Arnold Palmer pictured at Augusta National in 2007.
getty images
As a person on this earth, as a golfer, and as a writer, I really don’t know what I’m doing, one day to the next, one swing to the next, one paragraph to the next. I’m not saying that as a literal truth. It’s more like an internal pep talk.
I have a new book called The Playing Lesson: A Duffer’s Year Among the Pros. It’s my attempt to unlock golf’s secrets, surely not successfully, though it was fun trying. It’s my attempt to show, through various golf kooks, why the game has such a hold on us. My friend Alan Shipnuck said the book made him like golf more. Another satisfied customer! It’s a lovely observation.
Books are funny things. People sometimes ask about the usefulness of outlines. (Not a fan.) Or knowing the ending early. (Often for me, and in this book especially.) This one goes, in its reporting and writing, in odd and unexpected directions, and most of the people in it I had never met before. But there’s a lot of Arnold in it. Arnold Palmer. There was no plan for that. It just kind of happened.
My inspiration for this new book is George Plimpton’s cult-classic The Bogey Man, about his experiences playing in three pro-ams on Tour. I’m urging it on you, and I have a bunch of copies if you need one. George has a lot of Arnold in The Bogey Man. The action unfolds in the winter of ’66, when Arnold was in his prime. You might be tempted to say that’s a long time ago. I would say nothing has changed since then. Not really. Human nature is human nature, and golfers are golfers. As a tribe, we’re a little crazy.
As the book begins, George heads west from New York City to California, schlepping his brand-new golf bag through various airports and motel parking lots. George attends his tournaments wearing two hats, as pro-am golfer (shaky 95 shooter) and stumbling reporter. (I can relate on both counts.) Arnold is in all three events. The old tour, lowercase t. Guys played more then, even the stars.
In a locker room at Harding Park in San Francisco, Plimpton tries to pose a question to Arnold, about his dreams. Arnold gets distracted, then returns his attention, his semi-attention, to Plimpton.
“You wanted to tell me about some dream you had,”
Arnold says.
“No, not exactly,” Plimpton says.
Plimpton’s other subjects go even less well until Arnold says, “Well, how’s that for you? That enough?”
These next three bits are from The Bogey Man:
I looked up from my notes. I wanted to say that I had just a question or so more, if he didn’t mind, but I didn’t.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “You’ve been very kind.” I stood up and shuffled my notes together. “Absolutely great.” I began backing away. I wanted to shake his hand in gratitude for his time, but Palmer was staring down between his feet. “Great,” I said. “Thanks.” I backed away around the corner of the locker.
I had the quick sense of failure — that I had been accorded valuable time and had not made the best of it.
It’s so good. For starters, you feel like you’re there. Also, the writer is vulnerable, as a writer should be (don’t you think?). Then the last part, about not making the best use of your time: That just screams at you. It screams at me, maybe I should say.
The Playing Lesson: A Duffer’s Year Among the Pros
Nearly fifty years after taking up the game, Michael Bamberger made a pair of startling discoveries: golf had never meant more to him, and he knew almost nothing about it. He decided to cover himself in green in a whole new way. He spent a year inside the ropes of professional golf—playing, caddying, competing, volunteering, and interviewing—looking for a door into the sport’s sanctum sanctorum.
THE PLAYING LESSONunfolds over all of last year, pretty much. At its start, following George’s lead, I head west, too. My first stop is the American Express, the old Bob Hope tournament, where I work in Amateur Player Services and watch at close range as Nick Dunlap, amateur among the pros, gets the good bounce that changes that accelerates the path of his life. Then to the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where I caddie in the tournament and, during an evening game of my own, meet Chris Wagenseller, aka Chris Wags. Chris Wags is a pro golfer and caddie and golfing lifer who can throw a golf ball 170 yards. My third stop is the WM Phoenix Open, where I play with Jake Knapp in the Monday pro-am. Jake reads my birdie putt on 16. You wanna know what happens? Maybe your library will carry the book. It’s right there, on page 69.
