When we talk about golf or the stars of golf, you can not forget “The King” Arnold Palmer. Golf was part of “Big Three” with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, who is widely credited with popularizing the sport in the world.
Before that was made for TV Golf, Golf TV live, Monday through Friday, all TV Golf weekends and days on a TV channel just for golf – all making the space ad viewers golfers more valuable – if it was not love at first sight that matters.
That’s how Frank Chirkinian, Golf TV pioneer, remembers it.
“The television camera is invasive, not knowing at the same time, he said.” The camera fell in love with Arnold Palmer. So far, Arnold has always loved this camera. There is a special relationship. ”
Chirkinian, who returned Golf TV for four decades after he joined CBS Sports in the same year – 1958 – Palmer, who won the Masters for the first time, remembers his first reaction on seeing Palmer in the air: “It has diverted cigarette on the floor, hung up his pants. It was, ‘Holy mackerel, what’s that? ”
That enthusiasm was reinforced by what may be the largest operation in the history of American sports marketing handshake.
In 1959, Mark McCormack, a young lawyer from Cleveland, who had known Palmer playing golf at the College of William & Mary, Palmer played for Wake Forest. He was interested in creating a sports management firm – through this handshake 1959 – Got Palmer as its first customer.
The company has become IMG, which has become the dominant power of sports marketing. Palmer, a speech in tribute to McCormack after his death in 2003, said that “maybe millions” of handshakes, but could not “think it means more to me and my career” with McCormack.
“They say timing is everything,” said Johnny Miller, principal analyst for NBC Golf, whose career highlights include winning the U. States Open 1973 after the “T” in the final round six strokes behind the leader, including Palmer. and Arnie was the perfect time to play golf on television. ”
Perfect, because television sports – and sports marketing, following the TV show – have been so successful in the 1960s. And Miller, who decided in his youth to “whip” of his drives specifically to copy Palmer, Palmer said that the perfect man for the head of television: “The way he was playing was fiery and virile. Never apologize, never acted like a crybaby, is very gracious in defeat. ”
And, Miller suggests, Palmer understands intuitively the market: “I knew it was important to make friends with people, make eye contact, never refusing an autograph. Phil Mickelson Arnie has copied more than any other (now on tour), which is that Tour Guy other players may be copied, the absence of Tiger Woods. ”
Palmer suggests Chirkinian style has brought new viewers for Golf TV. “It seemed like a non-elitist, blue-collar guys in what was then regarded as a country club sport and told viewers:” His swing is very similar to mine, of course.
Palmer, like other rare athletes like Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali, which can add millions of viewers in the ratings, do not enter full-time broadcasting. NBC golf reporter Roger Maltbie, which Palmer calls “my hero growing and he is my hero to this day,” recalls listening to Palmer, who helped found The Golf Channel, sometimes, when it emerged as a television analyst “Never Arnold said nothing in his career that might offend anyone, and my memory of him on television. ”
It’s also a pretty good description of how a superstar of sport must meet to become a marketing superstar. IMG has become the largest U.S. distributor and producer of sports television and now represents models and directors, as well as athletes.
As Nick Faldo, now leader of the CBS golf analyst, said in 1995 in Palmer last British Open: “Had there been no Arnold Palmer in 1960 (which) could have been a small shed on the beach instead of this environment healthy. You can not say what the man did for the game. That’s all.
Arnold Palmer – Forever The King
