90 for 90

Today is Arnold Palmer’s birthday. Born at 7am on September 10th of 1929, he would have been 90 today.

Surprise home visits aren’t always welcomed, but on his 37th birthday Arnold Palmer opened the door to find President Dwight Eisenhower standing there with an overnight bag.

In 2004, to the roar of an adoring crowd, Arnold Palmer played in his 50th Masters and bid goodbye to a tournament he’d won four times and with which he had provided the golfing world with some of its best memories.

So much of Arnold Palmer’s success—both in golf and in life—had to do with his ability to look ahead.

An era came to an end on January 31, 2011 when Arnold Palmer made his final flight in the left seat.

"Keep it legible" Arnold Palmer used to tell pros, and they listened. To Arnie, autographs meant something, "a personal experience, a memento on which you can't put a price," he wrote in his book "A Life Well Played."

Arnold Palmer and Mastercard began a priceless pairing in 2004 when they joined forces for The Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard.

Among Arnold Palmer’s lasting impacts, the Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation specifically is dedicated to continuing the philanthropic legacy of Palmer and his family.

Smart, savvy and loving, Winnie’s role in Arnie’s success is undeniable.

In many ways, Arnold Palmer’s victory in the 1954 U.S. Amateur started it all. Within months of the win Palmer had turned pro, gotten married and begun his journey to becoming a legend. But more than that, it set the tone for Palmer’s career in a way that seemed as if it had been scripted in Hollywood, with a young working-class Arnie facing off against Robert Sweeny, a dashing, Oxford-educated banker’s son.

Arnold Palmer kicked off the 1960s by winning the first of his five Bob Hope Desert Classics in February of 1960 and he closed out the decade with a December, 1969 win in the Danny Thomas Diplomat Classic. In all, 43 of Palmer’s 62 PGA Tour wins came in the 1960s, including six of his seven majors (the 1958 Masters being the exception).

Sports Illustrated debuted the same year Arnold Palmer turned pro, and in 1960—early in both of their careers—it named him "Sportsman of the Year."

Arnold Palmer got hot in the desert, winning the Bob Hope Desert Classic in Palm Springs five times and taking the Phoenix Open three consecutively, in 1961, 62 and 63.

Arnold Palmer was famous for grinding away on golf clubs, spending hours in his workshop with sparks flying as he re-shaped, re-grooved and re-adjusted just about everything on a club that could be touched.

In 1971, during halftime of a game between Wake Forest and Miami, Arnold Palmer was inducted into his alma mater’s Sports Hall of Fame as the band spelled out A-R-N-I-E.

“I’d never been south of the Pennsylvania state line, but there was no question which way I was headed,” wrote Arnold Palmer, recounting his decision to attend Wake Forest University.

Wheaties produced another great box of cereal—and an even greater effort—when it put Arnold Palmer on the "Breakfast of Champions" in 1999 and tied his appearance to a fund-raising effort for cancer research.

Anyone who spent time with Arnold Palmer eventually learned that his libation of choice was Ketel One vodka, usually on the rocks with a twist.

Arnold Palmer's best 18-hole score on tour was 62, which he made at the 1959 Thunderbird Invitational and the 1966 Los Angeles Open, both of which he won. But his all-time lowest score over 18 holes came in September of 1969 at Latrobe Country Club, where he grew up and learned to play golf.

Playing to large crowds on the world’s biggest stages, influencing millions of people, flying around in a private jet and having fans constantly ask for your autograph—if Arnold Palmer wasn’t a rock star, you wouldn’t know it from the company he kept.

Arnold Palmer appeared on numerous magazine covers over the course of his life, and in 2013 his legacy of being featured alongside leading celebrities of the day continued when he appeared next to supermodel Kate Upton on the cover of Golf Digest.

Most golfers go their whole lives without a hole-in-one, but Arnold Palmer had 20, his first while he was in high school and his last in 2011, when he was 82 years old.

A few years before The Six Million Dollar Man appeared on TV, Arnold Palmer took top prize at the 1967 American Golf Classic and became the first professional golfer in history to make more than $1 million in career earnings.

Twice victorious as a captain in the Ryder Cup, Arnold Palmer said that being selected as U.S. Team Captain for the second staging of the Presidents Cup was “a thrill that almost stands by itself."

In 2005, at the age of 75, Arnold Palmer said “I do” for the second time in his life and married Kathleen “Kit” Gawthrop on a beach in Hawaii.

In 1967, Rolex and Arnold Palmer began one of the great, longstanding relationships in business, a complementary partnership at the top of the game.

Whatever the ups and downs of a son’s relationship with his father, fathers do occasionally know best, and so listening to your dad can be a good idea. Arnold listened when his father, Deacon Palmer, showed him how to grip a golf club and said “don’t you change that.”

On the last hole of his first round at the 1961 Los Angeles Open, Arnold Palmer needed par to shoot 69. Instead the golfer teed it up on Rancho Park’s par-5 ninth—his last hole of the day—and reminded us that he was human, ultimately making 12.

In a meeting of two hard-charging competitors who always went for it, Arnold Palmer and Richard Petty kicked off the 2008 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina.

It’s a relatively short list of golfers who’ve carded victories at the same event in three consecutive years. Arnold Palmer is on it, having taken the Texas Open in 1960 through 62 and the Phoenix Open from 61 to 63.