The Eternal Summer
Chapter One
The older a golf writer gets, the more he lives in the past. This may be true of real people, too. I can only speak for golf writers. Youth is in the past, for one thing, and golf writing may have been a hobby as much as a profession, based on the salaries most of us made.
There have been many splendid, important, landmark years in golf, and 1960 goes in there with four other years that come to mind immediately. There was 1913, when Francis Ouimet did that thing to Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. There was 1930, when Bobby Jones did that thing with the Grand Slam. There was 1945, when Byron Nelson did that thing with eleven in a row. And there was 1953, when Ben Hogan did that thing with the Triple Crown.
A lot of things put 1960 in there, things that Curt Sampson will tell you about in more detail, but mainly I will always remember it as the year Arnold Palmer became the Arnie of "Whoo, ha, go get 'em, Arnie!"
It was the year that Palmer, sweating, chain-smoking, driving balls through tree trunks, shirttail flying, took golf to the masses.
It was the year Arnie's Army was born, a horde of happy street rabble t ... read full excerpt from: The Eternal Summer ebook
