His connection with the people is what helped make Arnold Palmer to be Arnold Palmer. It was real, sincere, lasting. He looked at you when he waved, smiled earnestly for photographs, signed his autograph like it was the first and last one that would have his signature.
Palmer's focus was not so intense that he failed to see what was happening around him, a trait that perhaps on more than one occasion hurt him. A famous example occurred at the 1961 Masters, when he strode confidently up the hill at Augusta National's final hole, a third green jacket in sight.
A birdie at the 17th gave him a 1-stroke lead over Gary Player and now spectators lined the ropes on the home hole, including a friend who managed to get Palmer's attention.
"My tee shot was right in the dead center of the fairway,'' Palmer recalled years later. "He [his friend] had given me a little confidence in my game, and he went like this and waved me over to the edge of the ropes. And I made a mistake that my father taught me when I was a little boy never to do.
"He put out his hand and he says, 'You won it boy, great going.' And my mind left my body. Just went away.''
From there, Palmer hit his approach shot in a greenside bunker, knocked his third across the green and proceeded to make a double-bogey 6 to lose the Masters by one stroke to Player.
It was a stunning way to lose.
In a career that had so many triumphs, so many highs, this was a loss that haunted the legendary golfer, perhaps as much as any, certainly more than anything that ever occurred at the Masters.
"That was the saddest situation that I had there,'' he said.
And yet, as we remember Palmer, doesn't that story sum up what drew people to him?
Palmer won 62 PGA Tour events, seven major championships, but made a bigger impact by relating to the people, by acting as if he were one of them. Sure, they gravitated to a champion, and Palmer was a prolific winner. But they also loved his go-for-broke style and the fact that he would look them in the eye, shake their hand, pat them on the back.
Perhaps it wasn't prudent, but Palmer couldn't help but seek out smiling faces in the gallery and acknowledge with a smile of his own. He might have handled the attention, the adulation, better than any big-time athlete simply because he reveled in it, understood it, embraced it.
"When I was growing up playing the game and when I first came on tour, the person that I tried to emulate the most was Arnold Palmer,'' Phil Mickelson said several years ago. "And I'll tell you why. [The] 1994 U.S. Open at Oakmont. I saw him come out of the volunteer tent after spending an hour and a half signing autographs, and his comment was after people were thanking him profusely, he said, 'You guys spent hours on end helping out with this event, helping it run smoothly and yet you don't have a chance to go out and see any golf at all. I wanted to come here and let you know how much we appreciate it.'
"He spent an hour and a half signing autographs for roughly 1,000 people. I thought that was what professional golf should be, the way professionals should handle themselves, the way he treated people with respect and was always thoughtful toward others.''
It is fitting, perhaps, that Mickelson's story involved Oakmont, a virtual home course for Palmer, who grew up in nearby Latrobe, Pennsylvania. It was there that he lost a U.S. Open playoff to Jack Nicklaus in 1962 -- Palmer would also lose in a U.S. Open playoff the following year, and blow a 7-stroke lead in 1966 before losing another playoff. It was where his U.S. Open career came to an end in 1994.
Mind you, Palmer was 30 years removed from his last major victory, but the USGA granted him a special exemption at age 64 to play in the tournament one last time. After missing the cut in stifling heat, Palmer headed to the media center to discuss his last U.S. Open, and while he shed a few tears, he also received a standing ovation.
And yet, Palmer never faded away. He played in his 50th Masters in 2004 and a handful of senior events and kept right on playing golf into his 80s. Palmer remained so popular that, as late as 2016, at age 86, he was ranked by Golf Digest as the fifth-highest earner in the game, behind only Jordan Spieth, Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. The magazine estimated that he made $40 million in 2015 through endorsements and golf course design work. He was ahead of Nicklaus and Greg Norman.
Palmer was the product of good timing. When his game started to take off in the late 1950s, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead had seen their best days, and the game was looking for a dominant force, especially with the emergence of television.
For the first time, fans other than those in person could watch Palmer hitch up his trousers and take a vicious lash, his swing a mangled blur that sent the ball great distances. It didn't hurt that his first Masters victory in 1958 was one of the first with what was then considered extensive TV coverage.
"I think Palmer changed the whole face of golf,'' longtime Miami Herald columnist Edwin Pope -- who attended more than 40 Masters -- once said. "And since the Masters is the face of golf, he changed the Masters. Certainly television came along pretty close to the time Palmer came along. It was a conjunction of forces with TV and Palmer. He was so colorful anyway. I think it was just very fortunate that they came along together. Maybe one of them without the other could have done it, but it was all for the good.''
No doubt, Palmer -- who would later become an Augusta National member -- had a big influence on the Masters. He started winning the tournament when it was still relatively new, his first victory in 1958 coming just 24 years after the inaugural event.
"The Masters before Palmer was black and white. The Masters after Palmer was in living color," said Sid Matthew, an author and golf historian. "Palmer was as powerful in elevating the stature of the Masters as was the double eagle [by Gene Sarazen in 1935]. The shot heard 'round the world obviously put the Masters on the map, but there's little question that the charisma and the charm of Arnold and his charging style really elevated the prestige of the tournament.''
And it was Palmer who all but invented the modern Grand Slam. Bobby Jones founded Augusta National after winning what was then the Grand Slam in 1930, victories in the U.S. and British Amateurs and Opens. But in the intervening years, nobody discussed such a thing as the professional game gained more traction.
Not until Palmer, that is, when in 1960 he won the Masters and U.S. Open and openly discussed the idea of winning The Open at St. Andrews and the PGA Championship, calling it a modern slam. Although Palmer finished a shot behind Kel Nagle at the '60 Open (he would win it in '61 and '62), the idea of winning all four majors took hold -- although Palmer's personal nemesis would become the PGA Championship, a title he never claimed, denying him a career slam.
But he had a prolific career nonetheless. He was the first player to win $1 million and when he captured his fourth Masters and seventh major title in 1964, he had 43 PGA Tour victories on his way to 62. His last came at the 1973 Bob Hope Classic. Palmer captured 10 titles on the senior tour, including two PGA Seniors' Championships and a U.S. Senior Open. His last win on that circuit came in 1988.
Although his skills diminished, Palmer kept on playing. He lamented being able to "hear the ball land in the fairway,'' a self-deprecating way of saying he didn't hit it far enough.
Palmer often played in the pro-am of his Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando, threatening to stop, frustrated by his poor form. No matter; he attracted huge galleries, not a soul in attendance caring for a second that the ball didn't travel as far, that the scores weren't as low.
They came to watch a legend, and he always acknowledged their presence, something that once cost him a major, but always endeared him to legions of fans.