Arnold Palmer - A Hero's Last Masters

This contemporary following, almost twenty-five years after he left the PGA tour, could be seen at the 2002 Masters tournament, which Palmer had declared to be his last a few weeks before playing in the tournament. He made the cut, thanks in large part to a heavy rain that day, that kept him in the tournament for the weekend, and by that Sunday afternoon, people were lined up twenty deep in some places to get a view of The King as he made his final walk up the 18th fairway at Augusta in tournament play.

According to Sports Illustrated, Palmer brought golf "to the truck drivers and the mailmen and the women trying to make three no-trump in their neighborhood bridge groups." What Palmer's presence on the golf course, and in the millions of living rooms each weekend, did was to make golf a little less "prissy" and took some of the high society country club attitude out of the game.

Great players have always been a part of the game, from Bobby Jones to Walter Hagen and from Sam Snead to Ben Hogan, but according to Sports Illustrated, players such as Hogan, true standouts in the game, were "about as lovable as a border guard, an automaton who walked down the middle of the fairway without looking left or right." Palmer engaged the audience. Audiences felt they knew him, that they, in fact, might be Palmer if only circumstances had been a little different. When he was on the course, Palmer didn't make it feel like a rich man's game. Instead, he "walked fast, let his hair get mussed and bummed cigarettes from the gallery."