Chapter 22

AFTER MAL MANIPULATED DAVID into scrapping his dream of attending the Penn State summer writing program, David’s interest in golf transformed from dispassionate and technical to obsessive and fervid. Once recess started, he began arriving at dawn at the driving range where he’d continue hitting balls until the sun set or his hands bled, whichever came first, as if he could beat his demons into submission with a five-iron.

Rage can’t carry you to the summit of golf, but it can get you pretty close. David had enough pent-up anger that summer to strangle many a man-sized course into submission. In July, he won a local amateur tournament, finished second in two others, and shot a course-record 63 in the West Penn Amateur at Seth Raynor’s brutal Fox Chapel. The entire summer built up toward the State Open. By the time it came around in early August, David had every reason to believe he could win.

He entered Latrobe Country Club, the sister course to his own stomping ground, with confidence and purpose. He’d win the damned trophy and tell his father—who hadn’t made any further overtures in the direction of building their relationship—where he could stick it. David stood on the first tee, driver in hand, overflowing with a potent mixture of determination and hatred. He heard a voice say, “Good morning.” It

was his playing partner, an irrelevancy). David would crush the course and anyone who happened to be in the way. He turned around, grousing and extended his hand without enthusiasm.

The man engulfed David’s hand with a grip so mammoth and strong that David thought his life might be squeezed out through his fingers. He looked up and swallowed.

“Good morning, Mr. Palmer,” he said. The words barely came up.

“Call me Arnie.”

“Good morning, Mr. Arnie.”

Arnie took a tee from his pocket and tossed in the air. It landed pointing at David.

“Your honor,” he said.

David heard the words and understood what he was expected to do, but he couldn’t move. His brain sent a signal to his feet, but it had no effect; the neurons wouldn’t fire. He felt embarrassed beyond words. David could only stand still and stare at Palmer. Arnie understood; it had happened many times before. He smiled and said, “Let’s tear it up today.”

That helped just enough. David regained control of his feet, walked to the tee box and placed a peg in the ground. He took a practice swing, then another, trying as best as he could to run through his normal routine, but he could neither feel the grip in his hands nor the weight of the club. He couldn’t feel anything at all. In fact, he could barely breathe. He simply swung and hoped for the best.

When the ball flew off the club, David was amazed. He’d prepared himself to whiff. It was a poor shot: a push into the rough, with a fading ball flight that David hadn’t seen once on the range that summer, despite having hit thousands of practice balls. Still, he’d never before experienced such a profound sense of relief. All he had to do now was watch his playing partner, the man with four green jackets, drive his ball over

the ditch. That he could handle.

Arnie took a half swing to the side of the ball, cracked the muscles in his neck, looked down the fairway twice and coiled. The swing was over in an instant—an animalistic blow so ferocious that it caused the ball to make a serpentine hissing sound that David had never before heard on a golf course. Arnie tilted his head to the right in his familiar manner and watched. The ball drew a bit too much from right to left and landed in the left rough.

“Dang it,” he said to himself. Then he smiled and said to David, “See you at the green.”

David relaxed then. Arnie wasn’t perfect. He was just a man like anyone else. His gift was his willingness to let everyone around him know that. Feeling more comfortable, David said, “Right before I roll my birdie in on top of yours.”

Arnie smiled and said, “That’s what I like to hear.” And it was true— Arnie just wanted to be one of the guys.

Amazingly, David lived up to his word. He stiffed his approach and poured his putt in right on top of the King’s.

“Game on,” said Arnie.

“Game on,” said David.

Arnie slashed his way through Latrobe, like Sherman through Atlanta, attacking each shot as if it would be the last one he ever hit. His tee shots went everywhere—three hundred yards down the fairway (though no one hit it three hundred yards back then), whistling around a dogleg, into the rough, behind trees. He’d played the course a million times, but still managed to find new places. Palmer seemed to relish the obstacles, as if playing the game in the conventional manner didn’t pose an adequate challenge. He wielded his irons like machetes, almost daring the ball to defy him, but it rarely did. Through the first nine holes, Arnie

found only two fairways, but made seven birdies.

In between shots, he talked to David like an old friend about golf and girls and life. He told David about losing the U.S. Open in 1966 and how, even a decade later, he sometimes awoke in the middle of the night in a cold sweat having relived the back nine at Cherry Hills. He told David how the British cheered for him even when he couldn’t break 75, how hard his Pap had been on him and how it had made him the man he was. He told him that at Wake Forest he’d been one down in a match to someone not nearly his equal, playing the round of his life, when his opponent called a penalty stroke on himself for something Arnie hadn’t seen and never would have suspected, and that was why golf was the greatest game in the world.

