Acerbic Bob Greene may be on good ground putting Arnold Palmer`s USGA pitch into perspective. Golf is so boring to Greene he`s reduced to reminding us that our world is ”beset by hunger, poverty and military escalation,”
better targets for our concern than whether organized golf survives. I agree with Greene: It`s a boring sport. Personally I prefer racquetball.
But then Greene hits one deep into the woods. He jocularly invites Arnie to his office ”and write my column for a day,” implying that he would bogey badly at the word processor. Don`t bet too much on this match, Bob. In 1951, long before you were writing for The Tribune or for Esquire, Arnold Palmer studied a set of photo contact prints I had shot of him winning the Masters that year, and wrote a fine pre-word processor article for Life magazine to go with the pictures.
Not being a professional writer, he did have one problem a word pro often has: ”I didn`t get paid enough,” he later complained. So be warned, Bob. The old guy could write a much better column than you could golf. These keys are much easier to hit than that little white ball.
