Arnold Palmer, ASGCA Fellow
President
Arnold Palmer was the first in the modern era to be a both tournament player and golf course architect. He has received the Donald Ross Award from the American Society of Golf Course Architects for significant contributions to the game.
Mr. Palmer is a spiritual descendent of the Scots of 150 and 200 years ago, those who determined that golf courses would have 18 holes. He started work in the dirt, he learned in the dirt, and what he does, he basically has been doing all his life.
The year Arnold turned six years old, his family moved into a small frame house adjacent to the old sixth hole at Latrobe Country Club, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where Mr. Palmer’s father, Milfred, known as Deke, held the dual jobs of greenskeeper and golf professional.
Among the physical characteristics Arnold shared with his father were his large, strong hands, blacksmith’s hands, some said. These were hands Deke used to help shape the first nine-hole course at Latrobe in the early 1920s, and hands his son would use for pushing heavy greens mowers, steering tractors and performing other tasks while growing up there, and then eventually helping his father to build the second nine.
“Designing golf courses has been part of my game plan as far back as I can remember,” Mr. Palmer says.
While at Wake Forest, Arnold and his teammates created a layout near the college campus as their practice facility. He served in the U.S. Coast Guard at Cape May, New Jersey, after leaving college. Because he was known for his amateur golf accomplishments, he was asked to build a nine-hole course on the base. With a rake, shovel and hand-push mower, Arnold was directed to a weed-choked grassy patch of ground between the base’s air runways.
“That probably was not the most challenging layout but certainly was the most exhausting to create,” Mr. Palmer says. “When I was done, it was a pretty rudimentary layout – a nine-hole chip and putt, really – but I was pleased with my efforts, and the officers who played it were delighted to have a place to hit balls.”
After leaving the Coast Guard, Arnold won the 1954 U.S. Amateur and became a professional golfer. He won his first tournament, the Canadian Open, in 1955, and won two PGA Tour events in 1956 and four in 1957. Even then, in November 1957, he was offered the opportunity in his native southwestern Pennsylvania to create Laurel Valley Golf Club, but declined, citing his desire to play the Tour full-time.
It was a wise decision because five months later, Arnold won his first Masters in a career that would produce 62 PGA Tour victories and seven professional major championships. As for Laurel Valley, he provided some input for well-respected architect Dick Wilson, who built a fine golf course there, and many years later, after his design firm was in full operation, Mr. Palmer updated the course, which has hosted the PGA Championship, Ryder Cup, U.S. Senior Open, Senior PGA Championship, and four playings of PGA Tour events.
What Mr. Palmer describes as his “first substantial experience designing a golf course from start to finish” came in the mid-1960s in Somerset, Pennsylvania, a resort about 40 miles east of Latrobe, at a place called Indian Lake.
“I did it virtually on my own with only a crew of day laborers supplied to me by the project’s owner,” Mr. Palmer says. “I cleared the land and drew up the course plans in my head.”
Word began to get around that Arnold Palmer was interested in taking on golf course designing jobs, and offers began coming his way. Mr. Palmer and his business manager, the late Mark McCormack, decided to bring on a professional architect. That was Frank Duane, a former president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects and a highly respected golf course designer.
Mr. Duane was confined to a wheelchair, the result of an infection from an insect bite in the tropics that left him paralyzed, but that proved not to be a serious obstacle to their success. Mr. Palmer became the field supervisor and on-site consultant and sometimes was even up in the bulldozer, working hands-on.
They were an effective team. Among their first collaborations were Myrtle Beach National, in South Carolina, followed shortly by the Bay Course at Kapalua, in Hawaii. The collaboration lasted five years, and they designed 12 golf courses before Mr. Duane’s health failed and he passed away.
This was the early 1970s, and Mr. Palmer was looking for a new design partner when he went to play in an exhibition match for the opening of Bermuda Run near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with three young Tour players who were also former Wake Forest players. He liked what he saw, and asked to be introduced to Ed Seay, a young former Marine who co-designed the course.
Within a short time Mr. Palmer approach Mr. Seay, and in 1972 they formed Palmer Course Design Company, based in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The business was relocated to Orlando in 2006 and renamed Arnold Palmer Design Company. This was one year before the death of Mr. Seay, who by then was a consultant to the company.
Mr. Palmer has been involved in golf course projects covering 37 states and 26 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Korea, China, Taiwan, The Philippines, Guam, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Costa Rica, Ukraine, India, Cambodia, Brazil and United Arab Emirates.
Many APDC-designed courses have been the venues for tournaments on the various tours in the United States and around the world. In addition to the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, the TPC of Boston is host to the Deutsche Bank Championship, and the Classic Club in Palm Springs is the host club for the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. The Palmer Course at PGA West and SilverRock are also on the Bob Hope rota. The Palmer Course at The K Club, near Dublin, Ireland, was the venue for the Ryder Cup matches in 2006.
Another notable achievement for the company was the creation of Chung Shan Hot Spring Golf Course in the early 1980s in southern China. It was the first new golf course in the country in more than half a century and touched off a golf boom in that nation.
