“I’m going to try to be your best friend from now on.”
AMERICA, ESPECIALLY AMERICAN TELEVISION, sees only American golf. Network announcers might calculate a Sergio García or Rory McIlroy victory “drought” in terms of years, even if it had been only weeks. By their count, poor Els won just 19 tournaments, never mind the 50-some world victories he rang up away from the PGA Tour. Even Palmer performed notable feats outside the country that barely registered on home radar.
In 1975, after a fallow couple of seasons, Arnold won the Spanish Open in April, a worthy tournament, and the British PGA in May, a big tournament, to almost no notice. Scottish journalist Renton Laidlaw was with him in Spain. “It meant so much to him,” Laidlaw said. “Right after the awards ceremony, I went down with him at La Manga to his condominium right on the course. He ran to the telephone to call Winnie in the States. It was almost as if he had won his first golf tournament. ‘Winnie! Winnie! I won the tournament!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve won again!’ He was so delighted, so elated. Like a young boy, like a twenty-one-year-old boy who had just lifted his first trophy. It was lovely to see. So natural. He was a superstar who was so completely normal. I wrote about that the next day in the paper.”
A year later, Palmer shot 64 in Palm Springs and seemed to be on his way to winning again in America, what would have been a sixth Bob Hope. But then something happened and he had to withdraw.
Doc Giffin’s best friend since childhood was an insurance salesman, a fellow Craftonite named Bill Finegan. One of Pittsburgh’s smokiest bedroom communities was Crafton, the suburb that shaped former Steelers coach Bill Cowher, known for making a sideline face (like a half-chewed caramel) that was a common expression in Crafton.
Finegan married into the Flanagan family; the Flanagans’ home served as headquarters and clubhouse for all the neighborhood boys. Bill and Doc (so named, by the way, because his father worked in a drugstore) played golf together growing up and as young adults pooled their modest resources to go in on a partners’ membership at an affordable course in Aliquippa.
In 1976 the friends planned a vacation together in Orlando to play Bay Hill. But, riding in the private jet of his richest customer, Finegan disappeared in a storm over West Virginia. The plane was missing for 10 days. Then pieces of it were found in the mountains.
“After the memorial service for Bill,” Doc said, “Arnold told me, ‘Go take your vacation now, Doc. Go to Bay Hill.’” Deacon came to Giffin and asked, “Would you mind if I tagged along?” “I was surprised,” Doc said, “but grateful for the company. ‘I’d love that,’ I told him.”
During the flight to Orlando, they played gin rummy. “He wasn’t a man of many words,” Doc said. “It was mostly nods and grunts.” But then he stopped dealing the cards, set them down on the tray, and looked Doc straight in the eye. “‘You’ve lost your best friend,’ he told me. ‘I’m going to try to be your best friend from now on.’”
Accustomed to rising early, the old greenkeeper headed out before daybreak to play nine holes on Bay Hill’s short track, the Charger; then, along with Doc, he went 18 more on the big course. Twenty-seven holes in all. “Played nicely, too,” Doc said. “We finished up, had a bite to eat, and he went back to the hotel for a nap. We had adjoining rooms with a connecting door. Some of Arnold’s workers took me out for a boat ride. When I returned, around dinnertime, the connecting door was open. Something felt wrong. I went into Deacon’s room and found him on the floor. He was dead. He’d had a heart attack.” Doc called Winnie, who called Arnie, who withdrew from the Hope.
Back in Latrobe, Giffin closed a locker and mounted a nameplate on it for the man who never set foot in the locker room without the express permission of a member. “Milfred J. (Deacon) Palmer, Golf Professional–Course Superintendent, Latrobe Country Club, 1921–1976.” It’s there today.
“I think Arnold wanted nothing so much in life as his father’s approval,” Gary Player had said, “and, for all that Arnie accomplished, I don’t believe he ever completely got it.”
To that, Doc said, “If Arnold didn’t know how much his father loved him, everybody else did. I did.”
“Pap played nine holes on the Charger,” Palmer said, “had a quick snack, came back, and played a full eighteen on the championship course. Came in, had a drink, said to Doc, ‘I’m going to go back and take a little nap. I’ll see you at seven o’clock for dinner.’ Gone. Whether he was lying down—they said he was—he died. Had a heart attack and died. Now that is the way to die.”
Doris went three years later, unluckier. “My mother had a tragic death,” Palmer said, “and that hurts me a lot.” She was tortured by rheumatoid arthritis, undergoing operation after operation, receiving artificial joints in her hands and arms, and the medication sometimes seemed more diabolical than the disease. “For a lot of years, she suffered,” he said. “It was a difficult way to die.”
Late in his own life, Palmer would say, “I’m more afraid of how I will die than of dying. I don’t want to linger. That scares me a little. The idea of lingering.”