“A good man.”
ON A SHIMMERING DAY in an ornate basilica at a small Catholic college two miles from Latrobe Country Club, hands clapped, voices rang, a guitar played, and the eyes of a thousand mourners inside the church—five times that many on an adjoining football field, and a national television audience—glistened in the sweet celebration of “a good man,” Arnold Palmer. In the welcome of Pope John Paul II’s friend, Archabbot Douglas Nowicki, the familiar words of the “valley of death” psalm, “green pastures,” “still water,” for the first time brought to mind a golf course.
Bob Goalby, who won the 1968 Masters when Roberto De Vicenzo signed for one more shot than he took, and Dow Finsterwald on a cane, both born in Palmer’s year, 1929, were his oldest colleagues there. “A lot of the guys our age can’t fly,” Goalby said. But 83-year-old Doug Sanders made it. He got the message.
Arnold’s youngest fellow pros who were present included Rickie Fowler, who brought the Ryder Cup, retrieved by the U.S. just a day and a half earlier. Captain Davis Love III, whose dad was tied with Palmer for the Masters lead in 1964, was in attendance, too, along with Phil Mickelson and assistant captain Bubba Watson. Though the seventh-ranked player in the world, two-time Masters champion Watson was skipped over in the Ryder Cup selections because the other players on Love’s team didn’t like him. His reaction was to ask to be included anyway, to root them on. He won more than anyone that week.
“We were looking down at the airstrip,” said Ernie Els, who flew in from Florida, “and the fog just suddenly lifted.” Other major winners in the chamber included Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Curtis Strange, Nick Faldo, Hale Irwin, Craig Stadler, Mark O’Meara, Mike Weir, Fuzzy Zoeller, Nancy Lopez, Juli Inkster, Annika Sörenstam, and, of course, Jack Nicklaus. The greatest (or second-greatest) player who ever lived. The only other candidate, Tiger Woods, was missing. But Muhammad Ali was probably sitting there, maybe next to Pap and Doris.
Golf’s rank and file was well represented, too: Peter Jacobsen, Jay Haas, Scott McCarron, Tim “Lumpy” Herron, Bobby Clampett, William McGirt, Billy Andrade, Jerry McGee, Chris Perry. Faces out of the past dotted the congregation, like Bob Drum’s son, Kevin, and old Bob Murphy, who tied Palmer for second in Arnold’s last good shot at a PGA. There might have been a more amazing assemblage of golf people sometime, but I doubt it.
Sam Saunders told a story of his grandfather, Dumpy. (“He’s still Dumpy in my phone, and [like hands on a golf grip] I’ll never change it.”) “He’d always take my call no matter where he was, and he’d always begin by saying, ‘Where are you?’” At 4:10 on Sunday afternoon, September 25, 2016, Sam called Palmer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “He asked me where was I? ‘I’m here at home,’ I said. ‘I’m thinking about you today—we all are.’ He told me to take care of my babies, take care of the children and my entire family. I told him I loved him, and he told me he loved me back. It was the last thing we said to each other, and I will be grateful for that the rest of my life.”
It reminded him of another phone call once, when Saunders dialed Dumpy and, flipping the script, Sam opened the conversation with “Where are you?”
“I’m with the president,” Arnold replied.
“The president of what?”
“Of the United States.”
“Why did you answer the phone?”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you.”
Against everyone’s counsel, but being a competitor, Palmer was in the hospital preparing for heart surgery that offered but didn’t promise an improved condition. He was awaiting a test when he died exactly as Pap had, just that suddenly. He didn’t linger. By the way, it wasn’t a rug on which he tripped, which separated the shoulder that never healed and started his decline. It was Mulligan, the dog. He said it was a rug because he didn’t want anyone to blame his old friend.
Arnie’s ashes were spread on top of Winnie’s at a particularly leafy and lovely spot by Latrobe’s ninth green. At that moment, a rainbow appeared.
Filing out, his friends paused on the church steps, listening to a piper and watching the jet with N1AP markings shoot straight up into the sky, on its way to heaven.