In 1955, over his first six months as a pro, Palmer couldn't win any official money due to tour rules at the time.

Invited to play in the Sam Snead Festival, an unofficial pro-am at The Greenbrier, Palmer and amateur partner Spencer Olin took first place, and Olin later gave Palmer a piece of the Calcutta into which Olin had bought. “I was sort of playing on a shoestring,” Palmer said in 2015. “It really came in handy at that time.” Palmer played at The Greenbrier again in 1961 and in the American Express Seniors in 1986; and in 2010 he cheered on grandson Sam Saunders in the inaugural Greenbrier Classic PGA TOUR event, traveling full circle, in a way, to the place where he’d found some relief in his early days. As Palmer maintained, “I have a particular soft spot in my heart for The Greenbrier.”

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