At the Bay Hill Invitational, a reminder to PGA Tour players to start actin' Arnold

My old english teacher and I were gabbin’ golf when I was having lunch with him last year during my visit in Eugene. He’s a huge golf nut and recalled a golf tournament he attended years ago, where Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi were headlining and playing in the same group.

While on one of the greens, Venturi missed a short little putt and proceeded to scold an elderly lady in the front row for moving a little - distracting him. Venturi stormed on to the next tee and the lady was in tears, humiliated.

Enter Palmer. He walks over to her and says “You don’t worry about that jerk Venturi” and gives her a big hug. The gallery applauds, and if anyone there wasn’t a fan of Palmer they became one that day.

I’m obviously too young to have ever seen Arnie work the galleries in his prime. But my grandpa loved Palmer just as much (grandma was a Gary Player fan a little more if I remember correctly).

But here’s the lesson. It’s time for some of the golfers on the PGA Tour to start getting a little more fan friendly out there. That was addressed today at Palmer’s Bay Hill Invitational in Orlando, when Arnie was asked about whether tour players were being accessible enough:

Q. What kind of advice would you give players, what type of things to do?

ARNOLD PALMER: Well, that’s not my position to do. Advice, I would say that they need to understand more about what the TOUR is all about, how it got to be where it is, and my advice would be to take a good long look and then maybe realize that it didn’t just happen; it’s taken a lot of years for it to happen. And we’re all in a very good economic situation, even with the economic downturn that we’re looking at. We’d like to see it stabilize and then continue to grow as it has through the years, and I think that it would pay the young people to take a look at that and maybe realize a little more about how valuable what they have is.

Palmer is stating it quite nicely, of course. But the underlying message is this: Palmer, Hogan, Casper, all those guys roughed it during their primes, playing for practically nothing, entertaining the crowds to the point that these days, finishing 142nd on the money list puts you in a Isleworth mansion.

The PGA Tour is thirsty for more Boo Weekleys and Rocco Mediate’s (Rocco also hinted this week players weren’t doing enough these days to glad hand the galleries & sponsors). Coincidentally, those players will resonate in my 2008 memory bank as much as Tiger or Padraig ever did. Pro golfers are entertainers as much as they are athletes. The showmanship needs to come back. Not everyone needs to ride the bull down off the first tee at Valhalla, but a little more crowd interaction and going the extra mile would be a great benefit if the tour is going to continue to grow during this global recession.

You can follow Brandon Tucker’s golf blog and more on Twitter: http://twitter.com/brandontucker or follow WorldGolf.com at Twitter.com/worldgolf