LATROBE, Pa. _ The King sits exactly where you would expect a king to sit: Wherever the hell he wants.
In the case of Arnold Palmer _ the undisputed king of golf as the sport’s most iconic, recognizable figure _ his throne is a rather modest one: Same seat with its back to the wall at the same table near the bar in the grill room at Latrobe Country Club, the place his father, Milfred “Deacon’’ Palmer, helped build as part of the original construction crew and later served as superintendent and head pro.
Most afternoons between May and October Arnie can be found in that cozy downstairs lair having lunch at the six-top table that can squeeze eight if need be. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come by and meet him, greet him or merely chat. His visitors at that table over the years have ranged from the rich and famous to the local steelworkers, barbers or bankers.
On this particular afternoon, lunchtime on a US Open Friday in Western Pennsylvania, I was fortunate enough during a visit to the club to be invited into Arnie’s welcoming world.
“Are you going to have lunch?” Arnie asked.
“Sure.”
“Well, have a seat,” Arnie said.
When the King invites you to sit down for lunch you sit down for lunch.
Arnie, who at 86 has slowed down physically but still possesses his sharp wit, had a snifter of Dry Sack sherry, neat, to go with his lunch. And conversation flowed as we all watched the US Open on a corner flat-screen TV.
When Jason Day fluffed a greenside chip on the 11th hole, Arnie looked at the TV wistfully and said, “I did the same thing he did right there. I made a 6 on the ninth hole. Cost me the (US) Open championship (in 1962 at Oakmont). I turned a 4 into a 6.’’
Arnie lost that U.S. Open in a playoff to a young Jack Nicklaus, who made that the first of his record 18 majors.
There’s not a lot Arnie has left on the table in his 86 years. To borrow from baseball vernacular, Arnie never struck out looking with the bat on his shoulders. This is a man who���s spent his life swinging for the fences.
Oakmont is a place that’s been a significant part of Arnie’s history. It is where he made his U.S. Open debut in 1953, missing the cut as an amateur. It is where he lost a playoff in 1962 to a young Jack Nicklaus, who made that US Open the first of his record 18 majors. It, too, is where Arnie made his emotional farewell from the U.S. Open in 1994.
There was some hope that Arnie would make an appearance this week at Oakmont for the U.S. Open, but with his compromised mobility, his family and friends decided it might be too much for him. A few relaxing lunches at his home club would have to do.
He lives across the club entrance on a street named (of course) Legends Lane, where he splits his time with his Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Fla.
Latrobe Country Club, which sits about 40 miles southeast of Oakmont, is a throwback in time. Think 50 years ago. You find yourself waiting for Jackie Gleason or Bob Hope to belly up to the bar for a post-round beverage or three. There are scar marks on the floor at one end of the grillroom bar from the dice games that used to be played there late into the night back in the day.
“It’s real cozy,” Latrobe head pro Matt Pellis said. “No frills. Old-school. It’s always been home for Mr. Palmer. That’s the way he wants it to be.’’
The locker room, with its wood lockers, is a relic. Arnie’s locker is unmarked, just blending in with the others down one row. His father’s locker, though, has a plaque on it, remains padlocked and has never been unlocked and opened since he died in 1976.
The clubhouse is like a museum, with glassed-in trophy cases packed with silverware, plaques and assorted baubles, every inch of the walls filled with amazing photographs and paintings chronicling Palmer’s rich life. There is one area in the upstairs bar they call the “wall of fame,’’ where there are pictures of Palmer with everyone from US Presidents to Muhammad Ali.
Pellis, who went to high school across the street from Latrobe CC and played his high school golf matches there as a kid and now is in his first year as the club’s head pro, described the club this way: “It’s basically been unchanged forever.”
Arnie holds the course record of 12-under-par 60 at Latrobe. He made two bogeys in that round _ one of which came on the par-3 10th, on which I came as close as I’ve ever come to a hole-in-one in a Wednesday evening round, leaving it six inches from the cup (so I’ve got that going for me).
Years ago, Bob Ford, the long-time head pro at Oakmont, once had a chance to break Arnie’s course record while playing in a Palmer Cup match, but with the matches already decided, in deference to Arnie’s record he elected to not finish the round.
Arnie is a figure who has transcended sports over generations spanning my late grandfather to my late father to myself. He’s someone who you always felt would be around forever _ a lot like Ali, who we just lost recently.
It, of course, is a reality that, like Ali, Arnie will not be with us forever. This made lunch with the King such a special, powerful, moving and memorable moment.
As our lunch neared its end, a woman who was to be married in the clubhouse ballroom upstairs over the weekend, approached him with a tray of cookies and asked “Mr. Palmer’’ if she could have her picture taken with him.
Arnie, of course, obliged.
“Sure,’’ he said. “You can sit on my lap.’’
And so she did, posing for the picture and telling him what a great wedding present this was.
“The King’s still got it,’’ I thought to myself.