By Bill Fields
University of Nebraska Press
325 pages
" 'I'm not much for spending a lot of time in the office,' [Arnold] Palmer says, pausing between wedge shots about 3 p.m. on a recent Wednesday at the Bay Hill practice range, the Orlando club he bought in 1976. 'It makes me stiff and sore and usually irritable. Eleven o'clock is checkout time.'
" ''That's nice work if you can get it,' someone says.
" ' Hey, I've been working seventy-eight years to get it,' Palmer says. 'I figure I ought to be able to check out at eleven.'
"Palmer is a little grouchy at having stayed in his small upstairs office in the Bay Hill clubhouse longer than is his custom. Just before leaving for the day, a man had come in and offered to donate $5,000 a hole for one of the hospitals Palmer is involved with if Palmer would play nine with him. 'Usually my price is a little higher than that,' Palmer says, admitting that such off-the-street propositions happen more frequently than you might think. 'But that's a pretty good offer, isn't it? We usually don't turn those babies down.' "
