CANON GREATER HARTFORD OPEN

June 25, 2001

Arnold Palmer

ARNOLD PALMER: I think it is very nice and it is very rare. I'm surprised that there are not as many -- they are not all here, are they?

ARNOLD PALMER: I understand that. I think it's wonderful. My first victory on the PGA TOUR.

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, 1960, it was the Insurance City Open. It was at Wethersfield. I like the golf course. And as I recall, I got into a playoff with Ted Kroll, I think, and won on the second extra hole. Of course, that was -- in a lot of ways, that was a major victory for me. It was my second PGA TOUR victory but first in America or in the States. It was very welcoming, and, of course, things started happening a little better after that.

ARNOLD PALMER: He did give me a putter, yes and it was a good one. Lasted for a while. Of course when you have as many as I do, they can't last too long. You've got to get rid of them to give the new ones a try.

ARNOLD PALMER: Of course it was a great, sort of a homecoming for me because when I was in the service, I was stationed at New London and I spent my weekends here in Hartford and I played golf around the various golf courses with Bob Kay and, of course, Wethersfield and a couple other courses. But for a short period of time, I thoroughly enjoyed being here in Hartford on the weekends and when I came back after being here in the service, that was kind of a home coming for me and something that I look forward to very much.

ARNOLD PALMER: You must have heard me this morning. I just asked Tommy why he told all those stories about me throwing clubs and I could still be throwing them every day for hours and never catch up to Tommy Bolt. Actually, I was the referee for Tommy's club throwing. (Laughter.)

ARNOLD PALMER: I think that's probably true. It depends on how you mean that. I traveled with Tommy my first year on the Tour and I joined up with him and his wife in San Francisco in June of '50 and we traveled most of that summer and of course we ended at the Canadian Open in August of '55 and just so happens -- and we were good friends and we are still good friends. I don't want you to misunderstand that language that we used, but Tommy and I have been good friends for many years. Of course -- and a sideline to that, I think that he is one of the greatest players and hitters of the golf ball I had ever seen. Traveling with him and getting to know him was a real pleasure for me. I was playing with him by coincidence after shooting 64, 67 the first two rounds of the Canadian Open and then coming back with another 64 in the last round I was paired with Tommy. On the sixth hole, I hit what was not too untypical. Matter of fact, I had better say, it was sort of a typical tee shot. Duck-hooked it into the woods on the sixth hole of the final round and the ball was lying in some pretty heavy rough and I just by chance saw an opening to the green; and there was a log lying there, Tiger Woods type rock, and we moved it and Tommy came in and he --

ARNOLD PALMER: I guess. He says, "Hit it into the fairway, you dumb bastard." Of course, at that age, that was not my policy, so I saw this opening and I hit it out through the opening on the front of the green and Tommy was mad at me for the rest of the day, but he wanted me to hit it into the fairway and I hit it on the green and he didn't like that at all. But that tells you that he was a friend. He was interested in what I was doing and as you know, I won the tournament and shot my -- I have not shot four rounds lower than I shot that week since I've been a professional:

ARNOLD PALMER: I don't think there's any question about the fact that to be fair to the all-time golfers, back to the beginning of the PGA TOUR, that we need to look at a system that would give points for how you finished, how you played over your career and starting at the beginning. I think, you know, in the early days, there was really no reason to go any other way but for money. It was the only system that we had, really, and the money was so feeble that it was not a big deal. Our leading money winner in 1958, and I think I was around $50,000. Of course $50,000 in '58 was a lot of money, but when you look at it today -- as a matter of fact, my eligibility on the Senior Tour has run out or is close to running out. So, if I didn't have some sort of an exemption other than money, I would not be eligible to play, and, of course, that's a sensitive situation, not for me, because I'm not really a factor or haven't been a factor on the PGA TOUR, but at the same time, the sponsors want me to play and want me to show up. But if I were solely relying on the money, I would not be making it. Now, of course, they have made an exception as to people that win over so many tournaments, and that's how I am eligible now. But I agree with anyone that has a theory, we need to find a system that will give the guys an opportunity to continue to play if they wish and/or to put them in a category that is equal to the kind of money that they are winning today. That's as simple as that.

ARNOLD PALMER: You think I am, really?

ARNOLD PALMER: He's my buddy. (Laughter.) I have tried very hard to stay the way my father taught me, to stay even before I thought of playing professional golf or being out here doing what I'm doing and I try to give that advice to the young guys today. I see that sometimes they forget that -- under different circumstances, they might have been on the other side of the ropes looking in and I always feel like it's nice to remember that you could be on the other side, so treat those people like you should like to be treated if you were on the other side of the rope, and I've tried to stay with that policy.

