Feature
Intelligent design
Philip Reid meets the legend and architect of the K Club course, who will be there in the flesh to see how the world’s top players handle its risk / reward holes
15/09/06:He’s late. Not fashionably late, just late. Very late. Bev Norwood, from IMG, who has so kindly arranged the interview, is like a cat on a hot tin roof. Is something wrong? Has, somehow, Arnold Palmer crept silently into the magnificent edifice that is the clubhouse at Winged Foot Country Club in New York via a different entrance?
He hasn’t. Where can he be? This lack of punctuality, he assures, is not like the great man. No, not at all.
To be honest, there is no problem. In fact, you feel privileged to be waiting for a true golfing legend. It has all the anticipation of a first date. Arnie, aka The King, is a man of the people, the most charismatic golfer of his and many other generations.
A man, too, of many talents. Golfer. Golf course architect. Aviator. Astute businessman. Palmer has an aura that only the special ones emit. The first sign of his imminent arrival is a scattering of fans, young and old, some 50 yards away.
Autograph hunters, clutching notebooks and replica flags, break like greyhounds from a trap to find their prey and, sure enough, Palmer, dressed immaculately in blazer, with not a hair out of place, appears – with a small entourage in tow – and signs the different items politely pushed towards him.
"I thought it was hard to win the US Open, getting in here was harder," quips Palmer. It seems his appointed Colombian limousine driver wasn’t entirely familiar with the roads network around Mamaroneck, this exclusive district beyond Yonkers and the Bronx. The journey, it transpires, has been every bit as taxing as negotiating a route through a giant maze, only without the fun.
Inside, destination reached, Palmer relaxes. Born on September 10th, 1929, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Arnold Daniel Palmer has an energy that remains as strong as the period from 1958, when he won his first of four US Masters titles, to the mid-1960s, when he dominated the game.
In the three years from 1960 to 1963, he accumulated no fewer than 29 professional titles around the globe and was to be named "Athlete of the Decade" in the US.
These days, instead of pursuing titles on the world’s fairways, Palmer has a myriad of business commitments that keep his mind busy and his body on the go: he heads Arnold Palmer Enterprises, and has been involved in aviation and car service firms for many years; he is president and sole owner (since 1971) of Latrobe Country Club, and president and principal owner of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, which he and a group of associates acquired in 1970. In 1999, Palmer and a group of investors purchased the famed Pebble Beach complex on the California coast.
It’s not just on golf that Palmer has left his mark. A skilled aviator, he is known to fly to many business engagements in his Cessna Citation X jet. Back in 1976, Palmer was one of a team of four that set an international record, flying around the world from Denver to Denver in 57 hours, 25 minutes and 42 seconds.
Life is a tad more sedentary now, but, by the template of an average individual, still extremely busy.
Palmer has some 25 projects on the go, from places as diverse as China and Panama to France and Indonesia. "I am doing something I love and what I want to do, and that is to design golf courses," he says. "It would never do for me to stop working. I have to continue to be active. I suppose if I stopped being active, I wouldn’t last very long."
Naturally enough, Palmer is justifiably proud that the Palmer Course at the K Club will play host to the 36th Ryder Cup match. He’ll be there too, in the flesh, and is very much looking forward to it. How does he rate the course?
"It is one of my top golf courses ever. It really has got some great golf holes," he replies. Aware of the criticisms that have been levelled at the course, that it is too American and that many believe the Ryder Cup should have been played on a links, Palmer responds: "What can I say? Michael Smurfit is one of the great guys I’ve ever met. He has contributed to Ireland, and he has contributed to the game of golf. He has built a class act in the K Club, and I just hope that everyone understands he has done something which I think is pretty fantastic for Ireland and the whole world.
"When I was doing the golf course, I was trying to give a combination of the Irish touch as well as the American touch. You know, I got a little Irish in me too, and I liked the thought that it has got an American touch to it, but is still very Irish. We built a golf course that I thought was just right."
So, what does he say to those who believe this course provides the American team, who haven’t won the trophy since Brookline in 1999, with a gilt-edged opportunity to reclaim the Ryder Cup?
"The K Club, I hope and feel very strongly, will be a great venue for both teams. It will be one that will require a lot of great shot-making. There are a lot of individual challenges on the holes that will challenge the players from both teams, whether it be the water holes, the par five up the river (the 16th), or the 17th, or the 18th, and the little par three (14th). That will be a nice hole.
"We did not try to do something that was real tricky. We tried to do a golf course for the Ryder Cup, for all golf, for Michael Smurfit, (to make it) a challenge that was enjoyable not just for the Ryder Cup but for all people who play golf there. That was our goal.
"I think the last three holes, as they changed them, are going to be fun holes . . . there’s a chance-reward situation. You better know what you are doing and be able to carry it off to get the reward that you want."
One aspect of the course set-up for the Ryder Cup doesn’t meet entirely with Palmer’s approval, though: the decision to move the tee forward on the par five 16th.
"As long as these guys hit it, I don’t think they need to move it forward. They can really whip it in there," insists Palmer. "I like the guy who is standing back there, hits a beautiful drive and now he has another challenge, and that second challenge is to be able to hit it on to the green, and it is a risk-reward situation. If he pushes it a little bit, he is in the water, and if he pulls it . . . (And with) 17 and 18, same situation."
Ah, the 17th. Half Moon. Palmer isn’t aware that it has well and truly shown its teeth, before a shot has been hit in anger in the Ryder Cup. When informed that Thomas Bjorn took an 11 there on the par four in the final round of last year’s European Open, when he was leading the tournament, Palmer chuckles.
"Did he really? Those (finishing) holes are all risk-reward holes. (On) 17, you must keep it left to have a good shot into the green, but you’re risking going into the water."
Palmer’s career has been one of many milestones. From the time as a four-year-old when he got a set of cut-down clubs from his father, Milfred (Deacon) Palmer, and began his love affair with the game, Palmer – whose legion of fans came to be known as Arnie’s Army – has left an indelible imprint on the sport that became his passion.
In his career, he won seven majors (four Masters, two British Opens and one US Open); the career Grand Slam eluded him with his failure to claim a US PGA title, a championship in which he finished second three times. His winning partnership with Sam Snead in the Canada Cup (now the World Cup) at Portmarnock in 1960 is credited with instigating the phenomenal growth of golf in Ireland.
"I played in the World Cup in Ireland and had a great time, and I think it is wonderful we now have the opportunity to play the Ryder Cup there."
Long before it was cool to be seen as a global player, Palmer started playing in tournaments around the world. He remembers first playing in the British Open, at St Andrews in 1960, when he finished second, losing out by a stroke to Australian Kel Nagle. He was to win back-to-back titles the following two years.
"Many years ago, I went to the British Open and I went for all kinds of reasons, selfish and personal. For the thrill of playing in an Open championship, for the thrill of playing at St Andrews. But my motives were many. One was that I had a mind that was saying, wouldn’t it be just wonderful if we could do things like have sport as our main objective to world problems? Couldn’t we bring it to the sporting field and have football and baseball and golf, where we have sport, where we have guys playing their guts out in the name of sport rather than having them shot at in wars?
"And that was an ambition of mine in 1960. Today, I feel the same way . . . I feel to some degree we have succeeded, (but) we need to go a lot further and to carry it even further into the world of sport and make it something that is a major objective in the world."
For now, the Ryder Cup, not only on a Palmer course, but on The Palmer Course, will give the world’s best an opportunity to fulfil Palmer’s philosophy, exactly as he would want it.