The Wicked Game

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Chapter One

Mister Palmer's Neighborhood

The hands are large and unusually strong, with the leatheryfeel of a workingman's hands. With hands like that a fellow could be a smith in a steel mill, which might have been the fate of Arnold Daniel Palmer had he not trained his fingers into the Vardon grip at an early age and swung himself into the history of golf. The hands were resting on the controls of the golfer's jet as he descended through the rain clouds to the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. There was a time, thirty or so years ago, when Palmer was the only professional golfer successful enough to afford a private airplane, dispensing with those wearisome road trips between tour events. Now there is so much money in the game that practically every tour player flies to work. Still, few own their planes. Even TigerWoods leases. Palmer owned this $16 million Cessna Citation X and, at the age of seventy-two, he was the pilot.

When he made contact with the control tower, it was the slow, sonorous voice of a thousand television commercials -- for Pennzoil and myriad other products -- an instantly recognizable and engaging, though slightly too loud voice, for Palmer is a little deaf. The tower welcomed him home and gave N1AP permission to land; he lifted the flaps and thejet came roaring in over the rooftops of this gray steel town southeast ofPittsburgh. It is not the prettiest town in America. In truth, Latrobe hasa tired look. Its vitality has been seeping away since the 1970s, when thesteel industry went into recession, and the population has dwindled toless than nine thousand. But Latrobe still has its pride. Rolling Rockbeer is brewed here. And, of course, Latrobe has Arnold Palmer, or onemight say that Arnold Palmer has Latrobe, for he owns great swaths ofthe place and much of the rest is named in his honor.

Each spring, when he returns after wintering in Florida and California,where he also has homes, Palmer collects a new Cadillac from theparking lot of the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. It is left there forhim by Arnold Palmer Motors, the local General Motors dealership. Inlate April 2002, he picked up a Cadillac Escalade and drove downArnold Palmer Drive into Youngstown, the neighborhood he grew up in,and where he is very much a king of all he surveys. Many of the housesalong the road are owned by Palmer or members of his family, and muchof the surrounding land is his, including the wooded hillside in the distance,land that Arnold and his late wife, Winnie, acquired so developerscould not spoil the countryside. Since Winnie's death from cancer in1999, Palmer has also established the Winnie Palmer Nature Reserve atthe edge of town, a fond tribute to a beloved spouse. They were a famouslyclose and happy couple, though some friends were taken abackwhen he started dating again soon after her death, keeping companynow with a well-preserved woman in her early sixties by the name ofKathleen Gawthorp, who looks more than a little like Winnie did: petiteand pretty and brunette. Arnie always had been popular with women.

Soon the fairways of Latrobe Country Club came into view, the golfcourse where Arnold's father worked as greenskeeper and club professional.Arnie owned the club now, and his kid brother, Jerry, managedit. Turning left opposite the entrance, Palmer powered the Escalade upa steep, tree-lined road to a parking area in front of a low, whitepaintedbuilding. These were the stables where his daughters, Amy and Peggy, used to keep ponies. Now that the girls are grown, with childrenof their own, Palmer has had the stables converted into offices. Thewelcome mat is embossed with his corporate logo of a multicolored golfumbrella. Inside are bright, interconnecting rooms, offices to five assistantsled by Donald "Doc" Giffin, an owlish former Pittsburgh Presswriter who has been Palmer's man Friday since 1966. Adjacent is theranch-style house Arnold and Winnie built shortly after they married.This compound and the club across the road are Palmer's summer base,and it is a homely place without any of the obtrusive security youngTiger Woods needs to surround himself with in Florida. Palmer is protectedby the fact that he is part of the community here in western Pennsylvania,where he was born and raised, and local people like him. Theyremember that when he became famous and reporters asked him wherehe was from, he didn't say he came from a place near Pittsburgh, as otherswould have, because almost nobody had heard of Latrobe. "NearPittsburgh was not a phrase Arnie used," says Bob Mazero, his schoolfriend and now doctor. He was Arnold Palmer of Latrobe. He wasproud of the place, and that made people proud of him.

Virtually every day of Palmer's life is filled with business, with thegolfer speaking frequently by telephone with his assistants and associatesacross the country, including Ed Seay, who runs the Palmer CourseDesign Company in Florida. Of the plethora of celebrity golfers in thelucrative industry of golf course design and construction, the most successfulare Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, with Palmer's companybuilding more courses, though Nicklaus's are considered superior* andare usually more expensive. Still, a Palmer course is hardly cheap, costingup to $500,000 per hole, and, with 250 courses in thirteen countries,this is one of the reasons he is so rich.

Another major source of income is endorsement work. The day afterPalmer returned home, there was a photo shoot for the International GLUV Corporation, one of many companies he is contracted to. Thecameras for the shoot were set up in the office foyer, the centerpiece ofwhich is an array of trophies representing his ninety-two wins, includingseven professional major wins.

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Excerpted from The Wicked Game: Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and the Story of Modern Golf by Howard Sounes
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.