By BART WRIGHT
The Greenville (S.C.) News

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Watching Arnold Palmer tee off in Masters competition for the last time Friday evoked uncounted images and memories, too many to process and understand.

He was here, competing with the world's best golfers before most of us knew what golf was, much less why anyone cared about the game. He was doing it when we first began to pay attention to the discipline involved in striking a little white, dimpled ball and when that time came, he was the first guy we saw in our mind's eye when we thought about big-time golf.

You try to summarize all of this, his career through the black-and-white years of television, through Vietnam, Watergate, through the expansion of television, the burgeoning popularity of the game among people they called the Silent Majority, and you realize how seductive it is to not see the forest for the trees.

It's all pretty simple, really, this Palmer phenomenon.

Put it this way - on Friday, millions of people in this country and around the world were interested in watching a 74 year-old man compete in a sport at its highest level.

That fairly qualifies as extremely unusual, even by American sports standards, which have always found ways to generate something new and different. Palmer is finished now with his competitive phase at Augusta, 50 years after he started.

Four-time Masters champion Arnold Palmer got emotional during his press conference after playing his final round of Masters competition. (AP photo)

"I'm not going to make a big, long speech today," Palmer said after his last round. "I'm through; I've had it; I'm done, cooked, washed up, finished, whatever you want to call it."

Maybe you had to be there. He said it with a kind of smile in his voice that told he wasn't sad like two years ago when it seemed as though he might not be invited back. This wasn't sad to Palmer at all; this was the way he wanted to go out.

And what a way to go.

With the Masters in its 68th year, Palmer has competed in 73 percent of all the tournaments, an incredible number by itself made all the more remarkable when you try to think of anyone in any other sport who has, for so long, been associated with his game. Art Modell, the longtime NFL owner turned over managing ownership of the Baltimore Ravens to Steve Biscotti Thursday, closing out 43 years of effort.

The difference is that the NFL is in its 84th year, so Modell has been involved only about half the time and he was an owner, not a competitor.

Sure, it's fair to say Palmer hasn't played at a Masters' level for quite a few years, but he is, after all, the meal ticket for all the players out here. He is the guy, more than anyone else, who popularized the sport to the nation through television. Palmer is to golf what the 1958 Colts-Giants championship game was to the NFL in terms of the springboard effect on national interest.

There's a statue of Michael Jordan in Chicago, one of Stan Musial in St. Louis. There's a Gordie Howe statue in Saskatoon.

They ought to have one here of Palmer.

Palmer's best run

Arnold Palmer's stellar 10-year stretch at the Masters:

Year	Finish
1958	Won
1959	3
1960	Won
1961	T2
1962	Won
1963	T9
1964	Won
1965	T2
1966	T4
1967	4