Palmer plays one last time in back yard

LIGONIER, Pa. – Perhaps this best explains Arnold Palmer’s game at age 75: He plays golf these days mostly for the exercise.

“I like to get out in the air and I like to walk,” said Palmer, golf’s acknowledged king for multiple generations. Now, his tournaments and his years both winding down, Palmer plays mostly to lend his enormous prestige to a few selected events.

For Palmer, who is widely credited with singularly transforming American golf into a spectator sport as well as a participatory one, the Senior PGA Championship that begins today is his last elite-level tournament in his native Western Pennsylvania.

That raises this question of the golfer who still counts millions as members of the devoted legion of fans known as Arnie’s Army: Is this the last significant tournament for one of the most recognized and successful athletes of all time?

Unlike Jack Nicklaus, who says this summer’s British Open will be his last big tournament, Palmer isn’t into definitives. He says only, “I’m not going to make any rash statements about quitting or when I’m going to quit or what I’m going to do. I’ll play … as long as my old body will allow me to play, and I do enjoy it.”

But Palmer realizes nothing is forever — even if golfers now nearing retirement age have barely known the day when they couldn’t flip on the TV and see Palmer play a competitive round. It’s been 21 years since Palmer last won the Senior PGA, 17 years since he last won any PGA-level tournament, 12 years since his last Top 10 finish, 11 years since he last played in the U.S. Open, also in the Pittsburgh area.

Now, improbable as it might seem for the golfer who still makes more money away from the course than anybody except Tiger Woods, just making the cut is a near-impossible goal.

“My game is unsatisfactory at the moment,” Palmer said. “I’m not sure that I have the physical ability to make that desire (to make the cut) fulfill itself. But I’m going to try.”

This wouldn’t seem to be the way Palmer would want to see his remarkable career wind down, just a few miles from the Latrobe course where father Deke was the superintendent and, 60 years ago, he began to grow and polish his game.

But, and this is what may differentiate him most from Nicklaus, golf to Palmer has not always been about winning or merely competing — as his first-round 86 at last year’s Senior PGA at Valhalla shows.

Just four months from his 76th birthday, Palmer still plays before spectators because this is what he loves to do. And he still loves it, even if his game is but a glimmer of what it was.