ORLANDO – The driver couldn’t stop telling stories about him. He rattled off golfers he’d driven around to the Invitational, and all of them had stories too it seemed like. But did he ever meet him? Just once, he had a strong handshake, a handshake you’d always remember. Although, people he worked with at the Invitational said that last year, the handshake just wasn’t quite as strong anymore.
The driver’s favorite story was one he heard from three different players. Like many stories about a mythological figure, the truth is fluid. The truth becomes what everyone else wants it to be. As Maxwell Scott says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
A few years back Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers’ quarterback, was at a charity event. A kid went up to him and asked for an autograph and a picture. Roethlisberger said no, and shooed the kid away. Here’s where Arnold Palmer comes in.
Palmer found out about the incident and talked to Roethlisberger. “Why didn’t you take the picture?” Ben said he didn’t have time and didn’t feel up to it, and Palmer stopped him right there.
“There are plenty of times I didn’t feel up to it,” Palmer said. “But I always did. And that fan, he was my grandson.”
And then Palmer asked Roethlisberger to leave the event.
Ask anyone who knew him. Ask anyone who didn’t know him. What do you remember about Arnold Palmer? Almost everyone will give one of two answers:
“He had a huge heart.”
“He was larger than life.”
Both things were true, and he was also a hell of a golfer.
At the Arnold Palmer Invitational in mid March the scene felt a bit like a wake. It was forlorn and solemn, sure, but it was filled with stories and plenty of drinks. At the unveiling of the statue on the course at Bay Hill, longtime friend and former Demon Deacon Curtis Strange gave a short speech. He pulled out a crinkled and overly folded set of yellow legal pages, and went through what Palmer meant not just to him, or to golf, but to Orlando, where he made his home not far from the course where he held his office.
“When you got to know him it was deeper,” Strange said. “It was his love and respect for people. It’s up to us to tell our children, grandchildren, and anyone who will listen stories about Arnold.”
There’s no shortage of those stories. Many of them are being told at the Masters this weekend, the first one without him in a year full of firsts, followed by seconds, thirds, and many others that will never start being easy.
“I’m going to do exactly what Arnie would’ve done,” Strange concluded. “I’m going to get a drink.”
Palmer is known for his signature drink, lemonade and iced tea, and as a master of branding long before anyone started flirting with the idea of a “personal brand,” he made sure his face ended up on every can. His signature – as important as anything else to him – is iconic, and he often told friends to slow their signatures down so it’d be more legible.
“It’s a privilege and a unique opportunity to sign something,” he’d say. “You need to take your time and your best effort.”
The nonalcoholic beverage wasn’t the only one he enjoyed. After every round, he had a Ketel One on the rocks with lemon. The longtime family vodka maker had no idea, not until Palmer’s wife Winnie reached out to the Nolet family before Arnold’s 70th birthday.
She asked if there was anything the brand could do, maybe get a couple bottles, and explained how Arnold had this drink often – with his favorite meal, meatloaf – on and off the golf course. Often when Palmer would be playing at Bay Hill with friends, they’d make a detour to the house and Winnie would ask what everyone wanted.
According to Golf Channel commentator Peter Jacobsen, the second someone asked for a complicated beverage, Arnold would say to that person “Well, looks like you’re going to help Winnie at the bar and bring them all out.”
Ketel One not only came through in that 70th birthday with bottles, but built an entire ice sculpture with relics of Palmer’s past inside. And that struck up a friendship with Carl Nolet Jr., the eleventh generation of Nolet to be in the spirits business.
“I learned something from him,” Nolet Jr. said. “And so many others learned a lot from him.”
At the Invitational, Ketel One honored Palmer in their chalet off the 18th hole with memorabilia, including Palmer’s Wake Forest yearbook, an original sweater from his first line, course notes from Augusta, and a notebook with scribbles from Palmer’s 1976 flight around the world. They also released a limited edition bottle with Palmer’s face, signature, and umbrella on it. They released 800,000 bottles to the public, marking the first time the liquor brand had ever had a likeness on the label.
“As soon as we got home from the memorial we said we needed to do something for him,” Nolet Jr. said. “You start peeling back that onion and there’s nothing but an incredible heart there. It’s sad we are losing these incredible men and women. It’s just been a hard year.”
Palmer’s office at Bay Hill is largely untouched. There are glimpses of the man he was, the things he cared about, and the fact that this is where an 87-year-old man worked and played. A Wake Forest pillow, pictures with friends and family, shelves filled with books on golf and history. And even a snowglobe with a golf ball you can shake to try and land on a tee.
For as larger than life as Arnold Palmer was, he was still a man who worked with people on a daily basis, and could never stop telling stories. Often it was possible to walk the steps up toward the office and be able to hear laughter from outside, as Palmer held court from his big chair for hours.
“The big handshake and the look right in the eye,” Strange said. “That was all Arnold.”
Even now it’s not rare to see people stop by and keep the tradition going, sharing stories – mostly about Arnold – and laughing it up. Folks don’t speak about him in the past tense, only in the present, as if he’s still walking the course and will sit in that chair at any moment.
The statue, now lit, overlooking the clubhouse at Bay Hill isn’t blocked off by any rope or fence. People can walk right up to it and touch it, take pictures with it, or have a quiet moment. It’s accessible and there for everyone, just like he was.
