Arnie’s 10 on 14 Adds Up : He Manages to Leave Open With a Laugh

Arnold Palmer found himself in a dreaded Muirfield bunker Friday. It was deep enough and steep enough to be an elephant’s grave.

And his lie was bad, up against the front wall. Prudence dictated that Arnie retreat and punch the ball out the rear of the trap, rather than try to conquer the bunker’s formidable north face.

But you know how Arnie feels about retreat. He doesn’t hitch up his pants and then wave a white hanky.

So he flailed away in this bunker to the left of the 14th green, only the top of his head visible. Four times he swung. Four times his ball caught the wall and rolled back at his feet.

No doubt he was beginning to feel an affinity for the coal miners of his home state, Pennsylvania.

“I wouldn’t say God couldn’t have got it out,” Palmer said, “but he would’ve had to throw it.”

The situation was becoming critical.

“I was digging a hole, I was getting deeper and deeper,” he said. “It was getting over my head.”

On his fifth try, Palmer hit out, onto the green. He two-putted for a 10 on the par-5 hole. Call it a double par.

It was the worst Palmer one-hole disaster since the L.A. Open in 1961 at Rancho Park, when he went out of bounds four times and took an infamous 12 on the 18th.

Good sport that he is, Palmer laughed at himself Friday while hacking away in the trap, and he laughed about it afterward, after his seven-over-par 78 had knocked him out of the tournament.

A bogey on the previous hole had put Palmer in an angry, charging mood. When his tee shot on No. 14 landed in a fairway bunker and his escape shot was weak, he decided to go for the green. He hooked a 3-iron into the elephant’s grave.

“I was playing very good,” Palmer said. “I was very pleased I shot 35 on the way out. That’s really the best putting I’ve done in some time. I figured I had to shoot a 69 to make the cut, and I was well on my way to doing that.”

Palmer recovered from his double-par 10 and birdied the next two holes. So with the exception of one lousy bunker, Arnie acquitted himself well for a 57-year-old guy who needed a special Arnie Palmer-type exemption just to play the tournament.

Still, Palmer comes to win.

“Maybe (winning) is remote, maybe it’s a long shot,” Palmer said proudly. “But there are 149 long- shots in this tournament.”

Today, after the cut, the number is smaller. Arnie is gone. The bunker won.