For Love & Money

There, on the sixth tee, he waited: a towheaded, barefoot boy with a cowboy pistol dangling at his hip and a sawed-off ladies' driver in his hands. Everyone around the Latrobe, Pa. Country Club knew Arnie Palmer, the club pro's five-year-old son. Coming up to drive, the women players would chuckle at the kid, then look with dismay toward the drainage ditch that lay 120 yards down the fairway. At that point, Arnie would make a sound business offer: "I'll knock your ball over the ditch for a nickel."

When he got takers--and he generally did--Arnie would carefully apply the overlapping grip that his father had been teaching him for two years, dig in his toes, draw back his undersized driver, and cut loose with a swing of such violence that the momentum often sent him sprawling on the ground--even as the ball headed out over the ditch. Pocketing his nickels, Arnie would confide to steady customers: "Some day I'm going to be a big golfer, like Bobby Jones."

New Leader. In 1960, Arnold Palmer, now 30, has fulfilled his childhood promise: he is widely recognized as golf's top player. And he got that way by developing to a rare degree the same qualities he showed as a cocky kid on Latrobe's sixth tee. He still swings all out, still is confident he can make any shot, still is frankly ambitious, still loves to play for money.

But he no longer plays for nickels. His $17,500 purse for his eyelash victory at the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. this month boosted his 1960 tournament earnings to $44,256, a record for so early in the season. With six victories already this year, Palmer towers above the pack as the strong favorite for this summer's major pro tests: the U.S. Open at Englewood, Colo, in June, the British Open at St. Andrews and the Professional Golfers' Association tournament at Akron.

New Era. As golf's new leader, Palmer is also the brightest star of a new generation of professionals--a generation that seems likely to dominate the game for the next decade or more. By nature, professional golf has always been a nerve-shaking test of the individual, who must face and face alone the task of knocking a stationary little white ball into a stationary little round hole, with his livelihood depending on a true stroke.

Since World War II the biggest names in golf have belonged to a pair of truly rugged individuals: hard-bitten little Ben Hogan, a Texan who laboriously constructed his game to a point of mechanical perfection, and Sam Snead, a shrewd hillbilly playing out of West Virginia, with a natural swing that was the sweetest anywhere. Both 47, Hogan and Snead still play the big tournaments, but their reigning days have clearly ended.

So have the days of their golfing generation, an era characterized by a crew of salty-talking, hard-driving pros who got their formal education in caddy shacks and found their relaxation at the bar-bunkered 19th hole. The Palmer breed, now taking over, is that of the college-trained family man with an agent to line up fat endorsements and a cooler in the auto trunk for baby's bottle. Less flamboyant than their predecessors, the new pro stars are nonetheless developing into distinct, colorful personalities who are drawing the galleries as well as the paychecks. And the gallery favorite by far is Arnold Palmer.

Cold & Bold. Win or lose, Palmer, with his daring, slashing attack, is fun to watch. He is a splendidly built athlete (5 ft. 11 in., 177 Ibs.) with strength in all the right places: massive shoulders and arms, a waist hardly big enough to hold his trousers up, thick wrists, and leather-hard, outsized hands that can crumple a beer can as though it were tissue paper. Like baseball buffs, golf fans dote on the long-ball hitter; they pack six deep behind the tee to gasp in admiration as Powerman Palmer unwinds to send a 280-yd. drive down the fairway. Coldly precise in his study of the game, Palmer is anything but stolid during a round: he mutters imprecations to himself, contorts his face, sometimes drops his club and wanders away in disgust at a botched shot. On the greens, bent into his knock-kneed stance, he tries to sink long putts when many pros would prudently try to lag up to the cup. Says Palmer: "I guess I putt past the pin more than most anybody. I always like to give it a chance. Never up, never in, you know." Says P.G.A. President Harold Sargent: "Palmer is about the boldest player on the circuit."

