“Wake Forest University has become synonymous with exceptional golf and that extraordinary reputation began with Arnold Palmer”.
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Palmer, who died Sunday in Pittsburgh at age 87, according to a statement from the USGA, was the accessible common man who would become the King and lead his own army.
Palmer won seven major championships, including four Masters titles, and he became one of the “Big Three” as his rivalry with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player dominated golf throughout the 1960s and 70s.
The first to win four Masters, including in 1962, Palmer also captured two British Opens, in 1961 and ’62, at Royal Birkdale and Royal Troon, respectively.
Palmer developed his following at tournaments and on television with an affable demeanor, telegenic looks and modest background as the son of a greenskeeper.
Wins first PGA Tour event at the 1955 Canadian Open.
“The announcer Vin Scully once said: In a sport that was high society, Arnold Palmer made it “High Noon”.
In addition to golf, Palmer had charitable endeavors and numerous successful business ventures, among them the ownership of several golf clubs (including his hometown club where his father once tended the grounds), as well as negotiating the deal to build China’s first golf course. His dashing presence singlehandedly took golf out of the country clubs and into the mainstream.
Following Palmer’s electrifying victories at the Master’s and US Open in 1960, golf has had almost 50 years of unprecedented global growth, Dodson explains.
Palmer’s roots are grounded in foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, and that’s central to his image as an easy-to-relate-to, blue-collar guy.
Palmer’s death comes on the heels of the death of another popular sports figure Sunday.
Tiger Woods tweeted: “It’s hard to imagine golf without you or anyone more important to the game than the King”. Palmer actually won the Masters every other year from 1958 to 1964.
Ex-Cowboy Hunter Mahan – the 2003 victor of the Haskins Award for outstanding collegiate golfer and co-winner of the Ben Hogan Award – tweeted out, “Thank you to Mr. Arnold Palmer for showing generations of golfers how to act on and off the course. Your philanthropy and humility are part of your legend”.
Although Palmer is most famously known for dominating the golf course, his legacy will continue on in other ways. He was one of the 13 original inductees into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974 and won the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Though he was awarded an honorary doctorate in humanities, he left college one year early and joined the Coast Guard.
Palmer is survived by his second wife, Kit, his two daughters, six grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. He was a champion as well as an ambassador to the world of golf and countless fans, including me.
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“I just think it’s time”.
