The service at Saint Vincent College was in Arnold Palmer’s hometown, and it was filled with just as much laughter and warmth from stories of the most significant player in the modern game. With a large tear forming in his left eye, Jack Nicklaus asked everyone from the elite to the everyman to remember the time Arnold Palmer touched their lives during the emotional farewell to the King. ‘I hurt like you hurt,’ Nicklaus said. ‘You don’t lose a friend of 60 years and don’t feel an enormous loss.’ Arnold was more than a golfer.
The service was another reminder that Palmer was not the greatest golfer who ever lived, or even the best from his generation. He just had the greatest influence through television, through marketing and mostly through eye contact. PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finches tried to explain Palmer’s popularity by mentioning his attacking style of golf, his appeal on television and the way he carried himself. He had this other thing, Finchem said. ‘It was the incredible ability to make you feel good.
Arnold Palmer was more than a golfer, it just so happens, by luck or by fate, he emerged at the same time televisions were finding there way into peoples homes. And he brought it all to the event, he was aggressive, he won, he was likeable. He would walk the course, and as he made eye contact, he was looking at you. He was a hometown boy who had style, class, respect with a workman’s attitude, and the people loved him for it, that they took the name of Arnie’s Army. He truly will be missed as a golf ambassador, but as a wonderful human being. There will never be another. What do you think?