50 Fun Facts About Arnold Palmer

Arnold Palmer grew up in which Pennsylvania steel town?

Latrobe Country Club, where his father was greenskeeper and pro, let young Arnold on the course only when members were away. In 1971 he bought the club.

Palmer attended which college on a golf scholarship?

Wake Forest drew him because his friend Bud Worsham played there. When Worsham died in a car crash, a distraught Palmer quit school and enlisted.

In which branch of the US military did Palmer serve for three years?

Coast Guard duty in Cleveland left his weekends free for tournaments. Palmer later said the three years matured him and had a lot to do with his success in golf.

Which 1954 title did Palmer call 'the turning point in my life' before turning pro?

U.S. Amateur glory was a class upset: the greenskeeper's son beat Robert Sweeny, a millionaire socialite and former British Amateur champion, 1 up in the final.

What job did Palmer give up in 1954, shortly before turning professional?

Selling paint ended for good that autumn. At his next tournament he met Winnie Walzer on a Tuesday and asked her to marry him that Saturday.

Which event gave Palmer his first PGA Tour win as a rookie in 1955?

Canadian Open: holding a big lead, the rookie hooked a drive into the trees and, rather than chip out safely, fired an iron through a narrow gap onto the green. He won by four strokes.

Whose tournament gave Palmer the last of his 62 PGA Tour wins?

Bob Hope's Desert Classic ended an 18-month drought for Palmer in 1973: he holed a birdie putt on the final green to clinch it and sent his visor sailing into the crowd.

How many major championships did Palmer win?

7 majors, all won between the 1958 and 1964 Masters. An eighth was his for the taking in 1966, when he led the U.S. Open by seven strokes with nine holes to play and lost.

Which major was the only one Palmer never won?

PGA Championship: the man credited with dreaming up the modern Grand Slam in 1960 never completed his own. He finished second in this one three times.

What nickname did golf give Arnold Palmer?

The King was a title he shared with Elvis, and it came from popularity more than records: his charisma turned golf into a mass television sport.

Who caddied for Palmer in every one of his Masters victories?

Nathaniel Avery, known as Iron Man, was one of the first caddies reporters sought out for a quote. Yet after his death in 1985 his grave lay unmarked until a headstone was placed in 2019.

Which pioneering agent signed Palmer as his first client around 1960?

Mark McCormack, a Cleveland lawyer, sealed the deal with nothing more than a handshake. The agency it launched, IMG, grew into a giant of sports management.

Palmer lost the 1960 Open at St Andrews by a single shot to which golfer?

Kel Nagle, a 39-year-old Australian, had never finished in the top ten of a major. With Palmer charging, he needed pars on the last two holes and made them.

Whose 1953 feat of winning the Masters, U.S. Open and Open in one year was Palmer chasing in 1960?

Ben Hogan could not try for a fourth: that year's remaining major overlapped with the Open. He won at Carnoustie on his only visit and never played the Open again.

Palmer won his first Open in 1961 at which course?

Royal Birkdale still marks his week with a plaque: from thick rough at the foot of a bush, Palmer ripped a 6-iron 140 yards onto the green and went on to win by a shot.

Palmer's only U.S. Open win, in 1960, came at which course?

Cherry Hills: between rounds a sportswriter friend told Palmer he was too far back to win. Irritated, he went out and shot 65.

How did Palmer begin his 1960 U.S. Open charge?

Drove the first green, a par 4, and two-putted for birdie. From seven shots back and tied for 15th, he birdied six of the first seven holes and won by two.

Palmer's arrival in 1980 helped launch which fledgling golf tour?

Senior PGA Tour organisers needed a star, and Palmer turned 50 just in time for its first season. He won ten of its events, five of them senior majors.

In 1976 Palmer set a speed record for flying a business jet where?

Around the world in 57 hours, 25 minutes and 42 seconds: Palmer, who had first taken lessons to beat a fear of flying, set the class record in a Learjet.

Who beat Palmer in the 1966 U.S. Open playoff after erasing a seven-shot deficit on the back nine?

Billy Casper trailed by seven with nine holes to play. Palmer admitted he stopped playing his rivals to chase the tournament's scoring record, came home in 39 and lost the playoff next day.

Palmer's 1966 U.S. Open collapse came at which San Francisco venue?

Olympic Club had done it before: at its first U.S. Open, in 1955, a little-known municipal-course pro named Jack Fleck beat the game's biggest name in a playoff.

Whom did Palmer beat over 18 extra holes to win the 1962 Masters?

Player and Finsterwald were major winners too, and Player led Palmer by three at the turn. Palmer then came home in 31 for a 68 and won by three.

Which playing partner never accepted the ruling that helped Palmer win the 1958 Masters?

Ken Venturi watched Palmer play a second ball at the 12th after his first plugged behind the green. Officials later let the par he made with it stand, and Venturi always called the ruling wrong.

Which phrase did writer Herbert Warren Wind coin describing the 1958 Masters Palmer won?

Amen Corner was Wind's label, taken, he said, from the title of a jazz record, for the 11th, 12th and 13th holes, where a disputed ruling and an eagle had decided the tournament.

What was Palmer's fan following famously called?

Arnie's Army drew the laborers, truck drivers and waitresses golf had never courted. Their numbers, on the course and in front of televisions, helped turn a country-club game into a mass sport.

Palmer was the first golfer to reach which PGA Tour milestone?

