This article originally appeared on Golf.com.
Arnold Palmer died today in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at age 87, according to multiple reports.
The news was first reported by Golfweek.
Credit: Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images
He had a knack for making people feel better about themselves, and about their prospects.
As a player, he allowed his fans to join him in his unbridled assertiveness.
He created a vicarious thrill as no player before him and none since.
All he had to do was contend, and he often did.
Palmer had a particularly close relationship with Dwight Eisenhower.
He was an odd sort of matinee idol.
He became, over the decades, fantastically rich, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The world has likely never seen anybody who loved golf more than Palmer did.
He played or hit balls virtually every day of his life.
Almost like another icon of his era, Walter Cronkite, Palmer was consistent, reliable and trustworthy.
His humor was often literal that way.
He was the first professional golfer with his own raucous cheering section.
His life changed in August 1954, when he won the U.S.
Amateur shortly before his 25th birthday.
Her father hated my ass, Palmer once said.
He said, Youre going to marry a golf pro?'
It was only in that period that Palmer decided to turn pro.
It worked out all right.
The two Pennsylvanians were married from 1954 until Winnie Palmers death in 1999.
The Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies in Orlando is considered a world-class center for neonatal care.
The couple had two children, Amy and Peggy, who were largely shielded from the spotlight.
He never won a PGA Championship.
Palmer had a wide stubborn streak and a long memory.
Like Ronald Reagan and Warren Buffett, Palmer had the knack to reduce complex things to their essence.
The two men never enjoyed much a rapport.
Palmer once said, He never called me anything except fella,' Palmer once said.
Nicklaus, a decade younger than Palmer, succeeded Palmer as the king of American golf.
He revered what he called our national championship.
But it was his play at Augusta National, both brilliant and boneheaded, that defined his career.
But the truth was that those men were far more in awe of Palmer than he was of them.
Businessmen had nothing on Palmer.
There were scores of other products in between.
Palmers stiffness as an actor added to his appeal and his credibility.
He drove that famous red tractor for Pennzoil for years, ran through airports with O.J.
Simpson for Hertz and appeared in an Electronic Arts video golf game with Tiger Woods.
A hundred other deals could be added to that list.
In 1960, Palmer won the Masters and the U.S. Open and American golf had its first working-class hero.
Palmer has signed that timeless SOTY cover thousands of times, his penmanship relentlessly consistent and legible.
There cannot be anybody anywhere who has signed more autographs than Arnold Palmer.
Palmer lost three U.S.
Opens in playoffs and in his mind there were another three he should have won.
Root around the soul of any professional golfer, including Palmers, and youll find something melancholic.
Longtime fans remember Palmer tossing victory balls and flinging visors like Frisbees before there were Frisbees.
He revisited these events without bitterness but with genuine regret.
He had a knack for creating intimacy.
Friends, relatives and employees were intensely loyal to him.
He liked golf on every stage.
Early on, he found himself one down to a duffer but then started turning the match around.
He shook his club and yelled joyfully, I got you now!
Palmer was externally a conformist but internally a maverick and people found that combination irresistible.
He could be a Harvard Business School case study for the athlete as celebrity endorser and businessman.
Palmer once said that Tigers relationship with Earl reminded him of his relationship with his father.
Both fathers taught the importance of discipline and practice.
Both instilled in their sons a competitive hunger bordering on starvation.
Palmers longtime agent, Alastair Johnston, recruited Woods to IMG.
Nicklaus, the Golden Bear, was a country-club kid and a plodder.
Player, the Black Knight, was a globetrotting overachiever with movie-star looks.
Palmer was simply The King.
Later, he became a public face of the anti-smoking campaign.
He was not one to sit around and hyper-analyze swing positions or the meaning of life.
Asked once about life regrets, Palmer said, I wish I would have tried putting left-hand low.
His legacy is vast.
He was an owner of the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The appeal of his name got Golf Channel off the ground.
Theres a hospital named for him in Orlando and an airport named for him in Latrobe.
Through his two daughters, Palmer had six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
He married for a second time in 2005, to Kit Gawthrop.
His official residence was a condo at Bay Hill, but Latrobe was the center of his universe.
There was a small refrigerator in that workshop and at 5 p.m. sharp the first beers came out.
Palmer is also survived by his two sisters, Lois Jean Tilley and Sandy Sarni.
He never changed his grip, he never changed his swing, he never changed his personality.
That observation got to the heart of the man and the matter.
Palmer lived a full life and got millions of other people to believe they could do the same.
