Arnold Palmer's wife and chief rooter, Winnie,
watched him lake 1962 Masters three-way play-off
(right against Gary Player and Dow Finsterwald.
Arnold
Palmer The
Winningest
Man in Golf
He's on his way to a childhood dream, a golfing grand slam, and if he
succeeds, his dad, mom, and wife should take bows By JACK RYAN
THE MOTHER of the winningest man in golf
looks back and remembers him as a "deter
mined boy, even at 9 or 10."
"Some of the local women would get up a foursome,"
she says. "I'd tell Arnie, 'Now stay home and help your
sister.' But by the time we'd get to the back nine, one of
the girls would tell me, 'Arnie's following us and carry
ing his clubs.' So what could we do? We'd let him play."
His father, a former laborer at the Latrobe (Pa.) Coun
try Club who worked his way up to club pro, has similar
memories. "The members didn't want a pesty kid playing
their course especially when he played it better. I'd tell
him, 'Only play on Mondays when the course is closed.'
But any day I could expect a member to come up and say,
'Deke, that boy of yours is out there practicing again.' "
The boy has grown to man, champion, husband, and
father. But he hasn't changed much. "He'll come home be
tween tournaments to rest," says his wife Winnie. "That
means practicing shots during the day. At night, we'll sit
around watching tv, but Arnie will jump up after a few min
utes and practice 'phantom' putting in the living room."
The golfing boy grown to golf wizard is Arnold Palmer,
of course, an affable crowd pleaser with the'physique of a
steel worker, which he nearly was, and the understanding
family that every golfer dreams of.
At the halfway point in the current golf season, Palmer
has won about $50,000 in tournament prizes; his yearly
income from all sources is about $300,000; he has collected
more than $325,000 on the links in his eight-year career;
and he has won the 1962 Masters tourney (for the third
time), the first link in his "dream of a lifetime."
This week Palmer goes after the second link, the United
States Open at Oakmont, Pa. If he wins and then dupli
cates the feat in the British Open next month and the.
subsequent PGA tournament, he will have fulfilled his
boyhood pledge a golfing grand slam unequaled since the
glorious days of all-time great Bobby Jones.
"The idea of a golfing grand slam is still very much in
my mind," Palmer says. "I hardly remember when it
wasn't." The words are immodest, but Palmer sounds more
like a Sunday golfer who hopes to break 100.
What makes a golfing great? Palmer has his own ideas
on technique (at $1,000 a demonstration). Other experts
point to his V build, the chunky muscles that swell in
his shoulders and taper to steel-like whips in his wrists.
"He always had big hands," his father, Milford (Deke)
Palmer, says, "and I first taught him the Vardon over
lapping grip. I told him to get a firm grip on the club, slow
backswing, steady head, careful on overswing." Mr. Palmer
was criticized for turning Arnie into a "sledge-hammer
swinger." Today critics pay to watch his 270-yard drives.
Mr. Palmer also taught his son that before he could
control his power, he must control himself. In a high-school
tournament, Arnie flubbed a shot, tossed his club over a
tree in anger. "Do that once more," his father said, "and
you never golf again." Today Palmer is a writhing ham
between shots but coldly automated in addressing a ball.
The elder Palmer moved his family to a tiny grounds
keeper's cottage in Latrobe after the Pittsburgh steel mills
closed during the Depression. There wasn't much extra
money for entertainment, so everyone turned to golf.
BY THE TIME he was six, Arnie occupied a permanent
perch on a nearby fence and would greet visitors with,
"Wanta see me hit the ball into the hole?"
"He always loved a gallery," Mrs. Palmer says about the
gallery's favorite player. "People watching him golf never
made him nervous. He enjoyed them being there. After
every good shot, he'd turn to our visitors and say, 'Did you
see that one, did you ?' "
One day a friend gave Arnie a book about Bobby Jones,
and he couldn't stop reading it. That's where the idea of
the grand slam came to him.
A golfing career needs financial backing in its early
stages, however, and although Arnold became a high-school
star he appeared destined for work in the nearby mills.
But an unexpected golf scholarship to Wake Forest Uni
versity led, in turn, to an amateur apprenticeship.
After service in the Coast Guard, Palmer became some
thing of a golfing bum, drifting indecisively from business
to golf. In 1954, he was entered in the Fred Waring Tour
nament at Shawnee-on-the-Dclaware when a freckled-faced,
pert-nosed girl in the gallery caught his eye.
(Continued on page 12)
Family Weekly, June 10, 196? 1 1
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