Free A Golfer's Life by Arnold Palmer

Palmer,” said Jim Weaver, getting up to offer me his hand, “welcome to Wake Forest College.”
    I was told to report to a rooming house on the circle that was owned by Johnny Johnston’s mother. Johnny, the school’s golf coach, was finishing his military service, and except for weekend leaves wouldn’t return to campus until the spring of my freshman year, so in the meantime we had Jim Weaver as a coach. What I failed to realize then was that Weaver, who really didn’t know all that much about golf, was itching to show the rest of the conference that Wake would be a pushover no more. Weaver was a born competitor and terrific motivator, a large man with a big heart and bear-like enthusiasm, qualities that made him a great choice to become the Atlantic Coast Conference’s first commissioner. Jim was still smarting, I think, from a remark made to him not long before by Carolina’s golf coach, Chuck Erickson, who confidently assured him Carolina’s crop of golf prodigies would wipe Wake’s collective derriere on the golf course, though in language slightly less suitable for use on a Baptist college campus. These were fighting words to Big Jim Weaver.
    Besides, Wake Forest wasn’t without promising young guns of its own. Mickey Gallagher and Sonny Harris were solid veteran players and constituted the team’s nucleus, whileBud Worsham and I were the highly touted newcomers. Jim Flick was also there on a combined golf and basketball scholarship. And a year behind us would come a couple of fellas named Dick Tiddy and Sandy Burton.
    The highlight of my freshman year, just about the time Johnny Johnston returned from the U.S. Air Force, was beating Harvie Ward and Art Wall at Pinehurst Number 2 to win the Southern Conference championship. I’m sure many of the reporters on hand considered this a major upset—Harvie, after all, was considered by many to be the best collegiate player in the country—but I never had any doubt in my mind that I could beat them or anybody else. The tournament was medal play, and I remember watching Harvie play the final hole, needing to make two to tie me. He made it very interesting to the last shot—nearly holing out his approach. When my heart started beating again, I realized I’d won my first Southern Conference championship and Jim Weaver was nearly out of his mind with happiness.
    I came home that summer bubbling with confidence and with a college-boy spring in my step and won the Sunnehanna Amateur and reached the semifinals of the North and South Amateur. My routine was now a little more varied and fun. I still worked most mornings for my father at the club—mowing grass or tending the shop, whatever he told me to do—but thanks to Harry Saxman and other prominent members at Latrobe, I was more or less accorded membership status and was free to play the golf course as much as I wanted to in the afternoons. I suppose it’s fair to say I was thoroughly obsessed with golf, thinking of little else and practicing long hours every day before hanging out with my old gang at night. That summer I flew to Memphis, Tennessee, and met a man named William Barrett, Jr., in the first round of the United States Amateur championship at Colonial Country Club. I felt pretty confident about my chances,but as one of the youngest players in the field I also remember feeling a little awed by the fact that this was the most coveted amateur event in the world.
    As strange as it sounds, perhaps I was both a little bit too awed
and
cocky—both being major sins in my father’s eyes. I failed to play as well as I should have and was beaten fairly handily, 6 and 5, by the much older Barrett in the first round. I took losing hard, mentally kicking myself for a number of missed opportunities. But once I’d resolved to fight my way back to the Amateur the next year and go deeper into the rounds of competition, the pain of disappointment was muted by a friend of my father’s named Bob Thompson. He invited