Men in Green by Michael Bamberger Read Free Book Online

endorsement deals worth tens of millions of dollars. Arnold was all ears.
    He asked, “Where is that money?”
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    Arnold has two grandsons. One, Sam Saunders, grew up at Bay Hill and was in his mid-twenties. Sam had a good college golf career at Clemson and played some on the PGA Tour, often on sponsors’ exemptions with Arnold’s fingerprints on them. Most of Sam’s professional golf has been on the Web.com tour, golf’s answer to Class AAA ball. There could not have been a thousand golfers in the world who were better than Sam, but every year new ones come into the pro game and existing ones try to figure out ways to hang on. The game is actually vicious. Sam could make it on tour, but the odds are long. You have to make many smart decisions about your swing and whom to trust with it, what clubs to play, how and when to practice, whom to hire as your caddie, when to take dead aim, when to lay up. You can get all sorts of advice in golf, but when you’re standing over your ball you’re all alone.
    Arnold’s other grandson, Will Wears, was in high school. Arnold described him as the best player on his school team, breaking 80 regularly and showing interest in the game.
    Arnold spent many hours with both grandsons. Will was living near Latrobe, and Arnold said he wanted golf instruction from his grandfather. Mike asked about Sam. Was he getting from Arnold the kind of golf and life lessons Arnold received from his father?
    There was a longish pause before Arnold answered. It was his first cautious moment with us.
    â€œIt’s a little different; I’m not his father,” Arnold said.
    Profound.
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    Before our day in Latrobe was over, Arnold turned himself into a tour guide. “Have you ever been inside the house?” he asked.
    We shook our heads.
    â€œWell, I’ll show it to you.”
    For the first time we could see Arnold’s age. With every step he took, his shoulders listed to one side and then the other.
    The first stop on the house tour was in front of a gentle landscape painting given to Arnold for his thirty-seventh birthday in 1966 by its painter, Dwight Eisenhower.
    It was a mountain house, really, sturdy and handsome. Mike said, “It’s a house where you can tell people actually live.” There was almost nothing golfy in it except the family dog, a golden retriever named Mulligan.
    â€œWhere’s Mommy?” Arnold asked Mulligan.
    Kit, who designed the house, came in, shook hands with us, and said to me, “Nice to meet you.”
    Arnold said, “You’ve met Michael before.”
    We had met, but it had been years earlier. I don’t know how Arnold could have remembered. His ability to make people comfortable is astounding.
    Arnold took us through the house. The tour concluded in his master bathroom. It was not ornate. No gold anything. Just a nice bathroom with a deep tub. Arnold showed it with pride. You can probably guess how it compared to the loo from his Depression-era boyhood home or even to the one in the rancher he shared with Winnie. That master bathroom was paid for, when you get right down to it, by his skill in golf. Everything in his life followed from that. You could tell Arnold knew that and never forgot it, not even for a minute.
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    Earlier, Arnold had taken us into his workshop, near his office. In the workshop were hundreds of golf clubs and an elaborate painting that a fan had sent, diagraming every shot Arnold hit en route to winning the 1961 British Open at Royal Birkdale.
    â€œWhen I get pissed off at everybody, I come in here and work on the clubs,” Arnold said. “Not as much as I used to, but I still do.”
    Next to the workshop was his airplane room, with models and photographs of the eleven planes he has owned. In 1976 Arnold made it into the Guinness Book of World Records by