The Course Is So Long, so Palmer Says So Long

The dignified champion had just hit what he thought was a dignified tee shot.

But the fairway was longer than last year. And he was older than last year.

Looking at the gaping distance required for his second effort on the Masters’ renovated 14th hole Thursday, Arnold Palmer gasped, then trudged to the gallery in search of a shoulder.

“Why don’t we just retire right now?” he said to friend Russ Meyer.

“It will get better,” Meyer said.

“I hope so,” Palmer said.

They both looked away, because they both knew it wouldn’t.

The dignified champion understands what that means.

With tears filling his lined eyes, Palmer later announced that today would be the last round he plays at the Masters.

“It’s over,” he said. “It’s done.”

Done, after a record 48 consecutive years here.

Done, after four green jackets.

Done, when his age finally equaled a Masters par--72--that he can no longer break.

Done, after a day in which the dignified champion was the worst golfer.

Palmer is in last place in the field of 88, a guy with a scorecard that reads 89, a guy for whom Tiger Woods said, “The golf course has just gotten a little bit too big for him.”

Maybe the course--but not this tournament, never this tournament.

This is where he won his first Masters in 1958 after surviving a rules controversy on the 12th hole.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said.

There is where he lost it in 1961 after making a double bogey on the 18th.

“The saddest situation,” he said.

This is where he needed only seven years to win his four tournaments, the greatest time of his life because this was the only tournament that mattered.

“In 1955, when I came here to play in my first Masters as a contestant ... that’s when it really dawned on me that this is the tournament of all tournaments that I want to win,” he said.

This is where he has been embraced even though he hasn’t won in 38 years because he is the one always doing the hugging.

This is what made him different from Jack Nicklaus or Gary Player, the other more aloof champions of his era.

He may have led an army, but Arnie did not behave like a general. He led the pack, but he was one of the pack, nudging and grinning and letting us in on his secret.

So it was again Thursday, when, amid scuffed tee shots and lousy putts, Palmer comforted his fans and acted as the perfect host for the first of his two-day farewell party.

“You know it’s time to retire when you either know the first names of everyone in the gallery or they’re relatives,” Palmer told a buddy during one of his many gallery conversations during the round.

After a bad tee shot on the 15th hole landed him in pine needles under a tree, Palmer walked up to the large gathering with a wink.

“I can’t believe all my friends would let this happen to me,” he said.

He laughed, so they laughed.

“Everybody better move back,” he said. “If I hit it here, hell knows where I’m hitting it next.”

He smiled, so they smiled.

He blasted the ball back to the fairway, then disappeared over a ridge, leaving the fans to embrace his touch and mourn the time.

“I love Arnie,” said Ed Richitelli, an old friend. “But I don’t want to remember him as the Arnie who shot an 85 at the Masters. I want to remember him as the Arnie who won the thing.”

The dignified champion knows this, and so he is leaving before the questions, before the criticism, before anyone grows tired of a guy who will have missed the cut for 19 consecutive years.

“I don’t want to get a letter,” Palmer said with a smile.

He was referring to the controversial letter of dismissal recently sent by Masters officials to veterans Gay Brewer, Billy Casper and Doug Ford.

But Palmer would never have received such a letter, and he knew it.

This wasn’t about looking in a mailbox. This was about looking in a mirror.

That is what a dignified champion does, taking control of his future, making the hard decisions before others do it for him.

“My golf has been pretty lousy as of late and it doesn’t warrant being here playing,” Palmer said. “That is enough of a push to push me over the edge and just say, hey, enough is enough.”

While he said he made the call earlier this winter, it was finalized on the first hole, when he hit a three-wood to the edge of the green for his second shot on the par four.

Then he putted completely off the green on the other side. Then putted to within 10 feet. Then putted in for a double-bogey six.

“Then I knew what kind of writing was on the wall,” he said.

The rest of the round confirmed it, what with the bigger hitters dwarfing him on the bigger holes.

“I think I hit the hell out of it, and I look up and they are 100 yards in front of me,” he said. “That’s a pretty good message right there.”

If there was a message here Thursday, it had nothing to do with golf. It was a message of honor, of grace, of traits sadly lacking among today’s not-so-dignified champions.

It was about the worst golfer in the Masters being the most perfect golfer in the Masters, still, after all these years, and if only somehow we could make him stay.

Palmer was asked how he would envision the most perfect final shot today.

He thought for a moment, then said, maybe, a hole in one on the 12th. Or, he said, perhaps a putt on the 18th.

Then he sighed, and shrugged, as if, how do you shrink 48 years into one shot?

“I think, just the round,” he said, a farewell address as fine as any other. “Just being here.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

*--* A Real Master Arnold Palmer will play his final round at the Masters today. He has failed to make the cut the past 18 years. A look at his results before 1983, the last time he made the cut: Year Finish Year Finish 1955 T10th 1970 T36th 1956 21st 1971 T18th 1957 T7th 1972 T33rd 1958 Winner 1973 T24th 1959 3rd 1974 T11th 1960 Winner 1975 T13th 1961 T2nd 1976 Cut 1962 Winner 1977 T24th 1963 T9th 1978 T37th 1964 Winner 1979 Cut 1965 T2nd 1980 T24th 1966 T4th 1981 Cut 1967 4th 1982 47th 1968 Cut 1983 T36 1969 26th

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