Rory McIlroy during the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
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Overnight guests in Arnold’s house — at Bay Hill, where he had a condo; in Latrobe, Pa., where he lived for decades in a modest one-story ranch house — were always told the same thing, delivered in Palmer’s foghorn voice: “There’s bologna in the ‘fridge if you get hungry in the middle of the night.” He ate his with mustard and mayo, on white bread. Arnold Palmer was a man who knew the good things in life, and how to keep things simple.
Nobody would be foolish enough to try to speak for Arnold Palmer. He spoke for himself with precision and insight and didn’t need a lot of words to say a great deal. He’d say of himself, “I’m as dumb as a rock.” In his own way, he was often the smartest person in the room, smart enough to know the value of lowering expectations. He would acknowledge that there’s no simple solution to the PGA Tour-LIV divide that has diminished professional golf. In his every public pronouncement, he would (I’m guessing) be in public support of the Tour because it was in his DNA to do that. He did not like public disputes. He would never use this word, but he was an institutionalist.
And a traditionalist. I don’t think there is any doubt: It would make him ill to see only 70 Thursday-Friday players in the tournament named for him that he regarded as one of the most important things in his life. He thought 125 was a good number, that you needed enough players to have a critical mass going into the weekend. I’m making an educated guess here, but he would see a cut for a field with 70 players in it as the joke that it is. A cut should mean you are on your game Thursday and Friday. A cut is a powerful reminder to every player in the field that this game of professional golf gives you nothing. He admired greatly Tiger’s ability to do what he needed to do on Fridays, after mediocre Thursday rounds, to make the cut.
He would be absolutely flummoxed that four players are not in the field this week (among 40 or so others): Jake Knapp, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and . . . Bryson DeChambeau. Regarding the first three, you can imagine him saying, “Here are three guys that people want to see, that can contend or win, that play with the kind of style that makes golf better.” Yes, Arnold was drawn to stylish players, and his bottom-line question for anything related to golf was this: Is it good for the game? In 2016, Fowler was in the Bay Hill field and made the 150-mile drive north from Jupiter, Fla., to Bay Hill to see Palmer to tell him in person he could not play. Palmer was disappointed but impressed by the gesture, and he spoke about it more than once.
Gestures meant a great deal to him, as did custom. By custom — this is going back some years — former Bay Hill winners had an invitation-for-life to play in the tournament. On that basis, leaving all the other complications aside, you can imagine Palmer saying, “Bryson should be playing this week, and I’m going to make the rough so thick this week that even he can’t play out of it.”
Arnold loved that Woods won his tournament eight times — and that Paul Goydos won it once. Golf without a David v. Goliath element to it is a much lesser game. LIV Golf and Signature Event golf leave no possibility for a Paul Goydos victory because there is nobody like Paul Goydos in the field.
Arnold loved cash on the barrel. He and his buddy Dow Finsterwald played in a made-for-TV match on a par-3 course in Las Vegas against Barb Romack and Mickey Wright. That day came with a guaranteed payday and Palmer had hundreds of similar days in his long career where he got paid for showing up and being Arnold Palmer. But he would distinguish between exhibition golf and tournament golf with ease. LIV Golf, 70-player-field golf, indoor night golf on a simulator, I think Arnold would put all three things in the same category: glorified exhibitions. Arnold Palmer didn’t become Arnold Palmer by playing in glorified exhibitions.
He knew bologna when he saw it. He went to his maker ruminating about the ones that got away, starting with the half-dozen U.S. Opens that got away from him in fourth rounds, or fifth ones. Millions of us this time of year we need full-throttle, full-field, David v.Goliath tournament golf. The kind of golf that turned Arnold into Arnold, and the PGA Tour into the PGA Tour.
Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.
