Author Chris Rodell paid a return visit to the Bridgeville Area Historical Society program series this month, completing a two-part series of presentations on Latrobe’s two famous sons – Fred Rogers and Arnold Palmer. It is indeed an impressive coincidence that these two internationally famous men spent their youth together in the same small Pennsylvania town.
Palmer was born on September 10, 1929, in Latrobe and grew up there, largely at Latrobe Country Club where his father, “Deacon” Palmer, was groundskeeper and eventually head professional. In his first high school match, as a fourteen-year-old Freshman, he shot a 70 (two over par) at his father’s course, leading his team to a one-sided victory over Jeannette.
In his Sophomore year he was runner-up for the WPIAL title and third in the State championship competition. The following two years he earned both those titles and was acknowledged as a future star. This earned him a scholarship to Wake Forest, where he honed his skills as an amateur, competing successfully in numerous national tournaments. His career there came to an abrupt halt when his best friend and room-mate, Bud Worsham, was killed in an auto accident.
Heart-broken, Palmer left school and enlisted in the Coast Guard, ultimately spending most of the next three years at a Coast Guard installation at Cleveland. There he was able to continue to play golf; he dominated the amateur ranks in Ohio. After completing his final semester at Wake Forest, he returned to Cleveland to work as a paint salesman and play golf at Pine Ridge Country Club.
After winning the U. S. Amateur Championship in Detroit in 1954, Palmer decided to try his hand on the professional tour circuit. He failed to win the first tournament in which he played, at Shawnee-on-Delaware, but did manage to meet a lovely young lady, Winifred Walzer, his future wife and companion for the next forty-five years. In November, 1954, he finally decided to become a professional golfer.
His first win on the tour, the Canadian Open, earned him $2,400, about half of his annual income as a paint salesman. Other wins began to pile up and in 1958 he won his first “major”, the Master’s Tournament; $11,250, a green jacket, and recognition of his stardom.
In the decades following World War II, three inter-related phenomena occurred – the ascendancy of Arnold Palmer to the status of international icon, the massive commercial success of golf on television, and Middle Class America’s adoption of golf as its favored participative sport. Each of these would have happened independent of the other two – their synergetic combination was remarkable.
Prior to the War, golf was a pastime enjoyed by a handful of wealthy men at exclusive country clubs. The Greatest Generation changed all that. New country clubs popped up overnight. Every developer with a hundred acres of land, eighteen soup cans, and a lawnmower announced the opening of a new public course, available to anyone on a “per-round” basis. And Mr. Middle Class bought himself a set of clubs and took to the links.
Some of the public courses were excellent – North and South Park, Butler’s, Mount Lebanon; others were atrocious. My friends and I usually played on the lower level courses, often with hilarious results. I particularly remember “Thornburg”, a perfectly level field with very few trees and narrow fairways, and frequent confrontations with golfers in the wrong fairway hitting their shots right at you.
Equally bad was “Wingfield Pines”, along Chartiers Creek between Bridgeville and Mayview. Some well-intentioned golf course architect with a great imagination had filled in most of the Blue Ponds, covered it with fragments of shale, and proclaimed it a golf course. In the heat of August golfers had no occasion to be concerned about replacing divots; every shot produced a cloud of dust and flying shale fragments.
Had Arnold Palmer not come along to be the John Wayne of televised golf, the networks would have had to create him. Palmer’s good looks, his obvious middle class demeanor, and his insistence on putting everything he had into every shot endeared him to the masses. The fact that he related intimately to his fan base magnified his influence. The speaker emphasized Palmer’s commitment to sign his autograph, legibly, for every fan who requested one and to answer every bit of fan mail personally and promptly.
Somewhere along the line Arnold Palmer the golfer morphed into Arnold Palmer enterprises. The hiring of Mark McCormack as sports agent apparently was a major contributor to this. In 1971 they purchased the Latrobe Country Club and repurposed it into a desirable destination resort club. The next year they incorporated “Palmer Course Design”, an organization that eventually designed and built over three hundred courses.
Palmer’s achievements on the golf course were remarkable. He won seven major championships between 1958 and 1964, including the Master’s four times. All told he won 62 championships on the PGA Tour and is generally considered one of the four greatest golfers of all time. Perhaps more significant is the fact that he is easily the most popular golfer of his era. His impact on the sport continues to be felt today.
The next Society program meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 24, 2022, at 7:30 pm in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville Volunteer Firemen. Shane Miller will present “The Flag of the United States”.