In this year's prestigious Masters, a nationwide television audience got a close look at Palmer in his career's finest moment. With three holes to go, Palmer needed one birdie to tie and two to beat another young star, California's Ken Venturi, 28. Recalls Palmer: "When I came off the 15th green, everybody was cheering. I could hear them, but they weren't getting to me--if I didn't get the bird it was all meaningless to me. On 16, I hit a three-iron to get the ball up to the hole, but I eased off. I didn't want to go over, and I left myself short about 30 ft. I couldn't see the cup because of a roll in the green, so I had the pin left in. I bounced it off the pin and dropped the second putt for a par.

"I had checked the pin position on the 17th green when I was playing 15. I hit my tee shot as long as possible. I hit my second so it would carry over the trap but hold up before it skidded past the hole. I left myself a 25-ft. putt, uphill. I had to hit it hard to go in for a birdie. It did.

"On 18, there was one thing I wanted to be sure of: no bogie. I had a six-iron shot to the green at about 150 yards. As I got ready to hit it, I thought of my father. It happens millions of times when I have a tough shot. He kept saying to me: 'Just take it back slow and it will come off. Slow and deliberate.' The six-iron hit to the right of the pin, spun around and almost hit the cup. It was six feet from the hole. I was lining up the putt, trying to get a few breaths of fresh air--like I was spending a nice day in the country. The putt dropped for my winning birdie."

The Competition. But the Masters did more than provide the occasion for an individual Palmer triumph: it showed how Palmer's contemporaries have come to dominate professional golf. Of the top four finishers, none was over 30 years old, while the greying Hogan faded badly on the fourth day, wound up tied for sixth place, and the balding Snead tied for eleventh. Among the golfers from whom Palmer will get the toughest competition in the years ahead:

P: KEN VENTURI, 28 (6 ft., 170 Ibs.), has the smoothest swing of the younger players, is a wonderfully talented shotmaker whose game is still marred by inexplicable runs of bad play (he lost the Masters mostly because of a dismal six-over-par 42 on the back nine of the opening round). Son of a ship chandlery salesman in San Francisco, Venturi began playing golf at the age of nine, was a senior at San Jose State College when he came under the benevolent care of Millionaire Lincoln-Mercury Dealer Ed Lowery. A golf nut, Lowery not only bankrolled Venturi by making him vice president of one of his dealerships, but introduced him to Byron Nelson, the Texas pro with the great iron game who flourished at the end of World War II. After Nelson had tightened his swing, Venturi surprised the golfing world as an amateur of 24 by nearly winning the 1956 Masters (he blew up on the last day with an eight-over-par 80). Many pros think that Venturi's rigid, blueprint approach to golf is the main reason he has never won a major tournament. Admits Nelson: "Ken accepted what I told him as law, maybe to the point of overdoing it." But Venturi has begun to steady an erratic putter, is the chief threat to Palmer's domination of the game. Says Venturi calmly: "I fear no player. I say that without modesty, because modesty has nothing to do with it."

P: DOW FINSTERWALD, 30, needs only a hairline mustache to look like a riverboat gambler, but he too often plays golf like an old maid: a top hole-by-hole tactician, his cautious strategy is simply to finish well up in the money (since 1958 Finsterwald has won only 10 of his 105 tournaments, but finished fifth or better 48 times, including 16 seconds). Son of a lawyer in Athens, Ohio, Finsterwald went to Ohio University, developed an all-round game to compensate for his slight, hollow-chested build (5 ft. 10 in., 160 Ibs.). Finsterwald's steady brand of play avoids the single bad round that can ruin aggressive players like Venturi and Palmer (who is Finsterwald's best friend on the circuit). "If Finsterwald ever gets that little extra spark needed to win," says Byron Nelson, "it will be difficult for anyone ever to beat him."

P: BILLY CASPER, 28, the son of a San Diego plasterer, has developed the sharpest short game of the circuit, but is less than zealous about practicing with woods and long irons: "putting and chipping are more fun." Casper has weight problems (5 ft. 11 in., 205 Ibs.), stays relaxed on the course by playing swiftly while rivals grow tense as they brood over shots. Casper's accurate, conservative brand of golf last year won him the U.S. Open.

