Dose of Arnie Is Good Medicine

Storm clouds blow into a black canopy over the churning lakes of Bay Hill Club. It will be night soon, the embarrassing round halted three holes early, the humiliation extended another day.

The 122nd-place golfer in a 122-player tournament is having the time of his life.

A chip spins wildly past a hole while the crowd yells for it to stop.

“Aw, let it roll,” he says, laughing. “The hell with it.”

A birdie putt stops short, the crowd groans, he spots a shivering girl, picks his blue sweater-vest off his chest.

“Hey, you want this?” he says, removing it and throwing it to her. “Go on, take it.”

A horn sounds, play is suspended because of darkness. The 122nd-place golfer must complete the round today, at which time he will be cut from a tournament in which he was 14 over par in last place.

Last, but not dead last.

Arnold Palmer, who once thought there was no difference, now knows better.

“To play even poorly is something I enjoy,” he says.

In his first golf tournament since he underwent surgery for prostate cancer Jan. 15., the world is laughing with him.

As if one of America’s last living sports legends needs enlarging . . . but here is Arnie on Friday, no longer merely the leader of an army, but the site of a pilgrimage.

Hundreds of them, many old, many experienced in the battle he just fought, line the fairways and surround the greens, reach out their hands for a touch, hope for a smile.

About 40,000 lives are lost every year because of prostate cancer. For nearly four hours, Palmer, 67, shows his gallery they do not have to be among them.

Cheering under one tree is Bill Chouinard, a retired air-traffic controller from Orlando. He just discovered he may have the same trouble as Arnie. He will visit a doctor next week and needed some last-minute inspiration.

“I see what the surgery has done for him, and so quickly,” Chouinard says. “I needed to see it.”

Then there is Jim Robertson, another Orlando retiree who underwent similar surgery four years ago.

“I couldn’t touch a club for three months, and here he is, already playing?” Robertson says. “You can tell by his mannerisms that he is still hurting a little bit in the stomach area. But this is amazing.”

They cheer every tee shot, each time he putted out, even if those shots in between are an interminable array of miscalculations and poor hits.

They laugh with each trademark Arnie growl after a bad shot, they even laugh at his whispered curses. When you don’t know whether you will see somebody again, apparently you don’t mind what he says when you do.

Palmer responds by facing the crowd before every tee shot, scanning for a familiar face, looking for an opening to make small talk.

“How ya feeling?” he asks one man.

“Me?” says the man.

At one point in front of the second green, he stops between shots, puts his hands on his hips, and stares into the trees.

It looks like a lot of fun for a guy whose game is turning into rubble on his home course, one which he partially owns, the reason he decided to begin his comeback here.

Embarrassed? “I feel very fortunate just walking down the fairway,” he says.

Palmer is also nervous. He doesn’t say it or show it during his 15-hole round of nearly four hours. But later, in the darkness in front of his personal hospitality tent, he shakes his head.

“Do you know that when I was in the parking lot after my match, somebody came up to me and said they had prostate cancer, and wanted me to tell them what to do?” Palmer says. “How do I know what to do? I’m not a doctor.”

He is glad to be an inspiration. But he worries people will forget he is only a golfer.

“It’s the questions about what happened,” he says. “I get them all the time. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Winnie, Palmer’s wife, is so weary of the questions that she departs the golf cart moments before this interview begins.

“You see, she doesn’t want to hear them anymore,” he says. “Nothing wrong with them. But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.”

His words of these last two days are perfect. People look at him like he’s a vision, then he opens his mouth and he is just Arnie.

He walked to the first tee Thursday wearing a golf cap with the price tag accidentally still hanging from it.

“I’m going to turn it back in when I finish,” he said.

He was standing outside the clubhouse after his Thursday round when an ambulance wailed in the distance.

“I’m just glad I’m not in it,” he said.

Then Friday, standing on the tee of the 14th hole, one of his granddaughters, a slim teenager, approaches from outside the ropes.

He walks over, hugs her from behind, and keeps hugging her, his big arms around her waist, the girl and grandpa laughing and swaying amid the dark clouds and wind.

“Never lay up,” reads the lettering on the arm of the Arnold Palmer golf shirt seen on several spectators this week.

Never indeed.