THE King

[BHoover]

Niall, I would be interested to read your explanation of why golf experienced an increase in popularity in the 1960s, not to mention the revival of the Open Championship?


Here's a hint: Arnold Palmer

[David_Tepper]

Niall -

No doubt AP resonates more in the U.S. than his does in GB&I, but you are very much mistaken to underestimate the impact he had on the game, in the U.S. and around the world, over his lifetime.

Not really sure how Rick Wakeman is in any way relevant to the discussion, but I still do have 2 or 3 Yes albums from the 1970's on vinyl.

At the very least, we have a topic for discussion next time we see each other.

DT

[BCowan]

Dissing AP and Yes in the same thread? This is craziness 

Indeed, great post. 


Niall,

   You are a curmudgeon which is to be applauded by me.  You have to step outside of your own outlook.  To the masses and people who thought little of Golf, AP transcended and broke barriers. 


Faldo for example did influence some golf swing nerds over here like myself.  I still sport my Pringle sweaters! 

[David_Tepper]

After AP's passing, Golf Digest produced a 100-page special tribute issue celebrating his life & legacy. I seriously doubt they will be doing the same upon the passing of any other golfer.

http://www.golfdigest.com/story/golf-digest-celebrates-arnold-palmers-life-with-a-special-tribute-issue

[Jon Wiggett]

I would agree somewhat with Niall in that it was TV that created the interest in golf as golf was the perfect sport for stations who play adverts. Arnold Palmer happened to be lucky enough to be the most charismatic golfer of that time and the two promoted each other.


Had TV come along in the 20 it would have been Jones, 30's Hagen, 40's Hogan, 70's Nicklaus, 80's Seve and so on.  However, we should all acknowledge what an enormous effect Arnold Palmer had on golf. I would suggest that Seve had the biggest influence on golf in Europe.


Jon

[Sean_A]

It may sound a rather centric view, but the bottom line is the US was world golf in the 60s.  If Arnie had a huge impact on golf in the 60s in the US then it was the case for the world.  The US was dominant in golf during this period in terms of the best players, best tour, richest players, best events, most media coverage that to say Arnie didn't have a huge impact is tantamount to saying that nobody did...and maybe this is the case in Europe in the 60s...I don't know...wasn't there.


Ciao

[Jim Nugent]

Niall, here are some excerpts from a 2013 article about Palmer's impact on the Open Championship.  I cut out most of the story, but as you'll see, the author comes to the opposite conclusion as you (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/golf--how-arnold-palmer-changed-golf-forever-084900662.html)...

 ..."In 1960, the 30-year-old Palmer was the most famous athlete on the planet. He'd already won both the Masters and the U.S. Open on come-from-behind Sunday charges. He would capture eight of the 27 tournaments in which he played, earning a then-record $80,000 in total prize money.
"The Open Championship? It was an inconsequential tournament from an American perspective, irrelevant to the burgeoning United States golf scene. For pros, the hassle of traveling to the United Kingdom wasn't worth any potential reward. Every player had to survive a 36-hole qualifier. The winner received only $3,500, compared to $14,400 at the U.S. Open, and the total purse at the Open Championship was $19,600, less than a third of the U.S. Open's $60,720. (No, there are no zeroes missing from those figures.) Moreover, the tournament often conflicted with the stateside-yet-still-prestigious PGA Championship.
"...Palmer's appearance provided an immediate boost for the R&A, which recorded a $10,000 profit from the 1960 Open, double the previous year and a boon to the cash-strapped organization. The armada of American media that followed in Palmer's wake spread the word of the Open Championship far and wide. And once Palmer returned to capture the next two Open Championships, the tournament's future status as a fixture for American golfers was assured.
"These days, of course, the Open Championship is a can't-miss stop on the year's schedule, for both players and fans. More than a dozen Americans have won the tournament, ranging from icons like Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson to, well … John Daly, with the most recent being Stewart Cink in 2009. Golf's frontiers are no longer in the United Kingdom; they're in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi.
"Palmer won't be in attendance at this week's Open Championship, but he'll be watching from his home in Latrobe, Pa. And his thoughts will almost surely go back to those days of half a century ago, when one man changed an entire sport."

