Hello again,
Born in 1967, coming to golf in 1980-81, the Palmer name is fundamental to the 35 years I've spent serving, living, and enjoying the game of golf in all its countless point of culture.
I am inspired by Arnold Palmer the Hall of Fame golfer and the person who did something more for others with the proceeds from a career of doing that oh-so-human, oh-so-silly, act of playing a game. He added so much value from that one measly recreational thing..it's as amazing as if billions and billions of dollars and goodwill flowed from being the best "coupon clipper" at the grocery store or something else off radar...perhaps the first one to detail his exploits on commercial media. But everyone on this board can share a hundred memories and a hundred deserved affections for how he registers with the golfer in us.
I am ambivalent about Arnold Palmer the icon and forerunner of those same billions and billions of dollars for the athlete endorsement industry, peddling items and permitting paying companies products to bandwagon what people like about watching him do that other thing and emotionally transfer that approval into the consumption of their products. I have no idea whether or not Pennzoil is better than Quaker State or is more right for my oil needs than Valvoline, nor do I know if Palmer ever took a Hertz Rent-a-car after landing his plane at the private hangar...but he and Mark McCormack (and the age of sports marketing they ushered, which saw Rory make 13 million in 4 weeks) made it a fundamental of American economy to believe so, even when it's not true. But today is not the day for that detailed critique.
I am fascinated by Arnold Palmer the 87 year old who represents (in someway, "leads") the next American generation we are losing to age and passing, now that the ones before him, the veterans of World War II, are all but extinct. Even in (or because of)his working class story and roguish power, he was to represent the Truman Atomic Age, and Eisenhower Jet Age, the Television Age, and Disney's World of Tomorrow. In this, Palmer's years on this earth (born ca. 1930) were exactly matched by the that of the "Beat" generation...the dissidents, the poets, the artists and lefty intellectuals that lived their primes yet he represents the other side of that American life. Whereas his peers of birth - Kerouac, Ginsburg, Seeger, Burroughs - felt the horror of the bomb, the incomprehensibility of annihilation being so close, and the Moloch of war, greed and consumerism, Palmer was just the opposite displaying a life not ruined, not troubled, but rewarded by the "Happy Day" ethos so many take from that time.
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[/size]I wonder what he thinks of American History and his place as an icon during the prime of his life. He viewed it from a unique position where he received adoration, suffered fools and reaped rewards...so unlike his many of his age peers. They were counter-culture... he was proto-culture.
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[/size]cheers
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