P: BOB ROSBURG, 33, is one of the most improbable of the younger stars. With small, weak hands, he has to pass up the pro's usual finger-entwined grip and just grab the club as though it were a baseball bat. Sweat fogs his glasses until he looks like a myopic insurance adjuster out for a Sunday round. He has muscle spasms in his back, an uncertain stomach. He once developed a skin allergy to leather: his hands broke out when he grasped the leather grips of his clubs. BUt Rosburg (5 ft. 11 in., 185 Ibs.), a second baseman at Stanford in his college days, nonetheless has power off the tee and a pool shark's touch on the green. Last year he won the P.G.A., finished a stroke behind Winner Casper in the Open. Rosburg is now grimly trying to conquer a problem even more serious than his physical ailments: an explosive temper that usually drives him into one miserable round per tournament.

P: MIKE SOUCHAK, 32, has sweated down to his rock-hard playing weight (5 ft. 11 in., 198 Ibs.) as a crack end at Duke University, is one of golf's longest hitters. But "Souch" seems too nonchalant for the pro wars, wields a cold putter, and blunts the edge of his game by frequently packing up, leaving the circuit and going home to see his family.

"Watch Me, Pap!" With such opposition, Arnold Palmer has need for every skill picked up in a lifetime of golf. He was raised, quite literally, on a golf course. His father, Milfred Jerome ("Deacon") Palmer, was greenskeeper and teaching pro at the club in Latrobe, 30 miles east of Pittsburgh. As a toddler, Arnie rode be tween his father's legs on the tractor-mower, romped in the rough, built castles in the sand traps. He was just seven when he talked his six-year-old sister Lois Jean into lugging around his heavy golf bag, went out one morning and broke 100 for the first time. "They wouldn't believe us," he recalls, adding with a slightly acid touch: "And I was putting them all out that day, toe." Palmer also fell into the habit of acting out a dream of the future by describing his play aloud to an empty green: "Arnold Palmer now lines up a putt on the 36th hole. He pauses. The gallery is quiet. He hits it and it's in. Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is the new U.S. Amateur champion!"

Many another kid has had such a dream --but to Palmer it was no fancy. "Except for Bobby Jones," says a friend, "Arnie never idolized any golfer. I think he figured he'd beat them all some day." Step by step, his father carefully laid the foundations for Arnold's game. The Deacon drilled his son endlessly on his stroke ("Left arm straight, right arm close, hands tight on the club"), brushed off criticism that the boy's swing was too violent ("When he gets older, he'll balance himself better"). In the process, Palmer absorbed from his father another mainstay of his game: stubborn determination. "Pap doesn't quit something until it's completely impossible," says Palmer. "He taught me that."

In the summer, Palmer built up his arms by wrestling tractors and mowers over the course (he had to stand up to handle the wheel); in the winter he drove balls painted bright red into the snow. At eleven he was coolly offering advice to the club champion--and having it gratefully accepted. Palmer never tired of practicing. "He'd be yelling, 'Watch me! Watch me! Watch me, Pap!'" recalls Deacon Palmer. "You'd get so sick of him you'd feel like hitting him a lick."

"A Gentleman'sGame."In high school, Palmer got a stern lesson in controlling his temper on the course. Infuriated by flubbing a shot in a junior match, he sent his club sailing over a poplar grove. Going home, he found himself in a car with a grim father. "Pap told me that this was a gentleman's game, and he was ashamed of me," says Palmer. "If he saw or heard of me throwing a club again, he was through with me as a golfer. That did it." Settled down, Arnie Palmer twice won the state high school championship, then headed south with Friend Buddy Worsham, younger brother of Pro Golfer Lew Worsham, with a golf scholarship at North Carolina's Wake Forest. The first day on campus Worsham shot a 68, Palmer a 67.

At Wake Forest, Palmer put a polish on his game, won a flock of tournaments, amused himself by shooting par while playing all his shots standing on his left foot alone. Then, in their senior year, Worsham was killed in an automobile accident. Completely shaken. Palmer quit school: "I thought I'd go crazy. I was always looking around for Buddy." Palmer spent three Stateside years as an enlisted man in the Coast Guard, won the Ohio State Amateur while on leave.