 

[Tim_Cronin]

Arnold Palmer made golf on television popular (Sunday's coverage of the 1958 Masters, his first win at Augusta, rated 7.7 on CBS, more than double the 3.0 of the year before). That built on Walter Hagen's substantial legacy as a popular professional decades earlier and began the rise of the gravy train that is today's PGA Tour.


Arnold Palmer brought the Open Championship back to life, creating the modern grand slam, and then brought his fellow American professionals along for the ride.


Arnold Palmer made the Senior Tour a real tour, and not just three tournaments a year. The USGA, after the first Senior Open in 1980 drew flies, lowered the eligibility age from 55 to 50. A 51-year-old professional from Latrobe, Pa., won.


Arnold Palmer's promotional push put Golf Channel onto cable systems when it might otherwise have never seen the light of day.


Other than that, and leading the fundraising for the children's hospital in Orlando, and building an army one handshake and autograph and wink at a time, no, he didn't do a damn thing.

[Gib_Papazian]

The difference between Arnie and everybody else is simply one of emotional investment. We all marveled at Jack overpowering the field (similar to Tiger) or Billy Casper's cold-blooded efficiency, but did you get a knot in your gut when his putt lipped out on the 18th green? Yeah, we laughed along with the Trevino and shook our heads at the crazy antics and caddy yard short game, but underneath that transparent facade was an angry Mexican, fueled by loathing, looking for any slight to fuel his buried fury.     

We rooted for Tom Watson's arrogant temerity to challenge Jack down the stretch, when everyone else would have cowered at the prospect of toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano combat against the colossus. But it was an effete Stanford egghead, squaring off against the fat kid from Ohio who grew up and pushed Arnie off the podium pedestal. 

Nope, Arnold Palmer was different. He stormed the palace, wrote the book on “Go For Broke” and we all read it; if not for Mark McCormack, Arnie might have made and lost 10 fortunes, left to his own impossibly swashbuckling instincts.

Five behind or five ahead, Arnie never took the sure bet - firing for the pin, even when par wins the day. Blazing around the track with a wide-open throttle guarantees a binary outcome. Cherry Hills in 1960 or Olympic in 1966 . . . . . . when you have 14 hammers in your bag, every hole is a nail.

Which, our course, is why we admired Tiger, but rooted hard for Phil. For those of us who came of age after Middlecoff - but before Greg Norman’s brain-damaged recklessness - Arnold Palmer was the populist ruffian with an ugly golf swing, a cigarette in one hand and Schmitz beer in the other. The perfect antidote to cold-blooded reptiles like Ben Hogan, effete yawns like Charlie Coody or southern royalty like Tommy Aaron.

The closest we have come in the modern era is John Daly - the poster child for metal-wood bomb and gouge. If not for a self-destruct mechanism on a manic-depressive tap-loop, he might have captured our hearts instead of our pity and derision. The difference is we remained fiercely loyal to Arnie past the bitter end.

The gallery still follows John Daly as a bizarre curiosity, but more to see how far he’ll get before the anvil drops from the sky. Even when Arnie could not scare par from the women’s tees, we followed just to be with him. Arnie never seemed a pitiful old man, too stubborn to quit (Doug Ford), but noblesse oblige because his mere presence gave every tournament gravitas.
     

[BHoover]

I walked into a British-style pub on Saturday afternoon and asked the server for a "John Panton". She acted like she had no clue what I was saying.

[Rick Shefchik]

To say that an individual cannot be greatly responsible for the popularity of his or her sport is like saying Bruce Lee did nothing for martial arts, Muhammad Ali did not have a significant impact on boxing, Babe Ruth didn't move the needle in baseball and Secretariat didn't improve ratings for the Belmont Stakes.

[Niall C]

I walked into a British-style pub on Saturday afternoon and asked the server for a "John Panton". She acted like she had no clue what I was saying.

Yeh, and what did she say when you asked for an Arnold Palmer ?

