A Golfer's Life (12 page)

Stranny’s father was the first person on the green to congratulate me after Frank and I shook hands. What class and generosity of spirit that took, to come forward so enthusiastically and shake the hand of the kid who broke his own son’s heart. You could see the emotion in his eyes as he pumped my hand and wished me well. As Frank and I walked off the green together, he said to me, “That’s it. I’m turning pro tomorrow.”

The next day, true to his word, Muss did just that, signing a sponsorship contract with Wilson Sporting Goods.

I had something more immediate to worry about—an afternoon quarter-final match against Don Cherry, the reigning Canadian Amateur champ. I didn’t know much about Cherry’s game, but I found myself two down to him at the turn and had to battle back to square the match by 16. At the long 17th, both of us missed the green, but I pitched close enough to make four. Cherry bogeyed and we halved 18, meaning I moved on to the semifinal round.

I don’t remember how I slept the night before the thirty-six-hole
semifinal match. I do remember that after beating Cherry, I went straight into the clubhouse and called my parents in Latrobe. They hopped in the car and drove eight hours to Detroit so they could be on hand the next morning. That meant more to me than anyone could ever have known.

Now it was Friday, and my opponent was Ed Meister, a former Yale golf captain and thirty-six-year-old veteran of thirteen U.S. Amateur campaigns. I’d beaten Meister once in the Ohio Amateur, but neither of us had any inkling we were about to make history at the National Amateur.

The match was a seesaw battle. I patched together a shaky 76 and was lucky to be one up after the morning round. Neither of us seemed to be on our games, and one sportswriter later reported, “The contestants hit shots that cheered the hearts of duffers in the gallery.” The low point came when we halved the 425-yard 18th with double-bogey sixes. Nerves were killing both of us, I think.

Meister was one up after twenty-seven holes, but I squared the match on 28 with a fine pitch and run that stopped four feet from the pin. We traded leads twice more and reached the 36th hole all square. This was the darkest moment of the tournament for me. Ed’s drive found the heart of the fairway, and a beautifully struck 5-iron left him eight feet from the pin. My drive was in the rough, and my 5-iron shot flew into a grassy area behind the green. The grass was deep and the green sloped dangerously away from me; I knew I was in big trouble. Meister was looking down the barrel at birdie, and I would have my hands full just to get up and down for par. I lofted a high wedge shot that came to rest five feet above the hole. Meister missed his birdie attempt but tapped in for four.

Now I faced the ultimate nightmare: the slick downhiller to halve the hole and keep the match alive. I took a long time studying the putt, trying to calm my nerves and remind myself
to hit it firmly enough to hold the line. I finally stepped up and stroked the putt and felt massive relief when it dropped into the cup. Later, a reporter asked me how I could take so long over a pressure putt. Perhaps he thought I was joking when I replied that I waited until I was sure I would make it. Fact is, I was dying over that putt, and I needed the time to calm myself down.

Meister missed another short putt and a chance to win at the first playoff hole; we halved with bogey fives. For the third hole in a row—putts of ten, eight, and five feet, respectively—he’d had the chance to slam the door on me but failed to convert. The same thing happened at the 38th hole. He was sixteen feet from a birdie and the championship—and failed to capitalize. On the par-5 third, I smashed a drive 300 yards to the center of the fairway, then used a 3-iron to reach the green on my second shot. Meister had trouble in the trees, and having left his fourth shot short of the green, conceded the match. He looked physically whipped, and I’m sure I did, too. We didn’t realize it then, but we’d just finished the longest semifinal match in the fifty-four-year history of the U.S. Amateur.

Bob Sweeny, my opponent for the thirty-six-hole final, was a debonair, forty-three-year-old investment banker from Sands Point, New York. He was movie-star handsome, wealthy, Oxford educated, with a golf swing as smooth as a Rolls-Royce engine. Sweeny was no casual socialite golfer who somehow woke up to find himself contending for the biggest prize in amateur golf. On the contrary, as his 1937 British Amateur title proved, Sweeny was a player’s player—a guy who gave strokes to Ben Hogan, I later learned, when they played together at Seminole in the winter months. He was also one heck of a nice man.

