{"id":392777,"date":"2026-01-07T00:10:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T00:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/392777\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T00:10:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T00:10:59","slug":"among-golf-signatures-arnold-palmers-artful-mark-was-in-class-by-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/392777\/","title":{"rendered":"Among golf signatures, Arnold Palmer\u2019s artful mark was in class by itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t get a personal, hand-signed Christmas card from John Daly<\/a> this year \u2014 or anything from him, for that matter \u2014 but he does have a beautiful and artistic signature, at least when he\u2019s trying hard and his Sharpie is fresh. This specious subject brings to mind a casual comment Lee Trevino<\/a> made to Tiger Woods on the putting green at the Old Course<\/a> a couple of summers ago: \u201cDid Santa Claus tee off yet?\u201d Santa Claus (aka John Daly, owner of a prosperous white beard and a belly that is richer yet) was in the group going out ahead of Trevino, Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Rory McIlroy, the whole gang gathered for a four-hole exhibition of Open champions. \u201cNo,\u201d Woods said, not skipping a beat. \u201cHe\u2019s teeing off now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Behind a nearby fence, the R&A had set up an area for kids to collect autographs of their golfing heroes. An autograph request always sounds more charming when it comes from a kid with a Scottish accent. Tiger\u2019s signature is no great thing. You can barely tell it\u2019s his. Trevino\u2019s is fine. Rory\u2019s is all loops and looks more like an Olympic logo than a signature. Big Jack\u2019s is a thing of beauty. It\u2019s perfect. In the history of golf signatures, only one is better. Arnold Palmer\u2019s. The gentle curves. Its straight-line bottom and 100-percent legibility factor. There\u2019s some art in it. The king of all signers..<\/p>\n

\"PGA
\n The king of signatures. <\/p>\n

getty images <\/p>\n

There\u2019s also this about Arnold: the way he connected with the people for whom he signed. George Clooney, in a profile in The New Yorker<\/a>, talked about this years ago. He was speaking of his own method but he was describing Arnold. \u201c\u2018Your job is to find the best way for those people to hold on to their dignity. For a second, they have thrown it out. They got what they came for but then they\u2019re standing there feeling, God, that horrible taste in their mouth: \u2018What now, how do I walk away?\u2019\u201d Clooney gives his fans a return ticket to the rest of their lives, but now slightly better. Arnold did the same. Clooney\u2019s signature, by the way, is half a mess, but very much his own.<\/p>\n

Warren Wolk is not an expert on movie-star signatures. But he is one on legendary sports figures. There\u2019s no signature he likes more than Arnold Palmer\u2019s. Wolk is the co-owner (with his wife) of All-Stars Sports Cards & Games, \u201ca collector\u2019s paradise since 1988,\u201d per the shop\u2019s business card. It is located on the outskirts of the Oxford Valley Mall, with itself is on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The mall, which opened in 1973, was once a great temple of merchandising but now seniors can do their counting-steps walks there without facing too many human obstacles.<\/p>\n

Wolk and Tracy specialize in the Big Four: baseball, football, basketball, hockey. The shop is as mom-and-pop as a store can get, and it exists because Wolk grew up on the Phillies, the Eagles, the Sixers and the Flyers. He came into card collecting the way many sportswriters find their way to their beats, via childhood infatuation. Wolk\u2019s father was one of the mall\u2019s original tenants, the owner of a bookstore called Paperback Booksmith. (Its motto:\u00a0Dedicated to the fine art of browsing.) The senior Wolk is a reader, a baseball fan and a member of Arnie\u2019s Army. Warren followed suit.<\/p>\n

The sports memorabilia business has not enjoyed an exalted\u00a0reputation in recent decades, as it has morphed from a gentle rite-of-passage kiddie ritual into a semi-big business populated, to some degree, by schemers. Warren Wolk is a reminder of card-collecting from a kinder era. He has to make a living, of course. But his starting point is the joy of sports, and the joy of collecting. Card collecting, he\u2019ll tell you, is a tactile activity in an era dominated by screens.<\/p>\n