ARNOLD PALMER: Of course, in both instances I won this tournament in the playoffs, and I remember it pretty well. I remember coming to the last hole at Wethersfield and I think it was the second time and I looked up at the scoreboard and -- who was it, Bill Collins was leading, and I needed to either make a birdie or a par. I think I needed to make a birdie at the last hole. I don't remember that exactly, but it was somewhere there and there were 16 guys tied for second. And I thought, oh my God, well you've you just figure it out -- and that time, the purse went from like, whatever, 2,000 or $2,500 to $100 at 16th place. So, if you didn't -- and that immediately hit me. I thought: My God, if I make a bogey on the last hole, I can be -- I can be 17th. Well, it turns out, whatever I needed, a par or birdie, tied and then won the playoff. But that was a pretty dramatic situation for me. That was 1960, wasn't it? And it wasn't just the money, it was where you finished because we were doing everything then. We were playing for points and position on the -- again, go back to the same old stuff. I was looking for the -- everything was taken off the Money List. So it was important to win money whether you needed it or not. It was important that you won it to get in the right position.

ARNOLD PALMER: First of all, I remember very specifically Charlie winning this tournament. First black man to win on the PGA TOUR. Charlie and I were pretty good friends. Even back way back, and we talked and I thought it was wonderful. I thought he had done a great job. I suppose that relating that to Tiger Woods and to the fact that when -- just before Tiger had left Stanford, he called me and he said, "Could I come meet you?" I was playing in Napa. Of course, that's a story in itself, because Tiger came up and we had dinner and we talked about the things that he wanted to talk about, and some of the very things that we are talking about here now. Be humble and stay that way, whatever happens in your life and don't forget to treat other people just like you would like to be treated. Those are some of the things we've talked about. He asked a lot of questions and I thought it was pretty neat that he cared enough to come and do that, and of course we had a great dinner. He left and he got a notice and I got a notice that if he didn't pay for his share of the dinner, he was going to be in trouble with the NCAA and the USGA. So, as it turned out, he had to send me a check for his part of the dinner. That was sort of the beginning. But I thought that he handled that very well.

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, I don't think it was a lot different than what I had to go through as a young golf professional's son on the Tour. I had played a lot of amateur golf and I had been pretty successful as an amateur golfer. But when you come out, it is a whole different ball game of course, until people get to know you and are comfortable with you, it's tough. Now, Charlie, obviously being black, had a little more of a problem and he had to overcome and I think that in his mind; it was always nice to have a friend or have people that he could talk to and a lot of the guys were pretty friendly with him. I played a lot of golf with him and we had a lot of good times and playing golf. So, I think that was part of the whole series of what was going on, and I was aware of what was happening and I think everybody else was. But it was over, except for the fact that he had to get used to the fact that he could do whatever he wanted to do and play wherever he wanted to play.

ARNOLD PALMER: Sure, just to be very short in my answer, sure. I miss a lot of the things. I think that the Tour has lost some of the friendliness and some of the demeanor that it once had. But it's like golf clubs and golf balls. Things change. And we are in an upscale situation golf-wise, economy-wise, world-wise. If you recall, I went to the British Open in 1960 and won. One of the reasons I went was that I felt without question, that golf was going to become very, very international. You could quiz me all day on that and it would take all day to answer all the questions, but if you remember -- and of course, I was reading a lot about golf and the international aspects of golf, whether it be South Africa, Australia or you name it. Any place -- and this is the key to it -- any place that the United Kingdom had a colony. So you can go back in history a long ways, they played golf. Well, just the fact that that was a part of the golf scene, simply meant that those people in those countries whether it be Africa or Australia or India or wherever were going to have golfers, and as time went on, those golfers were going to become factors in the game of golf. So one of my things, when people said, why do you go to the British Open, I said, well No. 1, I thought that you could never be a real champion in golf if you didn't win internationally and if you didn't win the British Open because British Open was the key to golf around the world and international golf. If you think about it and look at it, that's the case. It's a must. So winning the British Open was very, very important to me and playing in it was more important, and the fact that it was at St. Andrews and all of those things that I have just mentioned about international golf. Well, look at international golf now. Look at what's happening. I mean, as time goes on and mind you, that it's going to become more and more a part of the golfing scene. We talk about world tours and whether Greg Norman had the thoughts originally or whether the PGA TOUR and president-day situations with World Golf Championships; is that it going to become a more predominant factor in the game of golf than any other single thing than we are looking at today: The U.S. Tour, Japanese Tour, the Australian Tour, Far Eastern Tour, whatever, they are all going to be factors. But one major factor is going to be the world tour events, and it would not surprise me -- when, in the next ten years, to see as many international major events as there are individual events and individual countries.

ARNOLD PALMER: I think it's sort of like back in the early days when Bob Hope got involved and Sinatra and Crosby. When they played in a tournament, it brought another factor into the game of golf, and the fact that Sammy Davis came here was specifically to call more attention to the golf tournament by people who might not otherwise be interested in what's happening in golf. The entertainment world was very, very helpful to professional game by their involvement, whether -- and the people that I mentioned were the people that were key in that a long with other people. Gordon McKray (ph), Phil Harris, and that had a lot to do with the popularity of golf and more people recognizing it. Dwight D. Eisenhower was probably one of those factors involved in bringing for recognition to the game.

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