When he was discharged in 1954, Palmer went for the big time in the U.S. Amateur. Playing in the finals against onetime British Amateur Champion Bob Sweeny, Palmer rolled a soft, putt dead just three inches from the pin on the 36th green for the shot that won the match. At long last, the childhood fancy was fact: the announcers were saying that Arnold Palmer of Latrobe, Pa. was the new U.S. Amateur champion.

The New Boy. Ten days later, playing at Shawnee on Delaware, Palmer met a freckle-faced brunette named Winnie Walzer, daughter of the president of a small canned-goods company in Bethlehem. In three days he proposed. They were married that winter when Palmer turned pro--and discovered he was just a boy among the men who played the finest golf in the world. At times, the frustrated Palmer would even violate the mores of the pros by quitting in mid-tournament. "God, I wanted to win," he says. "My thought was to pick up if I wasn't winning and get the hell out of there."

His record for 1955 was speckled with failure ("tied for 22nd in Houston Open"), but Palmer kept improving his short game, learned not to gamble on every long iron shot, and by 1957 was the fifth leading money winner, with $27,802.80. In 1958, he went all the way, winning the Masters and the most money: $42,607.50. Last year, having trouble with his short and middle irons, Palmer won no major tournaments, but still was a respect able fifth in earnings with $32,462.14.

This year, although Arnold Palmer is playing better than ever, he still hustles back home to Latrobe at every chance to hit balls by the hour under his father's watchful blue eyes. Palmer has to guard constantly against a couple of faults: hurrying his backswing, letting the head of the club droop before starting the downward stroke. As he swings, he often mutters to himself the four check points drummed into him long ago by Deacon Palmer: "Firm grip, slow backswing, steady head, watch the overswing." Only once since he has been playing has he modified a basic part of his style: at 18, discovering that he was getting too much left hand in his swing, he changed his grip slightly. Many other pros are prone to tinker with their swings--often to their sorrow, e.g., Gene Littler, 29, who messed around with his fine natural form, developed a hitch that took a year to cure.

How to Scramble. In tournament play, Palmer relies on nerve, muscle, and the results of hundreds of hours of practice. Ideally, he hopes to tee off in the morn ing, before the winds freshen, and pile up an early lead. But whatever the time, wind or no wind, rain or shine, Palmer plays an aggressive, forcing game. Says one golf official: "Palmer will try a shot when the percentages are against him by 40 to 60. Venturi will never play odds past 50-50." Among the pros, Palmer is respected for his skill in the science of "scrambling" or "finessing," i.e., finding ingenious means for getting out of trouble. At his scrambling best, Palmer can play an intentional hook ("I close my stance slightly, drop my right foot back from the line of flight, try to swing a little from the inside out"), slice ("I open my stance and swing from the outside in"), find swinging room in a thicket, blast a ball out of water. "Some players can hit all the standard shots," says Palmer, "but they can't scramble. Eighty percent of the time there's a way out of trouble. You just have to know how to look for it."

Whether scrambling or playing perfect lies, Palmer starts with the great advantage of power. "The pros today play a home-run game," says Byron Nelson. With his strength off the tee, Palmer can often use his deadly four-iron for his second shot while his rivals are flailing away with their woods. In addition, says his friend Dow Finsterwald, this season "the best part of Palmer's game is his putting." Palmer's putting form is still a matter of argument between himself and his father. Arnold Palmer favors a wrist motion, the Deacon a pendulum-like arm stroke ("Pap's theory requires more nerves than I have," says Palmer). But whatever the merits of his style, Palmer has acquired the confidence necessary to a top putter. Says Finsterwald: "When Palmer addresses an 8-or 10-ft. putt, by God, he acts like he expects to sink it, which I suppose is the way you ought to think."

How Much Torture. To confidence is added concentration. "Sometimes during a tournament," says Palmer, "I see Winnie and don't even know it's Winnie." Says Bobby Jones, who retired from tournament golf because of the wear on his nerves: "The secret of winning tournaments is not just hitting the ball. It's how much torture you're willing to put yourself through. Palmer is willing to take the torture. Why, I've seen the tension drain the color right out of that boy's face." Explains Palmer simply: "If you relax, you blow the tournament. I get no enjoyment out of the game unless the pressure is on."

