Golfing legend Arnold Palmer was a Coast Guard veteran

During his senior year in 1950 at Wake Forest College, golfing phenom Arnold Palmer abruptly left school after his golf teammate and college roommate Bud Worsham was killed in an automobile accident. 

“After the devastating loss of his best friend, Wake Forest was not the same for Arnie,” wrote Elaine Tooley who interviewed Palmer many years later for the university’s alumni magazine. 

“I thought I’d go crazy,” Palmer said. “Grief is one of the most powerful forces on Earth and almost always unpredictable. I’d never felt anything like the emotions and conflicting feelings suddenly turning over inside me. Staying at Wake Forest suddenly felt empty and pointless without Bud there. Wake Forest without Bud was unthinkable.” 

“I joined the Coast Guard,” Palmer said. “On a cold winter day in mid-January 1951, I arrived at Cape May, N.J., to begin my basic training at boot camp.” 

“I had little time for golf during my nine months at Cape May, although I did design and build, almost single-handedly, a nine-hole, pitch-and-putt course between two airport runways on the base – my first golf course design job,” Palmer said.

 

His first Coast Guard assignment was in Cleveland, Ohio, where he became the yeoman for the commander of the 9th Coast Guard District, Rear Adm. Roy L. Raney. Palmer became his boss’ personal golf instructor and was allowed to compete in regional golf tournaments on the weekends.

 

Adm. Raney coaxed Palmer to enroll at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and become an officer. Palmer said he was flattered by the offer, because his “three years in the Coast Guard helped shape the rest of my life.” 

Yet, he was ready to exit the Coast Guard in 1954 to pursue golf as his life’s work. Palmer’s first goal, however, was to return to Wake Forest as a student-athlete. Palmer excelled on the links and was the medalist in the very first Atlantic Coast Conference golf tournament in 1954, but Duke won team title. The spring semester ended with Palmer a few credits short of earning a business degree from Wake Forest. 

A few months later, Palmer won golf’s U.S. Amateur Championship in Detroit, Mich., and decided to turn pro. He was off and running on the PGA Tour. 

Palmer’s first tour victory came during his 1955 rookie season when he won the Canadian Open played in Toronto, Ontario, earning $2,400 for his efforts. (Over the course of his career, Palmer won 95 tournaments, including 62 PGA Tour events and 7 majors.) 

After winning the Masters Tournament at Augusta, Ga., in 1958, Palmer followed through on a promise he made to himself in 1950, while riding on a train that carried Bud Worsham’s casket to the Worsham family in Cabin John, Md., Elaine Tooley wrote. 

“Sitting there in the baggage car, looking at the coffin, crying, I decided one thing. If I ever got able, got the money, got the opportunity, I was going to do something to honor Bud Worsham.” 

“In January 1960, Palmer created the Bud Worsham Memorial Scholarship, providing financial aid for Wake Forest undergraduates on the men’s varsity golf team,” Elaine Tooley said. “That generosity has given scores of young golfers the opportunity to pursue their education and sport, including Jay Sigel, Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, Jerry Haas, Billy Andrade and Len Mattiace.” 

During their time together on Wake’s campus, Arnie and Bud were “basically inseparable.” 

One would nag the other “to hurry up and get his homework done so they could golf,” Tooley said. “They were Wake Foresters.” Their spirits live on.