PALMER

become part of the sport’s royalty — he was colloquially known on the PGA tour as “The King” — and frequent playing partner of U.S. presidents. He left an indelible mark on the world of golf in the form of nearly 300 signature-designed courses, and Arnold Palmer Enterprises, which handled his endorsements and other ventures, helped make Palmer the first golfer to make his name a worldwide franchise.

Many credit Palmer with inventing golf as a televised sport, becoming the game’s first well-known star by helping to put a name and face to the game. Palmer’s vitality and boyishly handsome looks helped attract many new fans to the sport who watched on television. “I’ve got sex written all over my face,” Palmer once said.

Emerging as a superstar athlete in the 1950s, Palmer did not play golf courses, he attacked them. Armed with a brutish swing that more resembled a hockey slap shot than a daisy cutter, Palmer brought energy and zest to the staid game that men before him such as Bobby Jones and Sam Snead played wearing tweed coats and knickers.

With broad shoulders, beefy arms and massive hands, Palmer was known for bombing drives off the tee and then stalking his ball down the fairway, striding long bounds while dangling a thin cigarette between his fingers.

Frequently, though, Palmer’s heavy swing would lead him to find his ball beached in sand traps and buried in thick rough. When his options were either to play it safe by taking a stroke and punching out for a cleaner shot, or zinging it between trees and through bushes for the narrow chance to save for par, Palmer knew what to do.

“There always were conservative players, fairways-and-greens types,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “The spectators get a kick out of seeing a player take a shot, take a risk.”

Surrounded by the gallery, Palmer would flick his cigarette, hitch up his pants, and then blast his ball for often mesmerizing results.

Between 1958 and 1964, he won seven major titles, including the Masters four times, the U.S. Open once, and the British Open twice, two years in a row. Throughout a career spanning five decades, Palmer won 62 tournaments on the U.S. tour, and accrued nearly $7 million in prize money. He was the first golfer to earn $1 million in purses.

Perhaps Palmer’s most memorable tournament, and one of the greatest golf showdowns of all time, occurred at the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills Country Club near Denver.

On the final day of the event, Palmer was seven shots behind the leader — an otherwise insurmountable lead.

“What’ll happen if I shoot 65?” Palmer asked a friend before he teed off for the final round.

“Nothing,” said Pittsburgh sportswriter Bob Drum, “You blew your chance.”

“Like hell I did,” Palmer replied. “A 65 gives me 280 and 280 wins the Open.”

That day, Palmer drove the green on the 346-yard first hole. He birdied six of the seven opening holes. He shot a 65 — edging out an amateur prodigy named Jack Nicklaus by two shots to win his only Open title.

Palmer also had his share of success in Las Vegas. He was a threetime winner of the Tournament of Champions when it was played at the Desert Inn Country Club. His first victory came in 1962 when he birdied the 72nd hole and beat Billy Casper by one shot with a 12-under-par 276.

Palmer’s second Tournament of Champions victory came in 1965, when he shot an 11-under 277 and beat Chi-Chi Rodriguez by two shots. He successfully defended his title the following year, beating Gay Brewer in an 18-hole playoff and finishing with a 5-under 283.

Palmer was already an established champion on the tour when Nicklaus rose from obscurity to become golf’s golden boy. In nearly every tournament they entered, Palmer and Nicklaus battled in what is known as one of golf’s fiercest rivalries.

At the 1962 U.S. Open, Nicklaus won his first major championship by beating Palmer in a playoff. In 1964, Palmer finished first at the Masters, while Nicklaus was second. The next year, the order was reversed. In 1967, Nicklaus won the U.S. Open again, this time with a score of five under par.

In their later years, Palmer and Nicklaus became great friends. In 2010, Palmer and Nicklaus were the ceremonial starters of the Masters golf tournament and both hit an honorary first drive.

“In terms of fan recognition, he lifted the game to another level,” Nicklaus told USA Today in 2004. “He grabbed the imagination of the public. From 1958 to 1964 it would be hard to find a golfer who played bet- ter.”

His fans made themselves known one year at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, parading behind him and holding up signs that read “Arnie’s Army.” Many of them were soldiers from nearby Fort Gordon who had come to the tournament just to watch Palmer.

In all of his tournament appearances, Palmer was followed by throngs of fans who would stack themselves 15 rows deep. They’d climb trees, stand on shoulders, and even employ cardboard periscopes — anything to catch a glimpse of “The King.”

Palmer capitalized on his popularity to wide success as a businessman, notably in 1961 when he started Arnold Palmer Enterprises with the marketing symbol of a colored golf umbrella.

Much of his success behind the scenes was credited to his business partner, Mark McCormack, whom Palmer had played against in college. McCormack, who died in 2004, founded IMG, an athlete management business, in 1960 and signed Palmer as his first client. Their deal, which was sealed with a handshake, immediately proved fruitful.

Palmer is also credited with creating a blended drink, an iced tea splashed with lemonade.

Always the businessman, in 2002 Palmer had his company license “Arnold Palmer Tee,” a bottled version of the drink, to the AriZona Beverage Co.

Palmer was also one of the first professionals to design golf courses and make millions of dollars doing it. Nearly 300 golf courses around the globe bear his name, including two that Palmer owned: the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, home to the Arnold Palmer Invitational, a PGA tour event, and the Latrobe Country Club in Pennsylvania, the course where his father maintained the greens. Review-Journal writer Steve Carp contributed to this story.