[Adam Lawrence]

I walked into a British-style pub on Saturday afternoon and asked the server for a "John Panton". She acted like she had no clue what I was saying.

Yeh, and what did she say when you asked for an Arnold Palmer ?

Given that nobody really drinks the filth that is iced tea over here it's pretty immaterial.

[Niall C]

Arnie was a great bloke. I have my own stories about the man. He certainly showed up a minority of top golfers who simply don’t know or appreciate how lucky they are to make a lot of money out of playing the great game of golf. He was simply exemplary on how to conduct ones-self and was loved by millions because of it.


Now back to the question in hand which is do the modern stars owe AP for how much they earn today ?


That I think was essentially what Sam and Brian were saying in posts 6 and 7. It seems to be an idea that is peculiar to golf. For instance I’ve never heard anyone ask where Lionel Messi would be without Pele, or Dan Carter without the King Barry John. Yet when you look at these sports, they have also grown hugely in commercial terms over the last 40 or 50 years. Indeed I’m struggling to think of a major sport that hasn’t.


Have they all had their own AP’s that have allowed them to grow ? Or is it simply that over the last 40 or 50 years as the global economy boomed with Joe Public having more time and more money to spend on past times like golf/football/tennis/rugby etc., that corporate entities have latched on to the marketing possibilities and poured huge sums into sports ? Are these corporate sponsors/backers really doing it out of nostalgia for a 60’s icon ? I don’t think so. I think they are doing it because golf is a wonderful game; offers great televisual appeal; and, allows them to reach a global market.


I don’t think that is a hard conclusion to arrive at but it seems to me that some on here won’t allow themselves to admit that as they think that would be dissing Arnie in some way, which is nonsense.
 
Niall

[BHoover]

Niall, I was saying that modern players should show up to play his tournament, particularly this year after he has passed away.


If you want to believe that he wasn't instrumental in the growth of the game during the 1960s, and the revival of the Open, then so be it.


You should ask for less alcohol in your John Panton.

[archie_struthers]

 




Just one insight AP was probably going with Rolling Rock or Miller Light

[Adam Lawrence]

Niall, I was saying that modern players should show up to play his tournament, particularly this year after he has passed away.


If you want to believe that he wasn't instrumental in the growth of the game during the 1960s, and the revival of the Open, then so be it.


You should ask for less alcohol in your John Panton.

it's difficult to have negative alcohol...

[David_Tepper]

It's tribute week:

http://www.morningread.com/releases/f2305a3f-b8ab-4dfc-b0b1-a3d2d20d1eb9

http://golfweek.com/2017/03/13/meeting-arnold-palmer-stories-pga-tour/

[Marty Bonnar]

Niall, I was saying that modern players should show up to play his tournament, particularly this year after he has passed away.


If you want to believe that he wasn't instrumental in the growth of the game during the 1960s, and the revival of the Open, then so be it.


You should ask for less alcohol in your John Panton.

it's difficult to have negative alcohol...

Angostura Bitters 44.7% ABV!


F.

[Adam Lawrence]

Niall, I was saying that modern players should show up to play his tournament, particularly this year after he has passed away.


If you want to believe that he wasn't instrumental in the growth of the game during the 1960s, and the revival of the Open, then so be it.


You should ask for less alcohol in your John Panton.

it's difficult to have negative alcohol...

Angostura Bitters 44.7% ABV!


F.

trace quantities...

[Marty Bonnar]

Niall, I was saying that modern players should show up to play his tournament, particularly this year after he has passed away.


If you want to believe that he wasn't instrumental in the growth of the game during the 1960s, and the revival of the Open, then so be it.


You should ask for less alcohol in your John Panton.

it's difficult to have negative alcohol...

Angostura Bitters 44.7% ABV!


F.

trace quantities...

Yes, but not zero.

[David_Tepper]

Great clip of Arnie hitting driver off the deck on #18 at Bay Hill:

http://www.geoffshackelford.com/homepage/2017/3/14/just-13-years-ago-when-arnie-hit-driver-into-18.html

He even changed how alpacas are bred in Peru!

http://modernfarmer.com/2015/09/arnold-palmer-alpacas/