A Golfer's Life - Softcover

Palmer, Arnold; Dobson, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375705740 ISBN 13: 9780375705748

Verlag: Random House Large Print, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

There has never been a golfer to rival Arnold Palmer. To the legions of golf fans around the world, Palmer is a charismatic hero, the winner of sixty-one tournaments on the PGA Tour and still going strong on the Senior PGA Tour. But behind the legend, there is the private Palmer--a man of wit, compassion, loyalty, and true grit in the face of personal adversity.

Writing with the humor and candor that are as much his trademark as his unique golf swing, Palmer narrates the deeply moving story of his life both on and off the links. He recounts the loving relationship he shared with his father, "Deacon" Palmer, the course superintendent and head professional at the Latrobe Country Club where young Arnie developed his game, his friendships and rivalries with golf greats, his enduringly happy marriage with Winnie, his legendary charges to triumph and titanic disasters, and his valiant battle against cancer and remarkable recovery.

Arnold Palmer has lived one of the great sporting lives of the twentieth century. Now, with the help of acclaimed golf writer James Dodson, he has created one of the great sports autobiographies of our time.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James Dodson is a contributing editor and regular columnist for Golf magazine and golf editor for Departures magazine. His work has appeared in GQ, Travel & Leisure, Outside, and numerous other national magazines. His columns won the Golf Writers of America Award in 1995. Dodson's first book, Final Rounds, became an instant golf classic.


From the Hardcover edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Clear September evenings are beautiful in the little town of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, where I grew up and still live. A few days after my sixty-eighth birthday, on just such an evening, my wife Winnie and I left home and drove down the hill to the township road that hasn't changed much in the past half-century, crossed over, and started up the winding driveway of Latrobe Country Club.

The driveway crosses a small brook and two fairways, the steep downhill first and the long uphill 18th. We paused to allow a couple of late finishers--two boys carrying their own bags--to hit their final approach shots on 18. Winnie reached over and took my hand and commented that I seemed awfully quiet--and was driving awfully slowly--for a man who had a big speech to make in a few minutes.

Under normal circumstances I enjoy giving speeches, and I seldom use a prepared text, because years ago I discovered that speaking to people straight from the heart about a subject you love may be a bit more risky, but the rewards are almost always greater in the end. That's just my style, I guess--the way I prefer to play golf and the way I prefer to speak to people.

This crowd was different, however. The occasion was my fiftieth high school reunion, and at that moment almost two hundred people from Latrobe High's Class of 1947 were gathered in the upstairs dining room or sipping cocktails on the adjacent lawn, waiting for their unofficial host to arrive and get the festivities under way.

I hadn't seen many of these folks in over half a century--a thought that probably astounded them as much as it did me. How could that time have gone by so rapidly? Most of those in attendance, I knew, now lived other places and had come back to Latrobe from great distances. Others there were some of my closest friends on earth. But all of them had known me long before I became a famous public figure named Arnold Palmer. To them, I was simply "Arnie" Palmer, the skinny, golf-crazy son of Deke and Doris Palmer, the boy who would grow up and do well enough to buy the club where once upon a time he was permitted on the course only before the members arrived in the morning or after they had gone home in the evening.

I peered through the windshield and watched as one of the boys made a strong swing, and I remember commenting to Winnie, as his ball flew away in the twilight toward an unseen flag up the hill, "He may like that better than he knows." I knew what that boy was feeling, because I'd hit that final shot--perhaps from that very spot--thousands of times myself over the past fifty or sixty years. And every time, it filled me with a mixture of hope and wonder.

The boys picked up their bags and moved on. Wrapped in the spell of the game, they probably didn't have a clue or a care in the world who was watching them, and that's exactly as it should be, a tribute to this marvelous game we play. There is something magical about finishing a golf round in the dusk.

Driving on, I admitted to Winnie that I was a bit worried about what I was going to say to the folks on the hill, and she knew why without my having to say anything more. It wasn't being sixty-eight that was chewing away at me or even the slight bittersweet feeling I often experience with September's arrival--brought on by the knowledge that another golf season is slowly winding down. The truth was, several things had happened to us in the preceding year that made this homecoming all the more poignant, and therefore somewhat difficult for me.

She simply squeezed my hand and assured me that when it came time to speak, she knew I would do just fine.

"Oh really?" I said, with mock annoyance. "And what makes you so sure about that?"

She smiled that simple, no-nonsense smile of hers I've always loved and found so comforting, whether I set the course record or shot 80 in the final round.

"Don't forget, lover," she said, "I've known you a few years, too."




