Arnold Palmer

Arnold Palmer, the champion golfer whose full-bore style of play, thrilling tournament victories and magnetic personality inspired an American golf boom, attracted a following known as Arnie’s Army and made him one of the most popular athletes in the world, died on Sunday evening in Pittsburgh. He was 87. Doc Giffin, a spokesman for Palmer’s business interests, said the cause was complications of heart problems. Paul Wood, a spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said Palmer died at UPMC Shadyside Hospital, about 40 miles from Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pa. From 1958 through 1964, Palmer was the charismatic face of professional golf and one of its dominant players. In those seven seasons, he won seven major titles: four Masters, one United States Open and two British Opens. With 62 victories on the PGA Tour, he ranks fifth, behind Sam Snead, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan. He won 93 tournaments worldwide, including the 1954 United States Amateur. As the president of Arnold Palmer Enterprises, he supervised the design and development of more than 300 new or remodeled golf courses worldwide, as well as golf clubs and clothing. He popularized a drink known as the Arnold Palmer, a mixture of iced tea and lemonade now sold under his name on supermarket shelves. He was a major fund-raiser for the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Women in Orlando, Fla., and for Latrobe Hospital. He was the original chairman of cable television’s Golf Channel and a longtime corporate spokesman, notably in a Pennzoil commercial featuring a tractor he had driven growing up on the Latrobe golf course. He was a part owner of the Pebble Beach Resort in California and principal owner of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, the site of the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational tournament on the PGA Tour. True to his roots, he made his primary home in Latrobe, spending winters at Bay Hill. His handshake agreement with Mark McCormack, a Cleveland lawyer he met while playing golf against him in college, led to McCormack’s forming the International Management Group, now the world’s foremost sports agency. Palmer was its premier client. Arnold Daniel Palmer was born in Latrobe, a steel town southeast of Pittsburgh, on Sept. 10, 1929, the first child of Milfred and Doris Palmer. (A sister, Lois Jean, who was known as Cheech, was born when Arnold was 2.) His father, who was known as Deacon, then Deke, worked in the steel mills and as a laborer and greenskeeper at the Latrobe club, which was a nine-hole course then. The family lived in a modest house on the edge of the course. Deke Palmer was named the club pro in 1932 or ’33, and Arnold’s mother kept the pro-shop books. As a Wake Forest student, Palmer was shattered by the death of his classmate and close friend Bud Worsham, the brother of the 1947 United States Open champion, Lew Worsham, in an auto accident. Palmer soon withdrew from college during his senior year and served three years in the Coast Guard. After his discharge, he was working as a salesman in Cleveland (where he met McCormack) when he won the 1954 United States Amateur at the Country Club of Detroit. Palmer met Winifred Walzer, a 19-year-old who was studying interior design at Pembroke College, an arm of Brown University, in Providence, R.I. Her father was an institutional food distributor in Bethlehem, Pa. She and Palmer hit it off at dinner the next evening, and he proposed to her three days later. After eloping, they were married in Falls Church, Va., before a small group of Palmer family members and friends on Dec. 20, 1954. Winnie Palmer died of a malignant tumor in her abdomen in 1999 at 65. Arnold Palmer married Kathleen Gawthorp, a Californian known as Kit, in 2005 in Oahu, Hawaii. It was her second marriage as well. She survives him, along with two daughters, Peggy Wears and Amy Saunders; two sisters, Lois Jean Tilley and Sandra Sarni, both of Latrobe; a brother, Jerry, a former general manager at Latrobe Country Club; six grandchildren, including Sam Saunders, a pro who has played in several tour events; and several great-grandchildren.