that friendship goes two ways.

In a nutshell, it seems fitting that our friendship really took root in the friendly atmosphere at Bay Hill. The whole idea behind Bay Hill was to create a special low-key place where both the members and guests would be made to feel comfortable and welcome. It says something good when so many of the club and lodge staff, including caddies and housekeeping and kitchen personnel, are holdovers from the time when we arrived. We are surrounded by the entertainment business, and the competition for workers of all skill levels is, to say the least, fierce. That our turnover rate is so low is just one indication that we’re doing something right—and not just for our guests.

One of my great pleasures is playing in the daily Bay Hill Shootout. When I’m home from the road, that’s usually where you’ll find me after a morning’s work in the office and a quick lunch: preparing to tee it up with a bunch of golfing cutthroats, friendly rogues, old friends, and generally all-around good guys. The Shootout is an event that precedes me and dates back to the club’s founding members, a bunch of golf nuts who couldn’t wait to try to take each other’s pocket change every afternoon.

You’ve probably heard tales about the Shootout, how everybody who is anybody on the PGA Tour has played in it
at some point. That’s true. Many of them have. The Shootout is not only famous—it’s great fun. Here’s how it works: On a typical day, eight to ten foursomes, and occasionally a five-some, are selected as “teams.” Each team has a range of golfers—an “A” player, “B” player, “C” player, and so forth, with each player’s rating based on his handicap. We manage to attract a range of handicaps, and the best thing about it is that anyone who wants to play and can play reasonably well can get in the Shootout.

Originally, it cost twenty bucks per man to enter, and if your team was good enough to win you could pocket a couple hundred dollars for buying drinks afterward in the men’s locker room. Now the entry fee is up to $30, and on special occasions it’s $50 per man. That doesn’t count all the side bets and private nassaus and walk-in wagers flying around on an average day. On New Year’s Eve we play what’s called the Grand Shootout, which attracts more than two hundred players and has a pretty impressive pot.

In a typical Shootout, I’ll sometimes have four or five bets going in different directions, and there are certain members (who know who they are) whose folding money I simply
adore
collecting. On the other hand, more times than you might think, I’m the one who walks home to my condo with the lighter pockets.

Everyone has stories about the rough-and-tumble competition, but here’s my one of my personal favorites. Many years ago, my foursome came to the difficult par-3 17th. The hole plays across a large pond and bunker to a green many find extremely challenging to hit, especially from the championship or “Palmer” tees, where I play from. That day the distance was about 210 yards to the flag, and I asked Tomcat, one of my longtime caddies at Bay Hill, to hand me my 2-iron.

He shook his head solemnly.

“What do you think, Tomcat?” I asked him.

“Mr. Palmer, it’s a three-iron.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I can reach it with a three-iron.”

The truth is, a lot was riding on the shot. I was tied in several different matches and needed to at least make par, preferably birdie.

“Yes, sir. You just take the three and go ahead and hit it.” Tomcat had no doubt about it whatsoever.

So I set up and hit the 3-iron. I hit it pretty well, too.

Straight into the water.

As the jackals in my group broke up laughing, I growled, “Tomcat, that was the wrong damn club. Give me the two-iron, please.”

He handed me my 2-iron and I glanced over at the others and said, “Okay, guys. Laugh all you want. I’ll still make par the hard way.”

With that, I busted the ball. It flew across the pond, landed on the green, skipped once, and popped into the hole.

Par the hard way.

That nearly killed the guys. I turned to Tomcat and barked with mock gruffness, “See there, Tomcat? I
told
you it was a two-iron!”

He wasn’t the slightest bit fazed.

“No, sir,” he said with perfect timing, wiping the club and putting it back in the bag. “It was a
three
iron. You hit it fat.”

I guess some people at Bay Hill really know me better than I know myself.

A
nother private moment speaks volumes about my attachment to the place, the people, the tournament, the hospital that bears my name and benefits from the tournament’s proceeds, and everything else Bay Hill has come to symbolize in our lives over the past thirty years.

It happened in 1991, the start of a new decade, but hardly the most rewarding year of my life on and off the golf course. It came at the moment when we were in litigation over the Isleworth fiasco and my friendship with O’Neal had been severed, with painful financial repercussions to come. Every time I turned around, I seemed to be reading something bad about Arnold Palmer in the newspapers.

As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. I guess it is also true that it’s at moments like these when you discover who your friends really are. At any rate, fittingly, it had been pouring all week at the Bay Hill Invitational, causing smaller crowds and a general atmosphere of gloom, especially after the bad weather forced us to shorten the event to fifty-four holes.

Needless to say, I was in an awful state of mind, feeling sorry for myself and wondering what I could do to try and get the tournament, if not life in general, back on track. That’s when I was summoned to an urgent meeting in the locker room.

There I found most of the tournament’s players assembled, waiting for me. I must have looked really baffled and not a little bit worried. What on earth, I wondered, were they gathered for? It looked like a tribunal of some sort, an impromptu trial. That was exactly what I needed to put me over the edge.

Then Peter Jacobsen came forward and presented me with a specially inscribed cake congratulating me for making the thirty-six-hole cut the day before and, as someone later said, for being such a good ambassador for the game of golf.

Applause followed, and then some whooping and hollering.

I can’t really tell you how much that meant to me, coming at that moment in my life when so many other things seemed to be on the verge of crumbling, my own ability to make a tournament cut included. It was the perfect tonic for what
was ailing me, and lifted me right out of my blues! When the boys finally quieted down, I was called on to make a few comments but was struck speechless. When I finally found the words, I once again barely had the physical capability to speak. I hated for the guys to see me choked up like that, but there was no holding back my emotions, I’m afraid. They knew that and I knew that. But they were telling me in the most poignant way possible—like giving a birthday cake to a kid—what Bay Hill and I
both
meant to them.