King gets the royal treatment

Arnold Palmer will be marching up the 18th fairway at Augusta National on Sunday. He’ll be surrounded by his army, he’ll have a chance to win, and we’ll get to see it all in living color.

OK, resurrected color.

That was 1960 and this is technology-savvy 2007. Because we can send men to the moon, it figures that we can pump some color into our drab-looking past.

Which is exactly what broadcaster Jim Nantz has done as a prelude to Sunday’s Masters telecast. His independent production company, certainly spending more money on the project than the Masters did on its entire 1960 purse, has worked most of the year, sprucing up an old black-and-white telecast of that famous day when Palmer birdied the final two holes to beat Ken Venturi.

The hour show will be on CBS at 10:30 a.m. Palmer will be part of the show, watching with Nantz and commentating. He will win again, earning the second of his four Masters titles, and the most dramatic.

“This was overwhelming to see,” he said after a recent screening. “At the end, I was about as nervous as when I was playing.”

Nantz got Masters officials to go into their vaults and dig out the CBS telecast of that day. Nobody had looked at it since. It was copied by taking pictures of it as it played on a TV screen. Sending a man to the moon was probably less complicated.

Once copied, a production firm working for Nantz, Legend Films, went frame by frame, inserting color. Those involved didn’t just guess. They researched every frame.

“They called me up, asked me the color of my eyes,” Venturi said. “I told them, ‘Still hazel, aren’t they?’ ”

The result is more interesting than the process.

In those days, CBS had enough cameras, and enough interest, to televise only the last four holes. Venturi, for 35 years the lead analyst for CBS’ telecast of the Masters until he retired in 2002, is credited with coining the sentence, “The Masters starts on the back nine on Sunday.” In 1960, the action was on the final three.

Strangely, so that CBS could get as many top players as possible on the air in its abbreviated telecast, Venturi and playing partner Dow Finsterwald were the 10th twosome out on the final day. Palmer and Billy Casper came through six pairs later and were followed by five more twosomes and a final threesome. Two holes behind Palmer was the pairing of Sam Snead and a chunky kid named Jack Nicklaus.

Broadcaster Jim McKay called the shot on the new kid.

“He is a big, big hitter,” McKay said. “This is a fellow whose name you’ll be hearing for a long time.”

Venturi made his putt on 18 for five under par and a one-shot lead over Palmer. He had never won a Masters -- never did -- and said he knew this time it was his.

“I thought I won,” he said recently, in an interview from his home in Rancho Mirage. “It went in. I stood over it for a second and told myself that I had finally won.”

On No. 16, Palmer had a 35-foot, uphill putt. In those days, you could leave the pin in, even if you were on the green. Palmer hit the pin, the ball bounced back about two feet, he made the putt for par and, to this day, feels unlucky.

“I remember thinking, ‘What kind of luck is this?’ ” he said. “I hit the pin dead center and it bounced away.”

Others, including Casper and Venturi, have speculated over the years that the pin might have saved Palmer from facing a longer putt coming back.

On 17, Palmer had a 25-footer for birdie to pull even with Venturi, and he rolled it in.

“You can stand there with your practice bag,” Venturi said, “and you’ll never make it.”

On 18, needing par to force a playoff, Palmer hit his approach to within three feet of the pin, backed off the birdie putt once when he was distracted by McKay’s broadcast, and then stepped up and knocked it in. He had won by making birdies on the last two holes at Augusta, and any part of the Arnold Palmer legend that hadn’t fully come to the forefront did then.

Palmer, 77, and Venturi, 75, saw the film together at a special dinner at Bel-Air Country Club on Feb. 15. It was 47 years later, and they hugged, then, over the next couple of days, ham-and-egged it.

“It is always great to see him,” Venturi said.

“We talked, had some wine, had a nice night,” Palmer said.

“I thought maybe he’d miss the putt this time,” Venturi said.

“I was just hoping I’d win again,” Palmer said.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.