To look at us side by side, though, you might well have thought we hailed from different galaxies. Sweeny was a
middle-aged millionaire, a member of London’s swanky parkland club called Sunningdale, and an international playboy elegantly dressed in crisp pressed linen pants, with the most beautiful young woman I’d ever seen following him like an adoring puppy from hole to hole. I was a twenty-four-year-old ex–coast guardsman and paint salesman with his nervous parents in the gallery.

I don’t have any memory of Pap giving me advice before the match, though it wouldn’t have been his nature at all to do that. And I can’t even seem to recall what we all did the night before the final. I suppose we went out to an early dinner somewhere and I must have turned in fairly early, as is my habit. I was probably a bit quieter than normal, but I was often quiet before a big match, and I don’t think in this instance I was particularly nervous about meeting Sweeny. I had a lot of confidence in my abilities, and I think I slept pretty well, all things considered.

The first three holes seemed to indicate, however, that I wasn’t just outclassed but also outmatched. Sweeny calmly rolled three birdie putts into the cup, and I was left standing on the fourth tee wondering what train had hit me. Others among the 3,500 or so spectators watching must have thought the same thing, perhaps sensing a real slaughter in the making. To make matters worse, as we started down the fourth fairway after hitting our tee shots, the beautiful girl following my opponent suddenly came through the ropes and out onto the fairway and waltzed right into his arms, giving him a real double-feature kiss. I remember watching them in disbelief—and maybe a little envy—thinking what a cruel game golf could be. Here I was getting pasted in the tournament I’d always dreamed of winning, and my opponent was not only rich and handsome and hitting perfect golf shots but getting the girl as well! With slumping spirits, I glanced over at my parents,
walking quietly along in the gallery. Mother looked worried but smiled her usual reassuring smile. Pap wore his usual stoic face on the evolving drama.

Sweeny, it seems to me, never let up, never hit what you would call a bad shot. He made me have to come get him, which I did finally on holes eight, nine, and ten, winning them to halve the match. By lunchtime, Sweeny’s twenty-nine putts gave him a 70 on the card versus my 72. He was two up going into the afternoon round.

At the break, I reminded myself that I wasn’t trying to beat the man on each hole; rather, I figured, if I could play consistently and manage to beat the course, I’d have an excellent chance of beating Sweeny as well.

This proved to be a wise strategy, one I would attempt to adopt in match-play competition thereafter, because it forces you to keep your concentration where it should be—on the golf course instead of your opponent and the interesting things happening to him. We were nip and tuck all over the final eighteen, and every time I would make a move, he responded with a clutch birdie or a salvaged par to win. On the 22nd hole, for example, I dropped a twenty-five-footer for birdie, but Sweeny came back to win 23 when I carelessly three-putted. I tied the match at the 465-yard 27th with my best 2-iron shot of the week, but Sweeny took the lead at the next hole by nailing a thirty-five-footer for birdie. I caught him again at the 30th hole, and thanks to a burst of fine iron play I finally moved a hole ahead of him at the 32nd.

A birdie on the 33rd put me two up, but I lost the 35th with a three-putt. My drive at the 36th found the fairway and my second shot safely reached the putting surface. Sweeny’s drive was errant and he couldn’t find his ball. After several minutes of fruitless searching, he looked at me and graciously lifted his arm and called, “Congratulations, Arnie. You win.”

I confess I felt a bit woozy—the heat, stress, and fatigue of the week’s ordeal all sort of came rushing over me. The sudden elation I felt was almost overwhelming. I gratefully shook Sweeny’s hand, and as I started up the fairway to the green, still a bit dazed, Joe Dey, the wonderful, longtime USGA official who was overseeing the match, came over to me and said, “Mr. Palmer, if you don’t mind, we’ll call this a one-up victory.” I nodded, unable to speak.

To this day, I don’t know why Joe insisted on that, but that’s how it reads in the record books, a one-up victory over Robert Sweeny. For his part, Sweeny couldn’t have been more gracious.

As the media swarmed around us, my mother was the first one to hug me when I walked off the final green. As we embraced, she was crying tears of joy. “Where’s my father?” I called out. “Let’s get Pap in here. He’s the man who really won the U.S. National Amateur.” For several moments I couldn’t find him in the crowd, but suddenly he was there, quietly smiling for the first time that week. I could tell he was happy. As a flurry of cameras clicked around us, he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

“You did pretty good, boy,” he said simply, and my heart swelled nearly to the breaking point.

