This is the week that the PGA Tour descends on Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge for the Arnold Palmer Invitational. All week we’ll hear tributes and adulation for The King from each and every person involved with golf. And Palmer deserves every one…and more.
Without Arnold Palmer golf isn’t what it is today. You can say that it just luck that Palmer came along just as television was transforming America. And maybe it was a fortunate bit of timing but then golfers always need a bit of luck. Palmer’s good looks and swashbuckling attitude drew fans by the millions into what later was called Arnie’s Army.
It was Palmer that with agent Mark McCormack revolutionized the athletic endorsement model. Corporate America hitched themselves to Arnie and have stayed there for over fifty years.
Arnie was about as cool as an athlete could be. If he had played baseball he would have been Mickey Mantle. If it was basketball he was Michael Jordan. If he choose football he would have rivaled Joe Montana.
But it was golf for Arnie and we are so blessed that it was.
As John Feinstein says below Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods can be debated all day about being the greatest golfer of all time but it is Arnie that is the most important.
He’s right. Arnie did so much more than just play golf and win tournaments. He brought the game to the everyday American and gave them a hero to cherish for all time.
All hail the King.
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