He Continues to Repay Debt He Owes Game

The voice on the telephone was unmistakably Arnold Palmer, as was the honesty and enthusiasm with which he spoke.

“I am so against that,” Palmer said about the idea of paying players in the Ryder Cup. “Our guys are making enough money.”

Good point, Arnold.

Eight of the 12 members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team have won more than $1 million this year and the team combined has earned more than $13 million.

“That’s what the Ryder Cup and the Presidents Cup is all about--playing for your country and being part of a team,” Palmer said. “Paying the guys to play would take away from that mystique.”

On the spin that it was the Valderrama course that beat the U.S. team in the Ryder Cup, Palmer quickly broadened the perspective.

“I think the course was a huge factor,” he said. “And I think if we had spent two more days getting used to the course we might have won.”

“But it is not right to say the course beat us and not the Europeans,” Palmer said. “They have some very gritty players and they wanted it and they went out and took it.”

Good point, Arnold.

Remember, the final score of the Ryder Cup was really 15-13--the 15-footer for the halve in the last match was conceded--and the Europeans put it away with some great play and terrific pressure putting on Saturday.

There is an easy, natural wisdom in Palmer that is rivaled only by the passion he has for golf, the true affection he has for the fans and the sense of duty he feels to repay the game that has served him so well.

Some might think of Palmer as only nine months past cancer surgery. More remarkably, he is 14 tournaments past cancer surgery and shows no signs of slowing down.

“I would say if my game gets a little better and I start hitting the ball and having a little more fun, I might play more,” Palmer, 68, said about his plans for next year. “I’m going to play some, no doubt.”

Palmer, whose cancerous prostate was removed in January, sat out the bare minimum doctors demanded before returning to play the Bay Hill Invitational in March followed by the Masters and the PGA Seniors’ Championship--all in less than a month.

Then came 11 more Senior PGA Tour events with one more to go before the year is out. Palmer clearly still has the same zest for the game he had 40 years ago when he pushed golf out of the shadows and onto TV.

Not even illness was able to dampen that enthusiasm.

“Just because you have cancer there is no reason you can’t lead a good fruitful life after that,” Palmer said from California, where he was playing in The Transamerica tournament.

“I’m doing that. (Bruce) Devlin is doing that. (Jim) Colbert is doing that and hopefully (Larry) Gilbert will be able to do that,” Palmer said, naming the three other senior tour members diagnosed with cancer this year.

Palmer hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since 1973--two years before Tiger Woods was born--and on the Senior PGA Tour since 1988. Yet he remains one of the most popular people in all of sports.

Last year, Palmer was No. 8 on the Forbes magazine list of highest grossing athletes. At $15.1 million, he earned more than any other golfer.

Only $100,000 of the $15.1 million made by Palmer was won on the golf course. The rest was the product of his good name and overwhelming charm.

Palmer will not be the highest-earning golfer in 1997. That will be Woods. But Palmer will be second.

Palmer has never lost sight of what golf has done for him.

“I don’t find anything good about having cancer,” Palmer said. “But I think the fact that people are reading about it and I’m getting letters every day from everywhere from people asking all kinds of questions shows that people are more aware about the disease.”

Then, Palmer tied together two themes of the conversation

“I think about Dave Marr, who was my partner in a lot of Ryder Cup matches,” Palmer said about his friend who died of stomach cancer a week earlier. “And I think of the passion and emotion in those matches and there was not money involved.”

Just the pure love of golf.

And that’s what Arnold Palmer is all about.