Signs Of The Times

What’s the difference between kids getting autographs and professional chasers doing the same thing? Billions of bucks.

- Curt Sampson

ON a big screen inside a big tent at Bay Hill, at the first Arnold Palmer Invitational since the great man’s death, MasterCard debuted its new commercial. One topical vignette in the ad portrayed Ian Poulter and Graeme McDowell wading into a crowd of excited kids holding up pens. poulter We’re gonna sign everything. mcdowell Arnie would. poulter Arnie definitely would. mcdowell Yes, he would.

Damn right he would. Palmer’s forbearance and endurance with autograph seekers was among the many qualities that made him golf’s de facto patriarch and PR MVP. This same day they unveiled another tribute in the plaza near the first tee, a 13-foot statue of The King apparently hitting a pull-hook. A metal Arnold signing programs with perfect penmanship wouldn’t have been as dramatic a pose, but it would have been just as true to his legend.

Sixty steps from the sculpture of the patron saint of autographs, a cadre of professional signature seekers huddled by the white picket fence bordering the putting green. There were eight of them, each clutching a clear plastic shopping bag stuffed with . . . stuff.How they dress is their other tell—more L.L. Bean than J.Lindeberg—but this group of mostly middle-age men effected at least a muny-course look: golf shirts with the tails out, khaki-coloured cargo shorts and sensibly priced athletic shoes. They stood still and silent in the cool blue morning, as patient and motionless as birds waiting for worms. On the other side of the fence, two dozen of the world’s greatest golfers chipped, pitched and putted.

“What do you think of those guys with the bags?” I asked various of the world’s greatest. “What do you think of what Jordan said?”