Commissioner setting standard based on Arnie

Monahan’s first-year goal is to ‘make Mr. Palmer proud.’

PONTE VEDRA BEACH — Jay Monahan never said his first priority as PGA Tour commissioner was for every player to be just like Arnold Palmer.

That would be asking for the impossible.

Consider one of the many remarkable stories in Tom Callahan’s book, “Arnie.” Two men from Chicago, Jeff Roberts and Wally Schnei- der, were serving in Vietnam and wrote to Palmer seeking help with their bunker shots (when they weren’t shooting from bunkers). Palmer not only replied, he sent two sand wedges and golf balls, along with his sincere wishes for a safe and speedy return.

Roberts went to the West- ern Open when he got home. He waited for Palmer outside the clubhouse at Olympia Fields and told him that he was one of the soldiers to whom Palmer had sent the sand wedges in Vietnam.

“Are you Jeff or Wally?” Palmer said to him.

Monahan’s eyes lit up when he heard the story Tuesday. When at Palmer’s memorial service last October, he was struck by how eight speakers could stitch together a life well played. So when Monahan took over as commissioner in January and met with reporters, the first question was his priority for the year.

“I would say when we leave on Dec. 31st, it’s to make Mr. Palmer proud,” he said. “So we can look up to heaven and feel great about what we accomplished.”

Halfway through the year, Monahan gives the tour a grade of “incomplete,” but only because it’s still July and “we have more work to do.”

But he has seen enough to believe the tour is on the right track.

He saw it at the Dell Technologies Match Play in Austin, when Dustin Johnson walked between rows of fans on his way to the next tee with both arms outstretched to slap hands with them. That didn’t stop even as the match momentarily turned against him.

Monahan noticed Xander Schauffele walk off the 18th green after a birdie that led to his first PGA Tour victory at The Greenbrier Classic and hand his glove to a kid. He saw Brooks Koepka win his first major at the U.S. Open and sign autographs “well into the night.”

Of course, some things about Palmer can’t be copied by anyone.

“It’s really hard to articulate,” Monahan said, “but I’ve never in my life watched someone be able to connect with such a diverse group of people and always stay in the moment.”