This meant the world to me, and I felt my own tears coming. I’d finally shown my father that I was the best amateur golfer in America. It was the turning point of my life, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as much happiness on a golf course.

M
y extraordinary week in Detroit proved how quickly lightning can strike in the game of golf. Arriving there, I’d simply been one of a thousand dreamers who’d made it close to the pinnacle of amateur golf, a working-class guy with more grit than polish, more strength than style. But as the rounds of parties commenced and the flood of telegrams from well-wishers seemed to pour in from every direction, the press was suddenly writing head-turning things about me that I suppose I’d never noticed or perhaps simply always took for granted. They wrote about the intense excitement my “come-from-behind” victory and “go-for-broke” style of play seemed to stimulate in galleries; they wrote about the affectionate way I often spoke to spectators and paused to joke around with little kids in the crowd, my changing facial expressions, the lucky red baseball cap I wore all week, my composure under fire, the way I hitched my pants as I walked up a fairway, the openness of my emotions.

The truth is, I loved these stories. Not only were they the first to identify a host of personal characteristics and eccentricities people would come to associate with the name Arnie Palmer and apparently admire in coming years, but they also
confirmed what I dearly hoped was true—namely, that for all my rough edges and boyish lack of refinement, I belonged among golf’s elite. When Jack Clowser of the
Cleveland Press
wrote that “Arnold Palmer was born to be a great golf champion,” I daresay my pride and confidence grew immeasurably, as they did a few days later when John Dietrich of the competing
Plain Dealer
informed his readers that the Amateur had witnessed the birth of a “new super champion.” My crusty old friend Bob Drum of the
Pittsburgh Press
, who’d been writing about me since my schoolboy days in Pennsylvania golf, wrote slightly less breathless dispatches from the front lines about my alleged heroics at Detroit, while the major wire services sent these stories flying to all corners of the globe. I
still
get chills thinking about those first stories.

Lightning had struck, and my life would never be the same. In hindsight, though, it’s amusing how I misjudged the effect of the Amateur. Suddenly the press wanted to know about my future plans and any aspirations to turn professional. I remember hearing Pap reassure a reporter that I wouldn’t turn pro. Well, he was my Pap, and I dutifully echoed, “I like selling paint. I have no intention of turning professional. I am very happy, and my new title automatically puts me on the Walker Cup team.” At the moment I said this, I really meant it. With a six-month apprenticeship required by the PGA Tour, a period during which you could take no official prize money, I simply couldn’t imagine how I could make a living out on tour. So I pointed out that the Walker Cup would be contested in England the next spring and I couldn’t wait to go there. I also noted that my next golfing goal was the British Amateur crown.

They say lightning never strikes the same spot twice, but my tale is proof that it sometimes can strike you again when you least expect it to. In this case, lightning of a very different
nature struck me within days of hoisting the Amateur trophy. My words—to say nothing of the direction of my life—abruptly changed.

Mother hadn’t been back home in Latrobe for more than a few days when she got a phone call from Fred Waring, the celebrated bandleader of the Pennsylvanians, inviting me to play in his annual golf tournament, the Waite Memorial, at Shawnee-on-the-Delaware. Fred had invited me to his annual golf shindig before, but I could never afford to go. Now that I was the new National Amateur champion I was even more anxious to go, but I’d been away from my job so much of the summer I felt bad asking Bill Wehnes for yet another week off.

Bill solved the problem nicely by telling me, “Tell you what, Arn. If you can get Mr. Waring to invite April [Bill’s wife] and me to the tournament, we’ll all three drive down there.”

I placed a call to Fred, who happily extended the invitation, and almost before I knew it the three of us were rolling down the highway to Shawnee-on-the-Delaware in Bill’s big Cadillac.

The tournament festivities began over Labor Day weekend. We arrived on Monday and checked into the Shawnee Inn, a beautiful rustic lodge abuzz with tournament activities. I immediately went out on the golf course to play a practice round, and as I was coming back into the inn I saw a couple of pretty girls coming down the stairway that led to the main lobby. One of them was Dixie Waring, Fred’s daughter. But it was the quieter, prettier, dark-haired one that really caught my eye. She had smoky good looks, and her demeanor had a clear sheen of class. Fred’s longtime secretary, Cora Ballard, a whiskey-voiced redhead, paused and introduced me to the two girls she was chaperoning for the week, the
tournament’s official “hostesses,” and I shook hands with Winifred Walzer.