He's an 85-year-old living legend with 62 PGA Tour wins, seven major championship titles and the kind of awe-inspiring presence that used to be enjoyed by the Colossus of Rhodes but, for a young man called Sam Saunders, the celebrated Arnold Palmer will always be one thing.
"He's just grandad," said Saunders.
Palmer is not your average grandpa to the rest of the golfing world, of course. When Glasgow's Martin Laird won the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill in 2011, the handshake of congratulations from those prodigious paws that had struck some of golf's greatest blows became seared on the memory.
"That's what makes winning here so special," said Laird, who is back at Bay Hill this week in a glittering field of global stars. "You come off and you've got a legend of the game standing there shaking your hand. That's something I'll never forget."
It was back in 1955 that the man who would be 'The King' claimed his first tour victory at the Canadian Open during his rookie season on the PGA Tour. Sixty years on from that initial breakthrough that would develop into a torrent of triumphs, it is now Saunders who is the new recruit trying to earn his stripes on the frontline of the PGA battlegrounds.
Attempting to emulate the conquests of auld Arnie is a formidable task on a par with carving Palmer's face into Mount Rushmore with a 4-iron but Saunders is slowly making his mark. In previous years, it was the family ties that got him a call-up to the Arnold Palmer Invitational in his grandad's own backyard. Nepotism doesn't really wash in golf, though, and the sheer, downright difficulty of this great game quickly separates the pretenders from the genuine contenders. This week, Saunders is at Bay Hill on his own merit.
Having earned his playing rights for the main circuit through the tough school that is the second-tier Web.com Tour last season, Saunders is now a fully paid up member of the world's most competitive tour. It hasn't been the easiest transition for the 27-year-old. After making his first two cuts of the new wraparound schedule, Saunders then made early exits from the next seven events. He found his footing, however, and almost followed in his grandad's footsteps by winning a tournament in his rookie campaign only to lose in a play-off for the Puerto Rico Open a fortnight ago. Saunders followed that up with a solid finish on the fringes of the top-20 in last week's Valspar Championship.
In this fickle game of fluctuating fortunes, Saunders seems to be on the up. Two years ago, he was heading in the other direction after a season of toil and trouble on the Web.com circuit. Saunders had to return to the qualifying school just to regain his rights for the second division but he went with the words of Palmer ringing in his ears. "He challenged me," Saunders said. "He said, 'you're married. You've got a baby on the way. How are you going to support your family? You need to be a man. That's your job to support your family. You have to step up and find the system that works for you'."
Palmer's pearls of wisdom continue to strike a chord, although Saunders confesses it took him a while to appreciate and absorb his grandad's golfing wisdom. "When I first turned pro, he helped me a lot, but I was also young and hard headed," added Saunders. "I thought, well, 'he played in a different era. Golf is a different game now. He doesn't know what it's like for me now'. It's taken me a long time to appreciate what he told me, and to understand what he tries to teach me. Now, I understand that he knows exactly what I'm going through, and he knows it better than anybody else out there. He likes when you show some toughness. When he used to be hard on me, I would kind of back down and be afraid to say anything. I would never say anything back to him in a mean way or in a disrespectful way, but he likes me to step up and show that I've got some guts and not be afraid to shoot something right back at him. He likes that. He wants me to be tough and he always tries to toughen me up."
It can be tough at the top, after all.
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