Palmer explained that he was playing that day because the game meant everything to him. It was a privilege for his beloved Latrobe to host the state open, which had been won by Jerry Barber, Tommy Armour and the great Lloyd Mangrum. If Palmer could win, he explained that it would mean as much to him as many of his professional victories. But, regardless of the outcome, to tee it up in competition with men of honor was a privilege no matter the stakes. David felt Palmer’s passion for the game.

Arnie continued to play with reckless abandon. He birdied the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth holes, triple bogeyed the difficult thirteenth after he hit in a bunker above the hole, and then birdied the next three.

On the sixteenth fairway, Arnie told David that he’d followed David’s career at West Latrobe High. Though they called it Palmer High, Arnie used the old name. Palmer said he saw a lot of young players and felt that David had what it took to make it on tour. He needed to chip better and suggested that David move his hands forward in his setup, but if David grinded at it, Palmer said he’d make it for sure. More importantly, Palmer said he liked the way David conducted himself. Future tour star or not,

he comported himself like a gentleman with whom it was a pleasure to play. Arnie invited David to have a beer after the round, or a ginger ale if he preferred, and he pledged his friendship to David and his help in building his career.

Arnie lived up to those promises. When David applied for membership in the PGA of America, his required character reference came from Palmer. When he won his first professional tournament, it was Arnie who wired the first words of congratulations. When Kristin gave birth to Scott, it seemed only natural to name Arnie as his godfather. David and Arnie played hundreds of times after that round in the Pennsylvania Open—first at Latrobe, then at Bay Hill after David and his family followed Arnie to Florida for better weather and practice facilities. They played in tournaments and exhibitions, for fun and for money. When Arnie played his last round in the U.S. Open, the tournament that meant more to him than any other—the tournament where he had his most stunning success and experienced his most bitter defeat—the threesome included David. He and Rocco Mediate shared the privilege of accompanying Arnie on that final tour of Oakmont, where Palmer had wanted to win more than anywhere else—expected to win—until Jack stuck a dagger in his heart. At the eighteenth hole, David watched from fifty yards behind as Arnie approached the final green, doffed his straw hat to the crowd and hoped that no one would notice him crying in the fairway.

Of course, that was all in the future. In that moment, David had only an assurance and the knowledge that he’d played with a legend and not embarrassed himself. More than not embarrassed himself, he’d played well. It was a great day. On the eighteenth, Arnie hit his approach to the elevated, triple-tiered green to thirty feet. David hit his ball just inside. As they walked uphill to the green together, shoulder to shoulder, David felt as proud as a young man could feel. David spotted Mal standing off

to the side of the green. He’d come straight from work to watch the end of the round, still dressed in his overalls.

“That your dad?” Arnie asked,

“Yes.”

“What do you say we give him a show?”

Arnie went directly to his ball, stood over his putt and said, “Don’t need to read this one.” Palmer knew Latrobe so well he often thought of the course as an extension of his own body. He popped his putt in the hole for a 65.

“Not bad for an old man,” David said.

“Not bad for a man with two bogeys and a triple,” Palmer replied, smiling. Then he nodded in Mal’s direction and said, “Now you knock yours in for your dad.”

David did. He holed the putt for a 67, four shots better than anyone in the field, except Palmer.

*** As the tournament leaders, the pair played again on Saturday, a windy day favoring Palmer’s low, penetrating ball flight. He shot 68, three strokes higher than his first-round score, but, in David’s view, far more impressive. Despite the challenging conditions, Palmer hit thirteen greens in regulation and managed the course masterfully. David held his own against the King and shot a 72—the only player in the field other than Palmer who managed to break 75. Though David had shot lower scores in his life, he’d never been prouder of his play. He could have fallen apart when a gust of wind deposited his second shot at the par-five third hole into a lake guarding the front of the green, but he dropped well back in the fairway, hit a solid pitch and holed the putt for his par. David felt himself learning the deportment of a professional from Palmer by osmosis.

When the duo teed off Sunday, a small gallery gathered to follow them. For the first time in his life, David played in front of a substantial audience. Playing golf in front of people is a different sport than playing golf alone or with your weekend foursome. One deals with all kinds of unfamiliar tension and many insidious, demonic thoughts like whether it’s possible to shank a driver and how much a skulled wedge would hurt someone who took it in the head. For David, the round became an exercise in self-mastery. He considered each fairway and green hit an accomplishment.

