page_title: Arnold Palmer
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Arnold Palmer / Early life
caption_attribution_description: YN3 Arnold Palmer, 23, played in the North and South Amateur Golf Championship held at Pinehurst Country Club, Pinehurst, N.C., April 20, 1953, while on leave from his yeoman duties in the 9th District Auxiliary office.
context_page_description: Arnold Daniel Palmer was an American professional golfer who is generally regarded as one of the greatest and most charismatic players in the sport's history. Dating back to 1955, he won numerous events on both the PGA Tour and the circuit now known as PGA Tour Champions. Nicknamed The King, he was one of golf's most popular stars and seen as a trailblazer, the first superstar of the sport's television age, which began in the 1950s.
  Palmer's social impact on behalf of golf was perhaps unrivaled among fellow professionals; his humble background and plain-spoken popularity helped change the perception of golf from an elite, upper-class pastime to a more populist sport accessible to middle and working classes. Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player were "The Big Three" in golf during the 1960s; they are widely credited with popularizing and commercializing the sport around the world.
  In a career spanning more than six decades, he won 62 PGA Tour titles from 1955 to 1973. He is fifth on the Tour's all-time victory list, trailing only Tiger Woods, Sam Snead, Jack Nicklaus, and Ben Hogan. He won seven major titles in a six-plus-year domination from the 1958 Masters to the 1964 Masters.
context_section_description: Palmer was born to Doris (Morrison) and Milfred Jerome "Deacon" Palmer (1905–1976) in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a working-class steel mill town. He learned golf from his father, who had suffered from polio at a young age and was head professional and greenskeeper at Latrobe Country Club, which allowed young Palmer to accompany his father as he maintained the course.
  Palmer attended Wake Forest College on a golf scholarship. He left upon the death of close friend Bud Worsham (1929–1950) and enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he served for three years, 1951–1954. At the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey, he built a nine-hole course and had some time to continue to hone his golf skills. After his enlistment term ended, Palmer returned to college and competitive golf.
  Palmer won the 1954 U.S. Amateur in Detroit and made the decision to turn pro in November of that year. "That victory was the turning point in my life," he said. "It gave me confidence I could compete at the highest level of the game." When reporters there asked Gene Littler who the young golfer was that was cracking balls on the practice tee, Littler said: "That's Arnold Palmer. He's going to be a great player some day. When he hits the ball, the earth shakes."
  After winning that match, Palmer quit his job selling paint and played in the Waite Memorial tournament in Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania. There, he met his future wife, Winifred Walzer, and they remained married for 45 years until her death in 1999.
  On November 17, 1954, Palmer announced his intentions to turn pro. "What other people find in poetry, I find in the flight of a good drive," Palmer said.
caption: Palmer, age 23, while in the
  U.S. Coast Guard in 1953
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