Aggressive Arnie

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 10

Aggressive Arnie

Arnold Palmer has always given the impression that he thinks God is a golfer. He is the type of competitor who would try to roll seven with one dice. And because of this, those followers of the game who watched him play Bob Charles at Shirley 12 years ago will remember him for his worst hole, because it exemplified his approach to golf. At the demon fourth, the downfall of many a good golfer, he attempted to draw his second shot over the road to the right and back again. It was a cavalier touch, but it was not precise enough. Arnie succeeded only in hooking wickedly, his'ball coming to rest in thick rough beside a barbed wire fence.

The fence prevented him from playing a right handed shot, and he had only a narrow gap between the fence and a macrocarpa tree.

Palmer grimaced,, grabbed his one-iron, and

played a left-handed shot with. the back of his club. Amazingly, he squeezed the ball out of the rough and through the tiny gap — only to see his ball swallowed by a bunker. He flopped a shot out of the sand, but his succeeding chip was too strong, and he needed two putts to hole out. A seven w.ent down on his card. It was a poor reward for his efforts; everyone was agreed on that.

How they would have enjoyed being in the gallery eight years later when Arnold Palmer played a great hook at the forty-first hole of the U.S. Open. His ball came to rest under trees amid a tangle of rocks, twigs, poison ivy and ground hogs. It was a par-five hole, and Arnie had prospects of scoring a nine. ; But instead of bumping the ball back to the fairway he had left so abruptly, he cracked a seveniron away from the hole and over the adjacent fairway. His ball pulled up

250 m from the hole, and in between was a half-acre of rough and some skyscraping trees with children perched in them. ■ “Maybe Arnold is going to surprise the hole;” said one wag. "He’s going to surround it.”

But the big man silenced the cackling. He gripped his three-wood, aimed at the clouds, ■ and hit a prodigious shot. The ball disappeared from sight, eventually to drop back to earth, pin high and 5m from the green. • Palmer hitched his trousers, looked as if he expected the outcome, and marched off to chip and two-putt for a six. He could easily have had double figures. “Now you know all you need to 'know about Arnold Palmer." said one spectator. ‘‘He treats a golf course the way a caveman treated his wife. He hits it over the head to get its attention, then drags it back to his cave by the hair.”