(This present tense here doesn’t come naturally to me, but the thing about a book is that you hope it will have a shelf life.)
From Phoenix on out, I find an open golf world and doors, with a lot of knocking open. I play, take lessons, caddie and watch tournaments up and down the Eastern Seaboard, in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with a fortnight in the olde country. Eventually, of course, I head home. In golf, as in Parchesi and baseball, we’re always trying to get home.
As I started writing last fall, I didn’t have a plan to make Arnold Palmer a part of this book, at least not a significant one. It just happened. Now, with a little distance from it, I can see how. When the U.S. Open was at Pinehurst last year, I stayed at a house owned by Arnold’s daughter, Peg. Also, Peg’s son, Will Wears, played in the USGA Four-Ball at the Philadelphia Cricket, my golfing home, about a year ago. But most significantly, I’m drawn to Arnold.
I first saw Arnold in person on June 4, 1979, in the parking of the Charlotte Country Club, at a 36-hole U.S. Open qualifier. His hair was silver. Years later, I had the honor of writing one of the many Arnold Palmer obits. The one I wrote ran in Sports Illustrated, in the Oct. 2, 2016, issue. Arnold, and three words, are on the cover. King of Kings. Arnold has his hands on his hips and he’s walking off the page.
The Oct. 2, 2016, issue of Sports Illustrated. Sports Illustrated
And now, coming up quickly here, is another U.S. Open at stately Oakmont, 36 miles as the ruffed grouse (state bird of Pennsylvania) flies from Arnold’s lifelong home in Latrobe. (The ruffed grouse is not a great flyer. Arnold was.) In 1962, Jack Nicklaus won the first of his four U.S. Opens at Oakmont, in a playoff over Arnold. Nicklaus wore the same lucky pants for four straight days, Thursday, Friday, 36 holes on Saturday, 18-hole playoff on Sunday. He told Plimpton all about it. Arnold was looking for his second U.S. Open, on that Father’s Day. He never got it. (Over the years, he told me all about it.) He went to his maker ruminating about U.S. Opens and lost chances of different kinds. The secret dreams of Arnold Palmer.
Arnold and Winnie Palmer had two daughters, Peg and Amy. Neither became a serious golfer. But Arnold and Winnie’s two grandsons did. Sam Saunders played as a touring pro for 15 years. Last year, at a tournament in central New Jersey, Sam missed a Korn Ferry cut, another missed cut in a series of them, and posted this by way of a retirement notice: “It was never easy for me, and I never reached my playing goals, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” He wasn’t done with golf. Not by any means. Just tournament golf.
How beautiful is that sentence? You could say it took Saunders 15 years to write it. Fifteen years and one last season.
I don’t know anybody, pro or am, who will tell you golf is easy.
(I’m stealing from myself, right there.)
***
IF YOU READ THIS NEW BOOK, I hope you enjoy it. (Maybe your library will have it?!) I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did reporting it. I mean, how could I not? I caddied for my friend Ryan French in the City Open in Alpena, Mich. I got a useful putting lesson from Brad Faxon. I played in a pro-am with Gary Player who showed me the value of the hooked wedge. I had Jake Knapp read a birdie putt for me on 16 at TPC Sawgrass. This last bit here is from the book, from The Playing Lesson. I’ve heard from a bunch of you, over the last 40 years. Thank you, thank you.
***
THE U.S. AMATEUR FOUR-BALL at the Cricket Club was Will’s third USGA event. WILL WEARS. The USGA gives you a money clip with your name engraved on it each time you play. Will’s first time in it was at the 2017 Four-Ball, held at Pinehurst. To get in, Will and his partner had to play in a local qualifier, which they did on an Arnold Palmer resort course in
Wheeling, in West Virginia, right before Labor Day in 2016. More than 60 teams were playing for two spots, and they secured the second one with a 61. Tough, tough crowd. On his way back to Baltimore, Will called his grandfather to tell him the news. Arnold was getting near his end but still home in Latrobe. He heard USGA. He heard Pinehurst. He might have heard 61. As best as Will could tell, his grandfather said, “That means something.” It was the last time they spoke.