Under such pressure-packed working conditions, a few pros moodily suspect their fellows of improving their lies after marking their balls on the greens. But there is little of that sort of thing, and little of the kind of gamesmanship practiced in the 1920s by the great Walter Hagen, who used to deflate a field of opponents by grandly inquiring, "Well, who's going to be second?" Among the last of the sly oldtimers is E. J. ("Dutch") Harrison, 50. With a younger player watching, Harrison will occasionally choose the wrong iron for a shot, choke upon the grip, curb his swing and loft the ball to the green. His opponent, noting the club Harrison has used, will select the same one, blithely swing full-out--and send his ball soaring far beyond the green into a trap.

Motels & Laundromats. For the most part, the modern pros are a congenial lot. They share in their trade secrets, e.g., heating golf balls with pocket handwarmers fired by lighter fluid, because a warm ball has more bounce than a cold one. They share in the physical ailments of their profession: back trouble from the constant twisting of the spine (Finsterwald, Marty Furgol); a torn tendon along the third finger of the left hand that exposes a nerve, keeps a player from gripping his club firmly (Rosburg, Snead, Jack Burke Jr.). They share in their social life. Driving some 35,000 miles a year on the tour that begins in January with the Los Angeles Open and ends in December at the Coral Gables (Fla.) Open, professional golfers hunt first for motels with swimming pools for the kids, then look around for a Laundromat for the diapers accumulated en route.

Arnold and Winnie Palmer usually make the circuit with Peggy, 4, and Amy, 20 months, although Palmer sometimes pilots a rented plane to a tournament. At night Palmer plays bridge that is as bold and bad as his golf is bold and good, dozes contentedly before TV horse operas. Says Finsterwald: "He'll watch anything with manure in it." So close do the family relationships become that Peggy Palmer, watching Finsterwald on television when he blew a crucial putt during the Masters, almost burst into tears: "Poor Uncle Dow."

Big Business. But once on the course, the pros are all business--and a big business it is. Merely to maintain himself on tour, a professional golfer, without a family in tow, must spend about $12,000 a year. To get by, many a young golfer sells shares of himself to backers who pay him around $200 a week, take back most of his earnings for the first few years. One notably sound investment: Billy Casper, who got an allowance totaling about $24,000 during a two-year period, paid a profit of $30,000.

For the winners, the rewards are great. The 1960 pro circuit has 46 tournaments with purses totaling $1,600,000, twice the prize money of only four years ago and nearly ten times that of 1939. Last year's leading money winner, with $53,167.60, was spare, teetotaling Art Wall Jr., 36, who is just now recovering from a kidney ailment that sidelined him in February. Seven other pros earned more than $30,000 on the tour, doubled that amount with endorsements, exhibitions, salaries from their home clubs, etc.

On the basis of his record so far this year, Arnold Palmer seems certain to Dreak Ted Kroll's record tournament earnings of $72,835.83 in 1956. In addition, gets a minimum of $1,000 an appearance for a golf clinic, a $5,000 salary from the Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pa., up to $2,500 for a TV appearance. Wilson Sporting Goods Co. pays him some $6,500 a year for using its clubs, throws in a bonus of as much as $3,500 when he wins a major tournament.

On tour, Palmer's four suitcases bulge with free Munsingwear shirts (36 of them), Foot joy shoes (eight pairs for golf, seven for dress) and Sun State slacks (30 pairs). The National Newspaper Syndicate is now distributing Palmer's column on golf, and he is now completing negotiations for television commercials for L & M cigarettes (which he puffs by the pack on the course). Like the other top 26 pros, Palmer gets free use of a white 1960 Pontiac (the finicky Finsterwald turned his back in, bought a blue Cadillac coupe equipped with everything but a practice green).

To Arnold Palmer, the game begun so long ago on the Latrobe golf course has obviously been good. But Palmer plays it for more than mere money; he plays it out of love. His ambition is to cement his place in golfing history by building up a record of victories in the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the P.G.A. Fellow professionals need no such dramatic proof of Palmer's prowess: they already rank him as golfing's best.

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