\"warren
\n Warren Wolk, holding his signed photo of Arnold Palmer, says \u201cthe greats usually have great signatures.\u201d<\/p>\n

michael bamberger <\/p>\n

An older man came into the shop. This was in the run-up to Christmas. Each man recognized the other, from previous visits.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow you doin\u2019?\u201d Wolk asked the man who was, just then, the lone customer in the shop. It is stuffed with goods, but organized.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m doin\u2019,\u201d the man said.<\/p>\n

He was looking for a stocking-stuffer gift for his grandson. He had come to the right place. One staple is a pack of random baseball cards, some of them signed.<\/p>\n

High on a sky-blue wall and deep in the store was a framed signed-by-the-subject photograph of John Daly at the top of his backswing. The swing is so long Daly can almost scratch his stomach with his driver head, and this is not sportswriter hyperbole. Beside the Daly snap was a signed photo of Taylor Swift, guitar in hand. Below these two country icons (Teardrops on My Guitar, Hit it Hard) was a signed photograph of Bob Feller, the iconic righthander.<\/p>\n

Everything\u2019s for sale at All-Stars Sports Cards & Games. Almost everything. On the wall behind the counter, about as high as an arm can reach, Wolk has a signed photograph of Arnold Palmer, likely from the early 1990s, and it\u2019s not for sale.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day a woman called,\u201d Wolk told me. \u201cShe knew Arnold, and I think the story was that Arnold had lost his collection of baseball cards and she was trying to find replacement cards.\u201d<\/p>\n

This tracked \u2014 and didn\u2019t. Palmer was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania, in Latrobe<\/a>, and grew up rooting for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Well into his 80s, he continued to go to at least one home Pirates game each season. Anybody, of course, could lose a baseball card collection, but Arnold never moved from Latrobe, and his mother was the ultimate pack rat, unwilling to throw out anything, including every pair of golf shoes Arnold ever wore. I once got a tour of this vast collection of Palmer memorabilia, in a giant warehouse, near Arnold\u2019s childhood home. One shelf was crowded with golf shoes, every last pair a tanker: leather uppers and leather soles with steel spikes, all of it held together by made-in-America craftsmanship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI struck out on the cards but one day this signed picture arrived,\u201d Wolk said. A little something for the effort. \u201cPure class.\u201d He believes that the salutation \u2014 To Warren, Best Wishes \u2014 was handwritten by Palmer and the signature itself was machine-printed on the photo. That sounds right. I was with Arnold, in his offices in both Latrobe and Bay Hill, more than a few times and saw the care with which he went through his morning ritual, signing books, scorecards, photographs and flagstick flags, often aided and abetted by his aide-de-camp, Doc Giffen. Arnold liked signing. Sam Snead<\/a> had a similar ritual, but he was never happy about it. Snead told me once he spent $10,000 a year on postage, mailing things back to fans.<\/p>\n

The accumulated knowledge of the internet wants to tell you that no athlete signed autographs more often than Babe Ruth. I don\u2019t know. I can\u2019t imagine that the Babe is ahead of Palmer in this undocumented category of sports collecting, in part because Ruth (who had a spectacular signature) died at 53 and Palmer at 87. Cal Ripken and Phil Mickelson spent decades as prolific signers, but Arnold signed regularly for over\u00a060 years, at all manner of inductions, testimonial dinners and of course at tournaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greats usually have great signatures,\u201d Wolk said. \u201cThey took pride in everything they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second customer entered the store. Warren Wolk put away his signed Arnold Palmer photo. It was not for sale.<\/p>\n

Michael\u00a0Bamberger\u00a0welcomes your comments at\u00a0Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I didn\u2019t get a personal, hand-signed Christmas card from John Daly this year \u2014 or anything from him,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-392777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}