A Golden Masters For The King

By Nick Seitz
Photo By Dom Furore April 2004

Fifty years ago Arnold Palmer trundled into Augusta for his first Masters driving an aging Ford two-door and towing a modest trailer home. The 24-year-old future king of golf--now king in perpetuity--qualified for the 1955 Masters by winning the U.S. Amateur the year before. In the meantime he had turned professional and married Winnie Walzer, and the newlyweds were traveling the PGA Tour in low style.

"After that Masters," Palmer says, "we went home to Pennsylvania and parked the trailer in my parents' backyard. When we got out, Winnie said, 'Arnie, I love you and I'll do just about anything you want me to do, but I'm never going to live in a trailer again.' And that was the last time."

This year Palmer, a vigorous and only slightly paunchy 74, will fly to Augusta in his Cessna Citation X, the fastest business jet in the world. He probably will be at the controls himself, and he'll rent a roomy private home for the week.

His playing schedule these days is reduced to pocket size, but Palmer is preparing to tee it up in the Masters for a record 50th time. That's not "just" a grand total of 50, folks, which would be remarkable enough. That's 50 in a row. Five full decades of competing in a major championship without a miss for illness or injury.

Palmer has played 148 competitive rounds at Augusta National. Has hit 11,012 shots, most with flair and bravado. He is the only four-time champion. (Jack Nicklaus has won six times, no one has won five, and several luminaries have won three: Jimmy Demaret, Sam Snead, Gary Player, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods.)

Palmer cannot move at Augusta without stumbling upon a milestone. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his fourth and final Masters victory in 1964. (Also his final victory in a major championship, at the robust age of 34--and he caught me off guard recently by confiding that the way he won in '64 may have caused the end of the seven-year run of winning seven professional majors.)

"Arnold will be here when he's got wheels on his coffin," Faldo said last April. "They'll be pushing him down the fairway with a little putter coming out."

Palmer is convincingly adamant that after reaching a personal goal to play 50--"I thought it would be neat"--he will stop. His involvement after this year almost certainly will be as an honorary starter, in the currently suspended tradition of Gene Sarazen, Byron Nelson, Snead, et al.

Palmer announced a previous Masters retirement two years ago when the tournament hierarchy imposed an age limit on its past champions, though they had been awarded lifetime exemptions as well as green jackets--uh, green coats, according to Masters vernacular.

Though presumably not the targets of the rule, Palmer and Player, who have done as much as anyone to advance the stature of the tournament, would have been among the immediate victims. Letters and a visit from Palmer and Nicklaus to Augusta National's Hootie Johnson, pleading the case for the tournament's near-sacred tradition, persuaded the chairman to change his mind. Doubtless the two Hall of Famers were looking out for their own egos, as the great ones usually are, but no one has ever doubted their dedication to the loftiest spirit of the game.

Palmer remembers being paired in his first Masters in '55 with Sarazen when Sarazen was well past his prime and did not break 80. "It was one of the great experiences of my life," Palmer says, "and I think the galleries saw that. If you take away the tradition, you make the Masters just another golf tournament."

Palmer tied for 10th with Nelson and Dick Mayer in that Masters as Cary Middlecoff beat out Ben Hogan and Snead, who had taken turns winning the previous four titles. Palmer won a crystal vase for shooting the low score the last day, a 69, and his earnings of $696 were critical to a young married couple with no serious financial backing. Like other tour rookies at the time, he was serving a six-month probationary period during which he was not allowed to take official prize money. (Imagine that in 2004.) But the Masters then was an unofficial event, so he could keep his winnings.

It is only fitting that the arc of Palmer's professional major-championship career begins and ends with the Masters, the tournament that meant the most to him as a youngster and means the most to him as a senior.

In 1956 Palmer finished 21st when Jackie Burke edged a collapsing Ken Venturi in horrid weather. Then in '57 Palmer tied for seventh when Doug Ford holed a bunker shot for a birdie on 18 and won by three. Palmer was warmed up for an unprecedented 10-year run in which he won four times (in the even-numbered years), just missed in two others and never finished out of the top 10. He won and lost alike with the hell-bent aggressiveness that endeared him to hackers worldwide and, with an assist from television, thrust golf into the major leagues.

Victory No. 1. Palmer remembers 1958 first for the favorable decision he got after appealing an imbedded-ball situation on the 12th hole. He made a double-bogey 5 with a plugged tee shot, but played a provisional ball and made a par 3. Two suspenseful holes later he learned that the 3 would count. He won by a stroke over Ford and Fred Hawkins, who missed birdie putts inside of 12 feet on 18. It was Palmer's first professional major championship.

Victory No. 2. With two holes to play in 1960, Palmer trailed the ill-fated Venturi by a stroke. The man who added the word "charge" to our golf lexicon birdied the 17th and 18th to win, hitting his iron shot to six feet on the last hole and sinking the putt. He became the only player to lead at the end of all four rounds except for Craig Wood in 1941. Palmer went on to win the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills two months later in equally memorable style.