In life as in golf, we all encounter turning points, moments of trial when everything accomplished up till then falls away and everything we stand for and believe is summoned forth for thorough examination. On the golf course, I've been fortunate enough to come out on the happy end of several such trials. But a few days after the 1997 New Year's holiday, I faced a more urgent moment of self-reflection. The phone rang at La Costa Resort and Spa, in Carlsbad, California, where I was preparing to give a speech and present the Arnold Palmer Award to Tom Lehman at the annual PGA Tour Awards dinner at the kickoff event for the PGA Tour's new season. Winnie was on the other end of the line, and her voice immediately told me something was wrong. A moment later I knew what it was. For several years during my regular periodic physical examinations, I'd scored elevated PSA tests, but several precautionary biopsies had all come back negative. The most recent one, however, had not. Winnie had called to inform me I had pro
state cancer.

The very word cancer can send a cold blade of terror cutting through the strongest man or woman. I remember feeling a great gutted hollowness inside, followed by a wave of anger at the injustice of the verdict. Why me? Why now? My physicians were quick to point out that there was no particular hurry to confront this frightening opponent--I could delay surgery indefinitely, even decline it, if I so chose. There were even other procedures and treatment strategies available. The decision was up to me, they said.

"Well," I remember replying almost without hesitation, "if you're leaving it up to me, I think there's only one thing to do. Let's get the damn thing out."

In retrospect, this was the only course of action I could honestly think to follow. Get it out, get it done with, so I could get on with my life--back to the golf course and back to my work and family. I had so much I still wanted to do, so many things I still wanted to accomplish; why, even my golf game was showing new signs of vitality after a few years of less-than-inspiring play. The cancer couldn't have come at a more inconvenient moment (if there ever is a convenient moment). I'm sure everyone who faces this terrifying news has felt this way at some point or another.

I promptly canceled all my business appointments and withdrew from the following week's Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, a tournament Ihad played in since it was started in 1960 and had won five times. Then I flew home to Orlando to be with Winnie and my daughter Amy and consulted with my doctors. The next day, we flew north to the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and three days after that the job was done.

For the first time in my adult memory, I didn't play much golf that spring. I spent weeks recovering at our condo at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, watching the golf season unfold on television and reading an avalanche of get-well cards and letters I received from concerned people all over the world. I can't really express how grateful I was for these cards and letters. Cancer can make you feel so alone. Friends I hadn't spoken to in twenty years got in touch, strangers shared their own inspiring medical stories with me; some simply offered prayers, while others sent small gifts. It was powerful medicine to think I'd somehow touched so many lives--and now they were touching mine.

It's also probably just as well that I can't tell you how frustrated I was--what a pain in the rear end I must have been to Winnie, who had the unenviable task of trying to keep me in one place, off the golf course and out from underfoot at the office--to have to sit on the sidelines while one of the most memorable golf seasons in history was brilliantly unfolding. Within weeks of the new season's debut, it was clear young Eldrick "Tiger" Woods was going to fulfill his early promise of greatness and make maybe the most sensational rookie entrance to the professional ranks since a fellow named Jack Nicklaus came along in 1962 (an event I happen to remember very well), and I set my goal to be back on my feet and playing--perhaps even playing decently--by my own Tour event, the Bay Hill Invitational, in mid-March.

Thanks to Winnie and others who stayed after me to give my body proper time to heal, I was able to be back on my feet and functioning pretty normally by early March. My golf game even showed flashes of surprising sharpness, but I found I tired with almost frightening suddenness--a phenomenon that's not at all unusual, as it turns out, after cancer surgery. My stamina simply wasn't what it had always been, and I reluctantly had to accept that it would be months, instead of weeks, before I really began to feel like my old self again.

Even so, playing two rounds with Jack Nicklaus at the Masters was a boost for my morale, a real tonic for what ailed me, certainly one of the year's highlights. Proving perhaps that time is no friend of champions, Jack was limping a little bit, too, from a nagging painful hip. But we had a lot of laughs and both agreed we wouldn't have missed it for the world. The Augusta crowds gave us a lavish welcome, and it seemed somehow fitting that Tiger Woods demolished the field to capture his first major, a breathtaking performance that will live in Masters history.

Unfortunately for me, by the time I began to get my old energy back and was charging to the golf course again, it was almost September--the American Ryder Cup team was headed to Spain and Valderrama and the golf season had come and gone almost without me. Well, I told myself, the important thing is to realize that I've licked a big opponent, or at least subdued him, and it's time to set my sights on next year.

That's when the second blow came.

Ken Bowman was one of my oldest and dearest friends. We'd palled around together since our school days in Latrobe, and his father, Lloyd, a vice president with Vanadium Alloy Steel, had belonged to the club where my father, De...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Large Print
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375705740
• ISBN 13: 9780375705748
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 520
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Harder; https://www.edel.com; ; Neum�hlen 17; Hamburg; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland