Free Men in Green by Michael Bamberger

Arnold late, but Ken went deep. He was telling us things he had already said in his book but with more flourish. No lawyers were watching him now. Out of deference to CBS and the network’s relationship with Augusta National, Ken had remained silent for decades on the subject of Arnold and the rule book at the ’58 Masters. But when he retired from CBS, Ken felt free to break his self-imposed omertà. It was obvious that the event was a fog of war that had never lifted for Ken.
    The incident happened in the last round, when Palmer and Venturi came to the twelfth hole, the little par-three in the middle of Amen Corner. The hole is famous for its fickle winds and a narrow green fronted by a murky creek. The green sits off by itself in splendid isolation.
    Palmer was leading the tournament when they arrived on the twelfth tee. Venturi was trailing by a shot and would be playing first. (He had the honor , in a telling piece of golf-speak.) The course was wet from a heavy Saturday-night rain. The hole was cut on the far right of the green, and Venturi hit his tee shot hole-high and twenty feet left.
    Palmer followed by hitting his tee shot over the green and near a bunker. About half his ball plugged into the soft turf. Palmer sought to use a local rule, sanctioned by the USGA rule book, which provided a free drop for an embedded ball. But the official on hand, Arthur Lacey, would not give embedded ball relief to Palmer.
    Here I will turn the story over to a partial source: Venturi, writing in Getting Up & Down :
    Finally, an angry Palmer played the shot. Not surprisingly, he flubbed the chip and the ball did not even reach the putting surface. He hit the next one five feet past the hole but then missed the putt, making a five. The two-shot swing put me in the lead for the first time since early in the third round. Two years after my memorable collapse, I was on my way toward a memorable comeback.
    Only Palmer wasn’t ready to give up on the twelfth hole just yet.
    â€œI didn’t like your ruling,” he said, glaring at Lacey. “I’m going to play a provisional ball.” (He was really playing what is called a “second ball.”)
    â€œYou can’t do that,” I told him. “You have to declare a second before you hit your first one.”
    Ken agreed with Arnold. He felt that Lacey should have given Arnold embedded ball relief. Regardless, Ken’s position was that Arnold broke a rule of golf by not saying right from the start, in a contested rules situation, that he would be playing two balls, with the idea that the rules committee would sort through the issue later. The words he said to Palmer have almost lawyerly precision: “You have to declare a second before you hit your first one.”
    And Arnold didn’t do that. Arnold made a five on the first ball and then, according to Ken, furious at the ruling and his score, returned to his original position, dropped another ball, and made a three with that one. That’s why Ken maintained that Ford and Hawkins, the runners-up, were robbed. Ken said, “What would Arnold have done if he had made a three on that first ball? Try it again to see if he could make a two?” Ken’s point was that in golf, you don’t get to choose which score you like better. I could see that. But I could also see that the situation was confusing, and Arnold likely got stuck with a bad decision and was looking for a fair appeals process.
    At the end of that round, Ken and Arnold shook hands and walked off the green together. But moments later, Ken said, he was telling Arnold he was signing a scorecard for a lower score than he actually made. Doing that is an automatic disqualification. But Palmer didn’t get disqualified. He won. Doug Ford, the defending champion, held the shoulders and Arnold slipped into his first club coat.
    Nineteen years later, Ken told us, he was playing Augusta National’s par-three course when he saw