Johnny Palmer (July 3, 1918-September 14, 2006)

Publication Date - Year 1999

South of the Triad, on the southernmost tip of Badin Lake, lies the small town of the same name. Badin is not a booming metropolis like many regions of North Carolina. Instead, it remains a quiet, quaint place with a handful of stop lights and a single golf course.
 
It is at this most unlikely of places that you will find one of the best golfers the Old North State has ever produced. You can run into him on the putting green at Badin Inn Golf Club, or out on the course at the tender young age of 81.
 
His name is Palmer. Not Arnold, of course, who gained more notoriety and fame playing when golf and money and television converged to make PGA stars larger than life. Nope, the name is Johnny Palmer, a diminutive man with a stoic approach who won eight times on the PGA Tour back in the late 1940s and early ’50s, and was also part of a winning Ryder Cup team.
 
Palmer serves as a living link to golf’s heritage, having battled the likes of Hogan, Snead, Demaret and Nelson. Yet, one has to probe and pry to hear tell of such glories.
 
Palmer doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve, not now or then. In his heyday, he was affectionately nicknamed "Old Stone" by Sam Snead because of his calm demeanor and expressionless approach to golf. Palmer had a focus about his game regardless of how well, or how poorly, he stroked his previous shot.
 
"Snead started calling me ‘Old Stone.’ He couldn’t ever tell what I was shooting, whether it was an 80, 70 or 60," Palmer says with a slight chuckle. "It got around to where a lot of people called me ‘Stone.’
 
"It was part of my makeup when I was playing. You go along and make two or three birdies in a row, and you just get on the tee and wait for your turn."
 
Palmer recalls another nickname he had – One Putt. He was deadly accurate with the flat blade, as well as with all short irons.
 
"From the 5- or 6-iron on in, I was pretty good," he says. "I never was a consistent player with the long irons."
 
The proficiency with the putter and short irons was groomed at the very same place Palmer now spends many an afternoon. Badin Inn Golf Club is a short course that was built in 1926, eight years after he was born in Badin.
 
Palmer learned the game the way many an average boy did back then, as a caddie. He started carrying bags at age 12 primarily for the money. But then he figured out he could make money and play at the same time if he carried a member’s bag and his bag at the same time.
 
There was a preacher who would let Palmer bring his own clubs along and play the course while caddying. From this simple beginning, a great golf career bloomed. Palmer became a wonderful short-game player on Badin's smallish course and learned to be a pretty good putter on the sand greens of the time.
 
"I just kind of worked up to it," Palmer recalls. "I began to watch all the guys play that came before me and it got in my blood. I tried to do everything they did."
 
He kept honing his game and won his first tournament at age 16 at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro. It was the old North and South Carolina Junior tournament, and Palmer qualified for the match play portion by shooting 71, before taking out all opponents en route to the title.
 
"That’s when I really wanted to start playing," he says. "I had my eyes set on the tour."
 
After a stay in the Air Force, Palmer left a grimy job at Badin’s Alcoa aluminum plant to join the tour. He marveled at the likes of Hogan, Paul Runyan and Harry Cooper, and would often go out and watch Hogan after his own round was finished.
 
Palmer’s first tour win came in the 1947 Nashville Open. It was the first of eight such victories, including wins in the Houston Open, the Canadian Open and the Colonial Invitational.
 
Palmer once shot 62 and 64 in the final two rounds of the Tucson Open, setting a 36-hole PGA Tour record that stood for many a year. He also held the record for low round at Pinehurst No. 2 with a 65, until new ownership took over the resort and did away with much of Donald Ross’ mastery and made it more player-friendly.
 
If you dig long enough, there is a litany of achievement Palmer forged with his blades. But he doesn’t dwell on himself or his accomplishments. Old Stone is just that, even in retirement.
 
Palmer remains true to golf. He plays two or three times a week when the weather is warm, and watches the Tour on television "quite a bit, if it gets interesting."
 
The stars of today receive his praise for their talents. He says the way courses are set up now with bunkers and water hazards lurking everywhere, it is amazing to him how well they perform.
 
"I think they’ve got it down pat. If they don’t, they won’t last long," he says. "They’re shooting very low scores and it seems like different guys do it every week. It’s not just one all the time."
 
If Johnny were playing today, he would be worth millions in prize money alone.
 
Indeed, Palmer would be a rich man, but he doesn’t worry about such things. He and wife, "Weasie," have a happy family with two grown sons and three grandchildren, and golf has provided a pretty good life for the Badin native.
 
He met movie stars and traveled the world while on tour, then settled in as a club pro at Tulsa Country Club for many years before returning home to North Carolina. All in all, it has been a good life for a young man who escaped the aluminum plant in search of fairway gold.
 
"I wouldn’t want to have done it any other way. You had your own time, you could make your own schedule and you could make a pretty decent living," explains the man who won $130,000 in prize money back in 1949. "I met people I would have never met otherwise, people that the regular guy would love to just pass on the street."