"Arnies Armies" Signed Gold Club Measures23 x 23 in.

The Arnie's Army Story told by Arnold Palmer

It was 1959 when I first saw the words "Arnie's Army". I was the defending champion at the Masters that year, and, as he always did in those days, Clifford Roberts - Augusta National's co-founder along with Bob Jones, used GIs from nearby Camp Gordon (now Fort Gordon), the military installation where Cliff spent two years as a young soldier, to work the scoreboards.

Many people don't realize that the Masters was not a sellout in those early years. Anybody with five dollars could walk up to the gates and buy a ticket for the day. Elementary school teachers had boxes of tickets on their desks with signs reading, "Masters Tickets: Please Help Support Our Town." Cliff wanted as large a gallery as he could get that year since the Masters was being televised for the second time, so he gave free passes to any soldier who showed up in uniform. A lot of the soldiers did not necessarily know a lot about golf, but when they found out that I was defending champion they joined my gallery. That prompted one of the GIs working a back-nine scoreboard to announce the arrival of "Arnie's Army," which is what it looked like. I can't remember another time, other than my stint in the Coast Guard, when so many uniformed soldiers surrounded me. A year later, when I won my second Masters title, I thanked the "army" of supporters who came out to follow me.

Johnny Hendricks, a reporter from The Augusta Chronicle, picked up on the phrase and ran the headline "Arnie's Army" for the first time. Boy, did it ever stick! Before I finished my playing career I think every newspaper, magazine, or television station that covered golf used the phrase at least once.