The Masters what it is because of Arnie

Golf fans will weep today, and all the world of sports should weep with them. An icon named Arnold Palmer marches into history.

“It’s time,” he said Thursday in affirming what most suspected - that this would be his final competitive appearance in the Masters Tournament.

He’s right. And he’s wrong.

His 17-over-par 89 in Thursday’s first round cut to the quick. Ugly shots outnumbered the good ones and, he said, “That’s not a lot of fun.” His Army of fans suffered with him.

Still, saying farewell to a competitive Arnold Palmer goes down hard.

“I remember seeing Gene Sarazen hit a shot in 1965, and I’m glad I did,” Columbian Larry Mattox said Thursday. “Just think what people who have never seen Arnold Palmer play golf will miss.”

They will miss a swash-buckling player who burst onto the major-league scene almost a half-century ago and brought the game kicking and screaming out of the country-club closets to a national stage for the masses. He won spectacularly, and he lost spectacularly, and he touched the sport’s soul in a rare and beautiful way.

Along the way, Arnold Palmer made the Masters, and the Masters made golf.

Reception for a king. This day has been inevitable for some time now, yet we hate to see it. We fight it. We cling grimly to the cliff of hope that Arnold Palmer , 72, could cheat the calendar and recapture the magic that set the golf world ablaze. Why, a Masters without Arnold Palmer will be like a banana split without the cherry on top. It’s just not the same.

“I didn’t want to get a letter,” he said, a bitter jab at the insensitive method Augusta National chairman Hootie Johnson used to unceremoniously dismiss three former champions from competition.

He did not need to fret; not even the grand czar of the Masters would bounce Arnold Palmer before the king wanted to go, and the reception on his 18-hole tour Thursday showed why.

Palmer received an ovation that dwarfed that accorded to the trio that started before his group – David Duval, Ernie Els and Greg Norman. He spent much of his time near the gallery ropes talking to fans and shaking hands. “The ones I didn’t know by their first names are relatives,” he joked, calling his statement only a slight exaggeration.

“The people,” he said. “They know me and I know them.”

They cheered his second shot to the fringe of the first green, then grimaced at his four-putt. They roared approval at his crisp chip close to the second pin, then groaned at the missed birdie putt. His 3-wood off the tee on the par-3 fourth hole landed short and in the sand.

“I look at the young people and how they play,” he said. “I hit the hell out of a tee shot and they’re 100 yards past me. That’s a pretty good message.”

Still, we don’t want to hear.

Changing of the guard. Told that he would be missed at this year’s Masters, Jack Nicklaus said fans want to see the player he used to be, and maybe that’s so. But there’s more; let Robert Hamilton tell you.

“Playing the Masters is a dream; playing the Masters with Arnold Palmer is a dream come true,” said Hamilton, runner-up in the 2001 U.S. Amateur and one of Palmer’s playing partners Thursday. “The experience is unbelievable. Knowing what he has meant to golf and especially this tournament and to get to play with him … words cannot describe the feeling.”

Even with the numbers on his scorecard mounting, he fought to improve every step of the way. The first hole told the truth, that the course is too long for him.

“I wish you hadn’t asked me that,” he said. “I hit driver, 3-wood. I hit that 3-wood as hard as I can hit that son of a (gun)” and barely reached the green’s fringe. “I knew then” that this would be his last Masters .

He plunged on, and on the final hole, now a 465-yard monster, his chip shot to within two feet reminded of his competitiveness one more time.

As he finished his visit in the interview room, a Masters official announced that Tiger Woods would arrive in a couple of minutes. Half the audience departed, leaving the game’s best player behind to follow the legend who made the Masters one more time.

This story was originally published September 25, 2016 at 11:49 PM.