#77: Grinding Away
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.
He’d learned how to work with tools and machines while helping his father, Deacon, the superintendent and head pro at Latrobe Country Club, and he never lost his fascination with alteration. In his early days Palmer said he only had hand-me-down clubs and so he had to modify them to fit his swing. Later, after he was famous, the pile of clubs in Palmer’s Latrobe barn took on the stuff of mythology—a wall of clubs, a mountain! And that’s about right. Ultimately, though, Palmer’s work was a kind of quest. “I don’t think anybody has ever built the perfect club,” he said, “and I want to be the one to do it.”
