Two Aces and a King

By Tom Callahan

Golf is still grinning. Arnold Palmer had a hole in one last week, and a day later he did it again. The same hole, the same club, the same unorthodox swing, the same natural grace. Palmer will turn 57 this week, but he remains the mind's eye and the heart's idea of a golfer.

On Maryland's new Tournament Players Club at Avenel, in the company of old comrades the likes of Gary Player, with a five-iron to the 187-yd. third hole, Palmer corked, uncorked and recorked this vintage year that saw Jack Nicklaus, Raymond Floyd and Bob Murphy win the Masters, the U.S. Open and the Canadian Open at 46, 43 and 43.

There seems to have been golf before Dwight Eisenhower, Bobby Jones, Bob Hope and Arnold Palmer, though in terms of general popularity, this was the sport's first foursome, and Palmer its original athlete. "Where Arnold changed the game," Player thinks, "was the way he looked at people. It made them look at golf." Player was a hole ahead of Palmer and standing beside the third green when Arnold bounced his first five-iron into the cup. As Palmer said later, "I saw him standing there. I thought for a moment. I wanted to hit a good one." Another way that Player thinks of Palmer: "He always knew how to share a moment of triumph, yours or his. Sometimes in life, it can be very hard to find someone to share your moments of triumph."

Palmer has sprayed triumphant shots all over the globe. A number of plaques commemorate them: at Royal Birkdale in England, where a particular six-iron took the British Open; at Cherry Hills near Denver, where they told him he was too far behind in the U.S. Open, so he drove the first green, a par four, and won. A monument at Rancho Park records the 12 he made on a single hole in the Los Angeles Open. That's the first one he mentions. Once in Paris, Palmer drove a ball off the Eiffel Tower and hit a bus. "Close to 400 yds.," he boasts, "mostly straight down." Another time, in Melbourne, he climbed a 20- ft. gum tree to play a backward iron shot -- a "tree-iron," as he pronounced it -- and made a bloody wonderful bogey.

Around the world, many people who care nothing about golf were gladdened by the news of Arnie's aces. "I've done a lot of unusual things," he says. "But when that second ball went in (on the fly this time), I've never felt anything like that before." Striding to the green, he kept muttering, "Aw, my goodness."

On the next day the Chrysler Cup began in earnest. It is sort of an old fogy's Ryder Cup pitting the Yanks against the world. Palmer and Gene Littler were paired against Player and New Zealander Bob Charles. The course buzzed with hole-in-one fables. The P.G.A. Tour believed Palmer's feat to be unique, though Chi Chi Rodriguez claimed as many as five in six weeks. Miller Barber said, "Oh sure, I've won four or five automobiles over the years." Billy Casper was undecided whether his best was in Okinawa, where all Japan carried him off on its shoulders, or Boise, when he skipped the ball over a lake to entertain Lawrence Welk.

Palmer strained over his third try. "There's $50,000 at stake in this tournament," thought Player. "Why do I want him to knock it in?" Citing "sentiment," Palmer stayed with the five iron, though the day called for a six. He knocked the ball over the green, grimaced and then smiled. "I didn't want to leave it short," he said.