AUGUSTA, Ga. — The grandfather of all curtain calls comes at 1:05 this afternoon. A 72-year-old, white-haired gentleman will stand at the 1st tee, squint at the gauntlet of jade grass and loblolly pines before him, pull out his driver and swing awkwardly and with suicidal intent. As he always has.

        There are some people you think will last forever, and others you hope will. Arnold Palmer is both of those. He has decided today will be his last round at the Masters. The parting won't be easy. It's only been 48 years.

        “It was time,” Palmer said Thursday, after an opening-round 89. “Some things in life are inevitable. I like to think there are a couple more good rounds in my body, and may be there are. But they didn't show up here.”

Arnold Palmer salutes the gallery at 18 Thursday. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        He'd hit a nice tee shot off No.1. From the fairway, 200 yards out, he lashed a 3-wood “as hard as I could hit that S.O.B.” It stopped right of the green, on the fringe. The hole was 50 feet away.

        Palmer needed four putts to get home. The first putt traveled up one hill and down another, short of the cup and off the left side of the green. The bogey try lipped out. “I knew what kind of writing was on the wall” then, Palmer said.

        He'd known before, of course. Palmer hasn't shot par at the Masters in 17 years. Yet he clung to the naive, very human notion that, somehow, 1964 could pay one last visit. One shot, one hole. One more moment for the King to play like one.

        Palmer made triple bogey at No.7 and doubles at 8 and 9. “That's it,” he said.

        The goodbyes are harder in golf. The players you love play 30 years or, in Palmer's case, 50. You see them every year, at the same places. They don't change teams and break your heart.

        You could argue for or against Palmer's continuing presence here. Part of what defines the Masters is its loving embrace of history, its recognition that age and beauty are synonymous more often than we realize.

        Palmer is as much a part of the place as Bobby Jones and the foliage. And yet he is taking up a space someone else should have. It's not a living museum. It's a golf tournament.

        He spent a lot of time Thursday lingering along the gallery ropes, recognizing people. At one point, he ducked beneath the ropes, to sit in a folding chair. At No.17, with his ball safely in the middle of the fairway, Palmer walked to the ropes, hugged and talked. He didn't return to his ball until it was time to hit. It must have been three minutes.

        “That gallery today, I could probably tell you the names of thousands of them,” he said. “The ones I don't know by their first names are relatives.”

        He was only half-joking, and this is what we'll miss the most. We'll never see another pro athlete with Palmer's human touch, not in any sport.

        Money and celebrity have insulated jocks from dealing with anyone who can't make them richer or more proficient. Imagine Jack Nicklaus, a decade hence, mingling with the galleries. Imagine Tiger Woods.

        They don't need it. Palmer's gift is that, deep down, you believe he'd do the glad-handing, anyway. He never took his popularity for granted. He never gave less than he got.

        He was told in 1955 he couldn't win the Masters. His flat line drives were ill-suited for the soft landings needed on Augusta National's linoleum-slick greens. Palmer won four Masters.

        If you looked hard enough and chose to believe, you could see that Arnie on Thursday afternoon. It was a little after 3. Providentially, the sun busted the clouds for the first time all day. Palmer strode up the last fairway.

        He still has that stalk, the athletic lean to his stride, the big chest, the Popeye forearms, the whole man's man catalog. Palmer walked up the 18th fairway Thursday, and 48 years vanished before your dewy eyes.

        “Thanks,” he said. The people circling the 18th green rose as one to cheer. Their ovation was nothing like the one Palmer will get today. “Thank you very much.”

        It's hard on these occasions to tell whom we feel for more, the players or ourselves. The passing of our heroes dates us all. We drift across the seasons, secure in the present, with those we admire as our guides. Then one day, way too soon, they leave our company. And we wonder why we didn't appreciate them more.

        Arnold Palmer will play his last Masters round this afternoon.

        We're all a bit older for it.

        E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.

        More Masters and local golf coverage at Cincinnati.com/golf

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