THE SPIRIT OF ARNOLD PALMER LIVES ON
Arnold Palmer epitomised achievement and philanthropy in golf. “When you’ve reached the top, send the elevator back down for the others”—that’s the essence of the Arnie Award, given annually by Golf Digest in recognition of golfers who give back.
This is the 12th-consecutive year we’ve celebrated the game’s benevolent spirit, partnering with the Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation. Rory McIlroy, the 2024 Arnie Award winner, will be honored at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and at the Arnold Palmer Invitational with a Palmer bronze sculpture created by the renowned artist Zenos Frudakis. Golf Digest will donate a total of $100,000 to the two foundations.
The Monterey Peninsula Foundation is the most charitable organisation on the PGA Tour, supporting more than 200 nonprofits with $18 million donated just last year and $123 million in the past decade. It’s one of the major funders in the central coast of California, building a community park, preschool and soccer complex in East Salinas; deploying $1 million in emergency funding for storm and flood relief; and supporting a health and housing campus serving low-income residents in Santa Cruz County (visit MontereyPeninsula Foundation.org).
Arnold and Winnie Palmer devoted much of their time away from golf to provide opportunities that benefited young people, championing causes “not just about golf but efforts made possible because of golf.” The Palmers were dedicated to improving children’s health in communities around the world, pioneering character-development initiatives and improving nature-focused wellness for kids. Among the beneficiaries have been the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and the Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies (for more information, see the PalmerFoundation.org). ship and the PGA Championship in 2014 put him on the Tiger-Jack track of four majors by the age of 25, McIlroy seemed to be channeling Tiger, aiming to become insatiable about winning and relentless about his fitness. He proudly spoke of having developed a ruthless streak.
But part of him must have known he was attempting to overcompensate for his own nature. “I’ve no real ambition to be the best at anything else,” he confessed in the same Golf Digest interview. “If we’re playing a game of cards or a game of pool, whatever it is, I’d happily let someone win just to keep them happy.” He added that as a teenage prodigy, “I felt it was a very selfish thing to be a winner . . . I guess it just took me a while to get comfortable with that, just because of the personality I have. I realised that if I want to succeed in golf, which I do, I need to have it. What helped was realising how people like winners, how people gravitate to them. If other people are happy with me winning, then why can I not be?”
This question would not occur to Tiger. Arnie, however, would have understood the softer side. When interviewer Graham Bensinger in 2015 asked Palmer his impressions of McIlroy, his answer—“He’s a nice guy”—included a nod that confidently conveyed expertise on the subject. The comment also brought back how disarmingly nice Palmer could be. Then-PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem described it well in his eulogy at Palmer’s memorial service. “Arnold had that other thing,” Finchem said, “the incredible ability to make you feel good—not just about him—but about yourself. He took energy from that and then turned around and gave it right back.”
McIlroy felt the chemistry when the two shared a long dinner at the 2015 Arnold Palmer Invitational. The next day, when the tournament host saw McIlroy and casually asked if there was
DESPITE THE DEMANDS OF FAME, MCILROY REMAINS ENDEARINGLY DRAWN TO PEOPLE.
anything he could do for him, Rory executed Finchem’s boomerang perfectly. “No, Mr. Palmer,” he said, “thanks to you I have everything I could ever want in my life.”
If McIlroy hasn’t yet attained everything competitively, it could be because he also shares a vulnerability that plagued Palmer. Though he gained fame in his prime for his “charges”— come-from-behind victories fueled by a joyful confidence and his Army’s frenzy—by 1965 he had fallen into a prolonged slump. “I suddenly got to worrying about disappointing everyone,” Palmer told Golf Digest’s Tom Callahan. “For the first time in my life, I guess I was afraid.” The next year he blew a seven-stroke lead with nine holes to play at Olympic to lose what should have been, at age 36, a redemptive U.S. Open victory. As crushed as Palmer was by the defeat, he still noted in his autobiography that “I really felt worse for my fans.”
The desire to please others can divert focus and add a layer of pressure to winning. How much of a role that trait has played in McIlroy’s major-less streak since 2014 is up to conjecture, but the questioning deepened with his recent close calls in majors—the 2022 Open at St. Andrews where he led by two with eight to play before finishing third, and last year’s U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, where he lost by one to Wyndham Clark.
Such setbacks have caused his career clock to tick louder, and it seems McIlroy is allowing the pendulum within to swing more toward what he used to consider selfishness. Though he maintained a high level of play throughout 2023, he won only once—at the Genesis Scottish Open in July—and began to feel worn down by his role on the policy board. He was also left dispirited by not having been consulted before the surprise June 6 announcement of the “framework” agreement between the PGA Tour and the PIF. At a press conference the day after, McIlroy said that after many months of “putting myself out there,” he felt like a “sacrificial lamb.” He also used the occasion to vent at the entity whose disruption had taken so much time and attention away from his game and his family—wife, Erica, and their 2-yearold daughter, Poppy. “I hate LIV,” he said. “Like, I hate LIV. I hope it goes away.”
In November, McIlroy resigned as a player director. “I just didn’t feel like I could commit the time and energy into doing that,” he says. “Something had to give, and I felt like it was the right time to step off.” Says Faxon, who served four three-year terms on the board during his career, “Rory’s two years were like 10 normal ones.”
McIlroy’s explanation included the words, “as I try to get ramped up for Augusta.” The upcoming Masters will mark the 10th time a victory would give him the career Grand Slam.
That’s pantheon stuff. If our Arnie Award recipient has any lingering misgivings about taking a step back from the front lines of the battle for professional golf’s future and a step forward as a golfer, a simple truth should clear his mind.
If he wins the Masters, he’ll be giving back like never before.