The King, R.I.P.

Sad news from overnight, the story we've all been dreading having to blog....

Mike Bamberger starts our reflection:

Arnold Palmer, who died Sunday in Pittsburgh at age 87, led an American life that will

A classic Walter Ioss, Jr. image from the '64 U.S. Open.

never be duplicated, so rooted was it in a lost time and a place and the sui generis chemistry of the man. 

The golf legend won his last major championship in 1964 and his last PGA Tour event in 1973, but in the 43 years since then his status as an international icon has only grown. He had a knack for making people feel better about themselves, and about their prospects. As a player, he allowed his fans to join him in his unbridled assertiveness. He created a vicarious thrill as no player before him and none since. When his golf skills faded and his hair turned silver and then white, he exuded grandfatherly warmth that was also unmatched, possibly in any sport. For these and other reasons he was not only the most beloved figure ever to play golf but the rare golfer who was able to transcend a niche sport and become a genuine celebrity.

Arnie's star shone brightest a little before I came of age, but there was little doubt as to who his fellow players revered the most.  Perhaps a couple of quotes to frame the man:

The sports columnist Dave Anderson once wrote that nobody could enjoy being who he or she is more than Arnold Palmer enjoys being Arnold Palmer. That observation got to the heart of the man and the matter. Palmer lived a full life and got millions of other people to believe they could do the same.

True that, as well as this from Sam Snead:

‘PALMER WENT TO BED AT NIGHT WITH CHARISMA, AND HE WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING WITH MORE.’

This Tom Callahan tribute might be the best of the early items (h/t Maggot), capturing the roots of Arnie:

He was a Pittsburgher, like Billy Conn, Mike Ditka, Honus Wagner and Johnny Unitas. The Mellons and the Carnegies and the Rooneys and Gene Kelly and David McCullough and Sean Thornton. 

He was loamy meadows and smoky skies, river valleys and steel mills, like the plant where his father, Milfred, worked ("Steel, Michaeleen, steel in pig-iron furnaces so hot a man forgets his fear of hell") until just in front of the Depression, Milfred took a job as greenkeeper and pro (mostly greenkeeper) at Latrobe Country Club. Nobody addressed him as Milfred, except Doris when she was of a fanciful mind. To most, he was Deacon. A few said Deke. Arnold called him Pap.

It's all there, including the tragedy during his Wake Forest days....  I especially liked this little anecdote:

He started to play at the age of 3 and turned pro at 7 when Latrobe member Helen Fritz offered him a nickel to hit her drive over a ditch. After adjusting the cap pistol strapped to his hip, he took a whirling cut that brought to mind a finish-line flagman or a revolving lawn sprinkler. Mrs. Fritz's ball floated down like a paratrooper onto the fairway. Every Ladies' Day thereafter, he was available to bash dowagers' drives for five cents. "Some of them," he said, "were slow pay."

Slow pay?  You mean like Colin King?  OK, that's for a precious few to enjoy...

But since Jack was my golf God, I'm guilty of framing Arnie in relationship to Jack, and this from the Callahan piece captures the complexity of their relationship:

Still, even as partners, Palmer and Nicklaus clashed. It was as if God said to Nicklaus, “You will have skills like no other,” then whispered to Palmer, “but they will love you more.” 

"I can remember ginger-ale battles in our hotel rooms," Palmer said. "One night," Nicklaus said, "we got to kicking each other's shins under the table. I don't know why. I kicked him. He kicked me. Neither would give. We ended up with the biggest damned bruises. We used to do the stupidest stuff."

 And this:

This is how I'd like us to remember them both.

Nicklaus and Palmer finished 1-2 at the Baltusrol Open in 1967 and 1-3 at Pebble Beach in 1972. Either man might have won the 1975 Open at Medinah if they hadn't been paired together in the fourth round and become so fixated on each other that they lost track of the field. 

Afterward, Jack was bemoaning three closing bogeys so pitifully that Arnold finally jumped in and said, "Why don't you just sashay your ass back out there and play them over?" 

The vinegar evaporated in time. Palmer made the first move. At a senior event, The Tradition, he knocked Nicklaus over by asking him to look at his swing. "Can you imagine?" Jack said. "Me? We've played 30 years, and that's the first time he ever asked me." "We still have the needle out," Arnold said, "but we know now that we love each other, and we always did." 

Even during the hatchet-burying ceremony, when Palmer was the honoree at Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament, the needle was still glistening. Asked by a Canadian writer if he would be returning to the Canadian Open (Arnold's first pro success, the only blue ribbon to elude Jack), Nicklaus replied, "Barbara says she's going to keep sending me back there until I get it right." To which Palmer inquired innocently, "Are you sure she's talking about golf?"

Or maybe this is how we should remember them:

That's the conclusion of the playoff at the 1962 U.S. Open, which I've always assumed was Arnie's most stinging defeat, coming as it did in his back yard.

I always felt that Arnie's legacy was those heartbreaking losses, and you can recite the list as easily as I.  Oakmont, Olympic, Baltusrol and St. Andrews head the list, but Augusta National as well.  His collapse on the final hole of the 1959 Masters was no less tragic than the others....

But the highs were incredibly high as well, and you'll no doubt grow tired of seeing that tee shot from Cherry Hills in 1960 in the coming days.  His record doesn't quite capture the man.....  Oh the total wins is sufficiently gaudy, it's the seven majors that seems deficient.  Bu, Arnie being Arnie, I'll encourage you to remember that in the span of five years (1962-66) he lost no fewer than three U.S. Open playoffs, and those were to guys named Nicklaus, Casper and Boros.

Strangely, the only guy that never warmed up to him was Ben Hogan, one assumes because of their differing styles:

Though he won the Masters in 1958 and 1960, Palmer didn't formally become Palmer until the 1960 U.S. Open near Denver. There were other applicants, including Mike Souchak, a muscleman himself, and Ken Venturi, the betting favorite to succeed Ben Hogan atop golf. Hogan's favorite, too. "Hogan never called me by my first name," Palmer said coldly. "Never."

Hogan famously competed at that Open while paired with a rosy-cheeked amateur named Nicklaus, though that's unlikely to be the source of The Hawk's enmity.  While Palmer's roots weren't of the dirt-poor variety like Hogan's, they were most certainly of the working-class, Western Pennsylvania salt-of-the-Earth variety.

He was The King, and his kind shall not pass this way again.