The Familiar Feeling of Arnie’s Place

Latrobe, PA doesn’t puff its chest at you, at least not entering through the rolling Pennsylvania backroads we took to get there from Oakmont. It’s about an hour drive in the traffic of U.S. Open week, and when you come upon Latrobe Country Club, there’s no spotlight or halo. No “Welcome to Arnie Country” billboard. No marble steps. Just some winding roads through open fields that lead you to the perfect encapsulation of a Western Pennsylvanian hero. The club, his home, his office, his famed warehouse garage—all stand preserved as I imagined them as a kid. Arnold Palmer seemed to live at home just like everyone I knew growing up. Quietly, among rolling hills and vignettes of simpler times.

If you grew up in southwestern PA, you understand the unique brand of silent pride. Maybe that’s why my dad talked about Arnie like he’d be at church next Sunday. His celebrity didn’t feel distant. He nodded at neighbors. He was from here, he carried us with him. You can see it in the way he collected mementos in the room where he tinkered on clubs. You can see it in the way he laid out his basement, complete with a small bar, a pool table just like my uncle’s growing up, and a Wake Forest fleece blanket draped over an ottoman. Uncles, grandparents, family friends—I know so many with the same sensibilities, and they feel timeless to me. A place where someone with beer taste spends their champagne budget modestly, and wouldn’t have it any other way.

For me, my interest in walking the grounds that Palmer built was mostly about one thing. Tucked into a small closet of tweed and linen and wool jackets, on a small dresser laid his Rolexes. Displayed like trophies because that’s that they are. Palmer’s Rolex relationship has always been of interest to me, not just as a casual watch admirer (I admittedly don’t know a ton about movement, and at the last place I worked there were plenty of people who knew a thing or two about luxury timepieces). I was also interested because of the juxtaposition of these two massive figures—albeit one a watch company and one a man—in the sport.

It didn’t happen with a press release or a boardroom briefing. Like a lot of good things in golf and life, the relationship between Arnold Palmer and Rolex started with a handshake. It was the early 1960s, and Arnie was already becoming The King. A blue-collar guy with a country club game and a jet-setter’s charisma, Palmer was making his way through the golf world in a way that felt both historic and human. At the same time, Rolex—already known for precision and prestige—was trying to figure out what golf meant to them. They had the crown. Now they needed the character.

The story goes that Palmer met André Heiniger, the Managing Director of Rolex, in Japan in 1961. Palmer wasn’t the type to chase deals. But Heiniger wasn’t pitching a deal. He was starting a relationship based on a sense of shared values. Excellence without arrogance, if you will.

By 1967, Rolex officially named Arnold Palmer their first-ever golf Testimonee. A word that feels weighty, chosen, responsible. Palmer wasn’t just wearing the watch. He was the watch. The brand was precision. He was poise. Together, they became one of golf’s most elegant duos.

It didn’t hurt that Arnie wore the hell out of a Day-Date. He’d wear it with a cardigan or a sport coat, the same ones now hanging next to it in the 5x5 closet in Latrobe.

Soon Rolex added Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. Then Tom Watson and Tiger. But Arnie was the OG. The first tee shot. The heartbeat. He didn’t just set the tone—he gave them their tempo.

Now, what started with a handshake and a watch is still ticking all over the grounds of Latrobe CC. Thanks enormously in part to the Arnold and Winnie Palmer Foundation, who’ve preserved not just Palmer’s legacy, but his way of life in all its nuances from the reading glasses on his desk to the can of Penzoil on the shelf in his shop.

Leaving the property, I take another mental snapshot: half‑lemonade, half‑tea. Half‑WPIAL grit, half‑Rolex shine. I can hear my dad’s voice again, answering my question before I finish asking it. “Who’s your hero, da—.”

“Arnold Palmer.”

Experiencing Arnie’s home base, and speaking to those who preserve his legacy, I’m reminded of why that’s always been his answer. Arnie showed us—my dad, me—that you can soar far beyond your roots without forgetting where you came from. Being the kind of guy who can remind you of a superhero and of your Pap, the one who was one of your original golf buddies, who organized his shagged Pro-V1s in egg cartons, who shot his age plenty in his 70s. It doesn’t get more timeless than that.