"By the way, Roger...": An Arnold Palmer Tale

Arnold Palmer tells his Roger Maris story before the 2016 U.S. Open

“We were grown-up kids!”

That’s the way Gary Williams described the feeling we all had as he, Damon Hack and I had the opportunity to visit Arnold Palmer in Latrobe, Pa., a few months before he died.

It was U.S. Open week in 2016. The tournament was being played at Oakmont, in Palmer’s backyard, but due to health concerns, The King wouldn’t be making the trip from Latrobe.

We certainly never thought we would get to see him.

And then inclement weather rolled in.

It is bittersweet, but in all of my years in and around the game, no story means more to me than this one. We had lunch, we watched golf, we drank Arnold Palmers with Arnold Palmer, and then we had story time in his office. The visit hit us all in places of our boyish hearts reserved for the special circumstances in which you get intimate time with your idol. And the idol over-delivers.

In this podcast, Williams, Hack, Doc Giffin, Palmer’s 50-year friend and consigliere, and Bob Ford, the iconic pro at Oakmont and Seminole, help me tell the story.

You’ll also hear Palmer tell us one of his favorite stories. It was the day in which golf flipped the script on the New York Yankees, baseball and all of the other mainstream sports.

The King went from being embarrassed in an elevator to striking out a better part of Murderers' Row.

And yet it’s no surprise, Palmer and Roger Maris went on to be friends and play a lot of golf together.

—Matt Ginella