$1 million in earnings on the course was the smaller part of his fortune: endorsements and business deals brought in far more, and kept him among golf's top earners long after he stopped winning.

Which two rivals made up 'The Big Three' with Palmer in the 1960s?

Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player shared Palmer's agent, and the three rivals were sold to the world as a set. They stayed close friends and are credited with spreading golf's popularity worldwide.

Palmer won which trophy for lowest scoring average four times?

Vardon Trophy wins in 1961, 1962, 1964 and 1967 showed golf's great gambler was also its steadiest scorer. The award was created in 1937 to honour Harry Vardon, who died that year.

Which children's TV host was a year apart from Palmer at high school?

Fred Rogers learned his golf from Palmer's father, the professional at their hometown country club, who gave the future Mister Rogers lessons as he did his own son.

Which ceremonial Masters role did Palmer take up in 2007?

Honorary starter duty means hitting the ceremonial first tee shot, a tradition that had lapsed until Palmer revived it. He had played 50 Masters in a row, the last in 2004 at 74.

Palmer's Bay Hill Club and Lodge, home of his PGA Tour invitational, is in which city?

Orlando was his winter home for decades. He helped found two hospitals there, one for children and one, named for his wife Winnie, for women and babies.

What does the winner of the Arnold Palmer Invitational receive in his memory?

A red cardigan sweater, the kind Palmer made famous, replaced the winner's traditional blue blazer in 2017, at the first tournament played after his death.

Which golf media outlet did Palmer help to found?

The Golf Channel went on air in January 1995 when Palmer, its co-founder, flipped the switch. A round-the-clock network devoted to a single sport was then a new idea.

Palmer built one of the first golf courses in which communist country?

China's Communists had banned golf as too bourgeois, and no course had been built there for decades. One of the first new ones came in the 1980s, when Palmer laid out a course at a spa hotel in Zhongshan for the Hong Kong tycoon Henry Fok.

In 1999 Palmer became the first Masters champion invited to do what?

Become a club member: a Masters win brings only honorary membership of Augusta National, and no champion had been asked to join in his own right until Palmer, four decades after his first win.

The Arnold Palmer drink mixes iced tea with what?

Lemonade made up only about a quarter of the drink as Palmer poured it: three parts unsweetened iced tea to one of lemonade, not the half-and-half usually served under his name.

Adding vodka to an Arnold Palmer produces a cocktail named after which golfer?

John Daly, a two-time major winner as well known for his battles with alcohol as for his enormous drives, is the golfer whose name went on the spiked version.

Which brand has bottled and distributed the Arnold Palmer drink since 2002?

Arizona Beverage put Palmer's picture and signature on the can. He had drunk the mix for decades but licensed his name for a bottled version only in 2001, when he was past 70.

Palmer said the Arnold Palmer drink got its name after a woman copied his order in which city?

Palm Springs was where he was designing a course that day. Palmer had been drinking the mix for years; it took a stranger at a nearby table to give it his name.

Palmer is name-checked by a caddie in which James Bond film?

Goldfinger has its villain cheat during a round of golf with Bond, and Bond's caddie mutters: 'If that's his original ball, I'm Arnold Palmer.' The 1964 scene was shot at Stoke Park in England.

Palmer was the first golfer to receive which honour, in 2004?

Presidential Medal of Freedom came from George W. Bush. When Congress added its Gold Medal, Palmer joked that he was particularly proud of anything the House and the Senate could agree on.

Roughly how many hours of flight time did Palmer log as a pilot?

20,000 hours is more than two years aloft. Palmer took his first lesson in 1956, flew himself from tournament to tournament for decades and last piloted a jet in 2011, aged 81.

Which airfield was renamed for Palmer on his 70th birthday in 1999?

Westmoreland County Airport lies less than a mile from the house where he grew up, across the road from the golf club he later owned. It is also where Palmer learned to fly.

Which car brand's dealership did Palmer buy in Charlotte with partners in 1974?

Cadillac got more than a dealer: Palmer wore its patch on his sleeve at tournaments and starred in its adverts. Until two years earlier he had been the public face of a rival, Mercury.

Palmer and O.J. Simpson were both spokesmen for which rental-car company?

Hertz had made Simpson its airport-sprinting 'superstar in rent-a-car' in 1975 and paired him with Palmer in later commercials. It dropped Simpson after his arrest in 1994.

Which US president, a personal friend, gave Palmer one of his own paintings as a birthday present?

Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered it himself: he flew in as a surprise for Palmer's 37th birthday in 1966 and knocked at the door asking for 'a room to put up an old man for the night'.

Which motor oil did Palmer advertise from the seat of his father's old tractor?

Pennzoil's commercials used no prop: the tractor was the one he had driven as a boy on the course his father tended.

Which baseball star asked what a golfer was doing at the 1960 Hickok Belt dinner, then lost the award to Palmer?

Roger Maris, the American League's MVP that season, watched Palmer take the belt for the year's top professional athlete and got his own question back as Palmer walked out. Maris won it a year later.

As newlyweds on tour in 1955, Arnold and Winnie Palmer lived in what?

A trailer, bought on borrowed money and towed from tournament to tournament, was home for his rookie season while Winnie kept the books. Within three years he was the tour's leading money winner.

Less than a week after Palmer's death, which event held a tribute to him at Hazeltine?

The Ryder Cup was won that week by a US team that dedicated the victory to him and, at his daughter's request, carried the trophy to his memorial service. In 1963 Palmer had been the event's last playing captain.