Arnie, on the other hand, elevated. He was like a virtuoso singer or actor who drew energy from an audience and became emboldened in his performance. Whereas David shrunk ever so slightly in front of the gallery, Arnie grew to larger-than-life proportions. David had never seen anyone play like this. Arnie birdied the par-four opener, holed a wedge for an ace at the second and nearly dropped a four-iron for a double eagle at the third. Through three holes, he was five-under par. At the fourth, another par-three, Arnie got unlucky when he hit the flagstick with his tee shot. His ball ricocheted into a bunker, from which he nearly holed out. He drove the green at five for a two-putt birdie, and he followed that with birdies at six and seven. He parred eight, the toughest hole on the course, and nearly drove the green on the ninth, which David wouldn’t have thought humanly possible. Arnie got up and down for his birdie—and a 27 on the front side.

When they stood on the tenth tee box, Arnie was fourteen shots clear of David. David, in turn, was eleven shots clear of the third-place golfer, who’d played quite well in his own right. On this day, there would be no collapse, and David had no interest in performing the role of Billy Casper. Arnie could have played Latrobe left-handed, putted with a croquet mallet and still won. But as they warmed up after a couple of quick

lemonades at the turn, Arnie grabbed his shirt and reported feeling a pull in his back.

“I think that’s it for me,” he said.

“What do you mean?” David asked. “It’s your tournament. Why don’t you bunt it around with a seven-iron?”

“I don’t want to take any chances with the PGA coming up.”

After that, Arnie announced to the officials that he’d be withdrawing. His excuse seemed plausible. The PGA Championship was his Holy Grail—the one leg of the Grand Slam that he’d failed to capture, and the one he said he valued the most, given his father’s place in the game. And the tournament was scheduled to begin in a week at Tanglewood Park, a Robert Trent Jones design in North Carolina that would have suited Palmer’s game well. But David knew better. Players didn’t shoot 27’s with balky backs. Palmer had withdrawn so that David could win, earn a spot in the U.S. Amateur and get his career going in the right direction. It was the most magnanimous act David had ever witnessed. It stood forever in his mind as the best example of the heights that golfers could achieve.

Arnie walked the back nine with David. He hit a couple of pitch shots and putts, talked with David about life as a professional and gave him the grand tour of the course he’d grown up on. After David holed out on eighteen, Arnie put his arm around him and told him that it had been a great weekend. They walked off the green together, arm in arm. Later, Arnie presented the winner’s trophy to David on behalf of the Pennsylvania PGA. After the ceremony, Arnie caught Mal’s eye, nodded approvingly in his direction, then disappeared into the clubhouse, leaving David alone with his father.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that David felt happy, but the rage with which he’d begun the tournament had dissipated and the desire to impale Mal on the winner’s trophy had been supplanted by a sense of

satisfaction in the work he’d put in over the summer. Playing that tournament with Palmer would always count among David’s best experiences in golf. Even at the age of seventeen, he understood that something special had happened.

David might even have allowed his father the satisfaction of an I-told-you-so. Mal could’ve said, “This is what I’ve been pushing you toward all these years.” David wouldn’t have embraced the comment— nothing could make up for Mal having been such an asshole for so many years, but he’d at least have understood it. In the glow of victory, David even might have interpreted it as a loving act. But Mal said nothing. Not “I told you so.” Not “See? This has been the plan all along.” Nothing. He opened the trunk so David could deposit his golf clubs, started the car and drove off without a word.

As Mal guided the Cutlass west on Pleasant Unity Road, past the farms and fields and Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, the silence felt increasingly weighty to David. Despite his resolve not to act conciliatorily with Mal, he impulsively initiated conversation, if only to break the tension.

“Playing with Palmer was great.”

“I’ll bet.”

They returned to the awkward silence. David stared out the window at Sewickley Creek. The quiet gradually transformed from uncomfortable to oppressive. Did Mal feel vindicated? Would he reconsider his harsh parenting techniques given David’s success? Would he offer a word of praise? By the time they passed Trauger Lake and crossed into West Latrobe, David couldn’t take it anymore.

“So I won the Pennsylvania Open. What do you think about that?”

Mal never took his eyes from the road as he responded. “You didn’t win the Pennsylvania Open,” he said. “You were given the title as an act of

charity by a truly great man, and the fact that you fail to understand that only confirms the weakness of your character and competitive spirit. No one with the discipline and drive to be a great champion like Mr. Palmer could have processed your experience as anything other than a failure.”

David suddenly became aware that they hadn’t been riding in silence the entire time. The engine of the Cutlass (which Mal had characterized as a family Christmas present in 1969, though he’d never allowed Adina or David to drive it, even after he’d come of age), was making a rumbling noise so faint that David’s brain had filtered it out as background noise. The noise became noticeable now. It must have been audible to Mal, who tended to the car obsessively. The ping seemed to grow louder, louder, louder—like the Telltale Heart—such that David felt he must scream or die, until he finally said, quietly, “I think there’s something wrong with the car.” This would be, more or less, the last substantial sentence ever spoken between him and Mal.