Arnold Palmer. The True Master!

If it's Masters time it must be Arnie time, and that doesn't change whether the king will make the cut or even break 80.

The point is that the Masters and Arnold Palmer have been identified with one another for more than 40 years. In fact it was 40 years ago, in 1958, that Palmer won the first of his four Masters. He won in even years starting in 1958, adding titles in 1960, 1962 and 1964. He didn't win again, and maybe he won't do all that well this year, but so what? It's a treat just watching Palmer tee it up at Augusta National year after year. He wouldn't miss the spring classic, that's for sure.

Palmer:   His first Masters victory

"I haven't given myself a chance at Augusta in recent years," Palmer said. "This time I'm going to get some practice in."

Last year Palmer missed the halfway cut by miles, shooting 89-87 for the first two rounds. But he had every excuse in the world, given that he was not ready to compete after going through surgery for prostate cancer. Still, this was the Masters, and Augusta National. Palmer was going to be there.

"It was important to me personally to get there," Palmer said, and it was easy to hear the conviction in his voice and also the disappointment at how he played. "I had it in my mind that I probably wouldn't play well, but I wanted to give it a shot."

Palmer felt badly about how he played, of course, because he hates to play poorly. Never mind that everybody at Augusta and around the world of golf knew that he was hardly in shape to play the Masters. The point is that Palmer gives every round his best shot, and that so many of those shots have come at Augusta in the Masters. It all goes back to 1955, when Palmer played his first Masters. He saw the course and felt the atmosphere and sensed that he would win the Masters. You could go further and suggest he knew he would one day win the Masters.

"Everything at Augusta was perfect," Palmer recalls. "I felt if you could play at all and if you had the desire to win then the place you could do it was at the Masters. Everything was just perfect for good golf. There was nothing to stop you from doing it."

Curt Sampson in his new book The Masters: olf, Money, and Power in Augusta, Georgia, refers to a conversation he had with Palmer on his first Masters. "I did think I could win the Masters the first time I played it," Palmer told Sampson. "Yes, I did, without question. I was always very confident I could do well at Augusta."

It wasn't long after that Arnie's Army was born, and it happened in Augusta. There was reference in the papers to soldiers from Fort Gordon in Augusta who were manning the scoreboards during the 1958 Masters. The tag Arnie's Army was born. The Army is there year after year after year, and is full of golfers and non-golfers of all ages.

On Arnold   Tom Watson   Ben Crenshaw   John Daly   Raymond Floyd   Paul Goydos   Fred Couples   Andy Bean   Larry Mize

But then Palmer hit his approach shot into a grenside bunker. His third went through the green, and in a moment Palmer had double-bogied the hole. To this day he remembers his error clearly, even acutely.

"I was aware of the situation all my life where people wanted to congratulate me before I was done," Palmer said. "I lost my concentration for a moment there. I did it all right, but at the time I didn't think about it. I was asking for trouble and I got it. It cost me that Masters."

Still, Palmer was in the middle of his run of four Masters wins then, and would win two more. Sure, his last win was in 1964, and yet it is a mark of his significance to the Masters that the tournament would seem to lack something if he were not to play. Palmer is a presence at every tournament he plays, or wherever he travels in golf. But perhaps this is nowhere as true as at Augusta National during the Masters.

Perhaps it is because of the way he has been identified with the Masters and the deep feelings he has for the event that the tournament committee has sought his advice on many matters over the years. The current hot subject, of course, is whether or not the club should alter the course to Tiger-proof it, as the term is these days. It's as if people are handing every Masters for the next 20 years to Tiger Woods.

Still, Palmer does not want more rough at the course, or narrow fairways. But he would like fast and firm greens, and has made his feelings known.

"Oh yeah, they know my feelings," Palmer said when asked if he has offered his opinions to the Augusta National Golf Club. "They've heard my opinion a lot."

And his opinion is simple and straightforward and said without pulling any punches. That's Palmer's style. Always has been, always will be.

Palmer:   His first time at Augusta

"But the only way to do that is to go back to Bermuda greens from the bent," Palmer continues. "They were overseeded with Bermuda for so many years and that's what needs to be done now. But they won't do that."

Palmer was making thos observations because he cares so much about Augusta that you can almost hear the pain in his voice. He wants the course to be a test, now and forever. And what he saw last year with Woods was the dawn of a new age, where the course proved vulnerable to him. But Palmer feels it is also vulnerable to a whole new generation of players.

"It's important that we keep Augusta much the same as it has been so we can compare," Palmer said during the Bay Hill Invitational a couple of weeks ago. "I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing what has happened over the years. Add a little more length, I have no problem with that. Changing it dramatically on the surface I would have a problem with. I think we should keep the golf course pretty much the same as it has been. If making the greens a little harder (or a lot harder) and a little faster (or a lot faster) is part of that program, then let's do that.

Palmer:   What would Jones  and Roberts think today

Whether or not Augusta National returns the greens to Bermuda grass will not affect how Palmer feels about the Masters. It's interesting to note in this regard that Palmer might have won his four Masters because of something he overheard his fellow pros saying early in his career at Augusta.

"I can remember a couple of pros watching me practice one day," Palmer remembers with feeling. "They were very prominent pros. I could hear them. I overheard one pro say to the other, 'What's that guy's name over there?' The other one told him. He knew me and had been watching me. He says, 'You better tell him not to give up his day job. I remember that very distinctly."

Palmer went on to win that 1958 Masters, and his reign at Augusta had started. It's not over either.

"What I did (in 1958) was notable because television was coming on pretty strong," Palmer notes. "(Dwight D.) Eisenhower was president of the United States. (Eisenhower, of course, loved golf and eventually Augusta National would build Ike's cabin on the premises.) There were a lot of things that were enhancing the game of golf and helping to bing it before the public. That was 39 years ago."

Palmer:   Origins of the Army

"It's amazing," Palmer's right-hand man and great friend Doc Giffin says. "It's his favourite tournament. One of the questions that always comes up is how long he'll keep playing there. We were looking at how he played last year and he was amazed he played that badly."

That's Augusta, and that's Palmer. He can hardly remember that he was in a weakened state a year ago when he arrived at the Masters. This year he has prepared, and he is feeling strong. Can he make the cut? Well, this is the Masters isn't it? And this is Arnold Palmer, a man for whom emotion and desire is everything. So you never know, do you? More to the point, it doesn't matter if Palmer makes the cut, at least not to his fans. They are happy just to see him there, in the spring at Augusta National, where he belongs and where he has accomplished and meant so much.

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