As the story opens, borrowed from the pages of Ian O’Connor’s book “Arnie & Jack,” when Arnold Palmer arrived at his first Masters in 1955 it was in the driver’s seat of a beat-up two-door Ford. The year was 1955. Riding shotgun was his pregnant wife, Winnie. They were hitched to a small trailer in which they would spend their tournament nights.
Palmer finished 10th that year and won the less-than-kingly sum of $696.
It got better.
By the time Palmer was done playing 50 consecutive springs in Augusta, winning four times in a seven-year span between 1958-64, turning the curious into acolytes, making the adventures of a thick-armed golfer as entertaining on TV as those of Ozzie and Harriet, he had come to mean almost as much to the Masters as the founders themselves.
Palmer’s most famous shot may have been struck somewhere else — driving the par 4 No. 1 at Cherry Hills in 1960 to begin a furious final-round charge at the U.S. Open.
Because of the gravitational pull of his personality and because he cared enough to make the trip, Palmer may be credited with re-invigorating the British Open in the eyes of the American audience.
But it was at the Masters that Arnie really became Arnie, where the fullness of his affection for the gallery — and it for him — as well as the volatility of his game became most evident.
Arnold Palmer is the Masters and the Masters is Arnold Palmer, as inseparable as the ice tea and the lemonade that go to make the drink named for him. The one that tastes so perfect on a sunny, pollen-laden afternoon when there is golf to watch in the south.
They completed each other, this man and this tournament.
The arc of Palmer’s career had its beginning and its end at the Masters. This was the first of his seven major championships. It was the last major tournament he played, shooting a pair of 84s in 2004 at the age of 74 and declaring, “I’ve had it. I’m done. Cooked. Washed up. Finished.”
His famed foil Jack Nicklaus would win more Masters than anyone, twice more than Palmer. But always in play there was classic observation of author Tom Callahan, who wrote: “It’s as though God said to Nicklaus, ‘You will have skills like no other,’ then whispered to Palmer, ‘But they will love you more.’”
Palmer won the Masters in heroic style, in 1960 with birdies on No. 17 and 18. With that trademark slashing swing, like that of a blacksmith who had forged his own set of clubs, he brought the final hole to heel. His drive pierced the tunnel of pines and rounded the corner of the fairway. His 6-iron landed to five feet. “A lionhearted finish,” the great Bobby Jones called it.
Palmer had blown the tournament on those same holes the year before. Risk, reward, it was all pretty much the same to him. Palmer never was one to win or to lose meekly. That was his appeal to a public that had enough caution in its own life.
It was at the Masters where Arnie’s Army was born, as the soldiers from nearby Fort Gordon, some working the hand-turned scoreboards on tournament week, began falling in behind Palmer. Pretty soon, the whole golfing world joined, no buzz cut required.
It was Palmer, while winning his first Masters in ’58, who inspired golfing scribe Herbert Warren Wind to coin the label Amen Corner for holes No. 11, 12 and 13. After engaging in a spirited dispute with a rules official on No. 12 and taking double bogey, he responded with an angry eagle on the par 5 13th. Wind set the drama to words, and they took root and flowered every spring thereafter.
Palmer was the first champion invited to become a permanent Augusta National member — now a tradition. Tournament co-founder Clifford Roberts always claimed he had no favorites, but everyone knew that Palmer would be his pick.
When the tradition of the ceremonial starter flagged at the Masters, it was Palmer who brought it back in 2007. No one had performed the duty since Sam Snead in 2002.
“I think I’ll just let (the single tee shot) go wherever it goes,” Palmer said at the time. And then reminding everyone that he was just like them, he added, “I’ll probably leave later and go wind up with a beer in front of the television.”
He showed up every year thereafter, even this year, when he was too unsteady to hit a shot but still able to take a seat and watch Nicklaus and Gary Player continue the task.
In his statement following Palmer’s death Sunday, Augusta National chairman Billy Payne testified to the deep symbiosis between the man and the Masters: “His presence at Augusta National will be sorely missed, but his impact on the Masters remains immeasurable — and it will never wane.”
Whenever Palmer was on the grounds at Augusta National, he made golf a personal experience for those on the other side of the green ropes. Surely it was impossible to connect with so many thousands on an individual level, but Palmer hitched up his pants and seemed to do it every time. When he acknowledged the cheers with a warm smile and a thumbs-up, when he veered closer to those ropes than he had to in order to convene with the gallery, Palmer was the momentary buddy to all.
This was the man who lectured other players to sign autographs carefully and legibly, because they were important to the person on the other end of the transaction. The man who took great satisfaction that his autograph had so little value on the memorabilia market because there were just so many of them out there.
A champion died Sunday. But within the circle of the Masters, it was more personal than that.
“His friends at Augusta National Golf Club will always love him,” Payne wrote.
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