Thank you for being here, Jon Rahm — the No. 1 player in the world.
Thank you for being here, Viktor Hovland — the No. 4 player in the world.
Thank you for being here, Rory McIlroy — the No. 5 player in the world.
In fact, thank you to all of world-class athletes who have chosen to play in this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational — aka The Arnie.
And thank you, too, to the PGA Tour for elevating the status of The Arnie by upping the total purse of the tournament to $12 million, giving it elite status among the regular tour events. It’s all part of a concerted effort by the golf world to keep Palmer’s legacy alive.
“He’s an inspiration in our game,” says PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Will Zalatoris, who, like Palmer, attended Wake Forest University. “He was the gentleman of our sport. Everyone out here at this tournament this week feels his presence.”
Arnie has been gone nearly six years now, but, thankfully, his memory is still treated with reverence and his tournament continues to thrive as one of the top events in the sport.
And don’t kid yourself, after the King passed away on Sept. 25, 2016, there were legitimate worries that his tournament would become an afterthought to the world’s top players.
“There was some concern that the tournament would decrease in stature — partly because of the schedule and partly because the golf course is not revered,” says nationally renowned golf writer Bob Harig of SI.com. “The tournament could have been easy to skip, but the status has held up because they [the Tour and the players] recognized that Arnie’s tournament should stand a little above the others.”
Let’s face it, the golf calendar is crowded with the four majors and four World Golf Championship events that are more prestigious and lucrative to the world’s top players. And it’s not like professional golfers have a reputation for being iron men or even mail men who live by the U.S. Postal Service creed, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
A more appropriate PGA Tour creed might be, “Among hangnails, toothaches, strained cuticles and fever blisters, all of these maladies are reason enough for us to skip the John Deere Classic.”
It’s no secret that the world’s premier golfers found it extremely hard to skip The Arnie when Palmer was still alive because they did not want to personally disappoint the King. It was much more difficult for golfers to bypass Bay Hill when they had to tell Arnie himself rather than an anonymous tournament director.
Bubba Watson, when he was ranked No. 2 in the world, told the story once about bringing his young son, Caleb, with him to Arnie’s office as a way to soften up the King before telling him he’d be skipping Bay Hill.
Right after Palmer’s passing, Dick Ebersol, former chairman of NBC Sports and an old friend of Arnie’s, went on Golf Channel and made an impassioned plea to golfers to make sure the status of the King’s tournament didn’t deteriorate.
Said Ebersol: “A lot of other golf tournaments have never quite been the same when the pioneer for whom they were named had passed from the scene — be it Bob Hope, who probably did more for golf than any other entertainer; be it Byron Nelson, one of the most revered players in the history of the game. The Nelson isn’t the same [since he passed away].
“Because Arnold’s bond to these players knew no limits of age, I hope all these young players — when it comes time to fill out your cards [to determine] where you’re going to play — writes down Bay Hill. And I hope they do it for years to come.”
McIlroy is one of those golfers who now never misses The Arnie. As a young professional, McIlroy didn’t play at Bay Hill because it didn’t fit into his schedule, but he hasn’t missed the tournament since 2015 and won here in 2018. One of McIlroy’s biggest regrets is that Palmer wasn’t there in 2018 to greet him and present him with the trademark red cardigan sweater that goes to the tournament champion.
“It [the sweater] is in my wardrobe,” McIlroy says and smiles. “I have not broken it out because it’s a little scratchy. I wish Arnold would have been around to be with me on the 18th green [in 2018]. That would have been the icing on the cake. But I got to spend a couple of years with him here in 2015 and 2016, and I’ll always appreciate those times that we did spend together.
“It’s always good to be back at Bay Hill. We all know what Arnold Palmer means to the PGA Tour and to the game of golf in general. So it’s always nice to be here, pay our respects and remember his legacy and remember what he meant to everyone.”
Thanks again for being here, Rory McIlroy.
You, too, Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Scottie Scheffler, Hideki Matsuyama and all the rest.
An Arnie thumbs up to each and every one of you.
We’re looking forward to watching you fellas hit some tremendous golf shots this week.
As the King himself once said, “What other people may find in poetry, I find in the flight of a good drive.”