In the summer of 2009, Will Wears was about to become a freshman in high school, his sister Anna was a rising seventh-grader and Peg’s marriage to Peter Wears was coming to an end. Peg’s mother, Winnie, had died ten years earlier, and Peg had always wished her kids could have known her better. Her father, closing in on 80, was slowing down but remained active. Arnold was playing golf almost every day, though in a cart. He was still flying his own plane but would not be for much longer. That summer, Peg and the kids moved from Durham, N.C. to Latrobe, into a house just down the street from her father’s. Anna and Will were enrolled in the Latrobe public schools. Will was now a Wildcat, as his mother and grandfather had been. The Wildcats’ home course was the Latrobe Country Club. Golf has always been a fall sport in Latrobe — spring is too cold in Western Pennsylvania for golf. Will made the starting squad as a freshman. He was already well over six feet. Arnold was often around observing, hands in pockets, wearing a cardigan, offering commentary here and there. Will was jumping right in.
Will played four years of varsity golf and two years of varsity basketball at Latrobe. From there he went to Loyola in Baltimore and played golf all four years there. He spent his college summers in Latrobe, and they turned out to be the final summers of Arnold’s life. They talked about everything. Arnold encouraged Will to get himself over to the Tin Lizzy, a taproom in nearby Youngstown. Also a restaurant but, for the purposes of this discussion, a taproom.
“Bumpy, the Tin Lizzy hasn’t been that kind of place for thirty years,” Will said, using the family nickname for Arnold.
Arnold heard what he wanted to hear. “You should get over there.”
On the driving range at Latrobe, Will kept hoping his grandfather would someday unlock the chest and retrieve the secrets. He wondered if Arnold was keeping something from him, even when Will got to the point where he could break 70 at Latrobe as often as not. Over the years, Will realized something: His grandfather was giving him his secrets. Arnold was giving him everything he knew and everything he believed. Will got it down to eight principles and three statements.
The Principles
1. The V formed by the left index finger and thumb should be pointing to the right shoulder. The V on the right hand, the same. The grip makes or breaks the golfer.
2. Play the ball back in your stance. Never position the ball ahead of the inside left heel with driver, and play it almost off the right foot with the most lofted clubs.
3. Regarding ball flight: Low is better than high, from driver to putter. Chip with a putter every time you can. If you can’t, hood the face of whatever club you use to chip.
4. Be completely still when over a putt. Lock your eyes on the ball.
5. Do not fan the clubface open on the backswing with any club.
6. Make a slow-motion backswing. The first foot of the backswing cannot be too slow. Build speed gradually. At impact, you should be swinging as hard as you can.
7. When the pressure is on, slow down everything. Feel like you are moving in slow motion.
8. Never make a one-handed finish. It tells your opponents you’re off your game.
The Statements
1. “Be completely committed to your shot. Don’t let anything distract you.”
2. “You’ve got to make that golf ball do what you want it to do.”
3. “You have to have a system. Your system. You have to have a personal style. Your style. Once you’ve got it, don’t change anything.”
Swing your swing, to use an Arnold phrase. You can take its first cousin anywhere: You do you. Two superpower mantras. They can be.
Michael Bamberger writes for GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. Before that, he spent nearly 23 years as senior writer for Sports Illustrated. After college, he worked as a newspaper reporter, first for the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette, later for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has written a variety of books about golf and other subjects, the most recent of which is The Second Life of Tiger Woods. His magazine work has been featured in multiple editions of The Best American Sports Writing. He holds a U.S. patent on The E-Club, a utility golf club. In 2016, he was given the Donald Ross Award by the American Society of Golf Course Architects, the organization’s highest honor.
