Arnold Palmer
Ray Slater, the man who caddied for Arnold Palmer when he won the 1955 Canadian Open, died last week. Slater, 83, was proud to have been at Palmer's side at the Weston Golf and Country Club in Toronto for his first win as a professional golfer. Slater was a long-time Weston member for many years. His daughter Michelle Irwin said that he and her husband went down once to the Latrobe Golf and Country Club in Latrobe, Pa. to play the course. Palmer grew up at the club and eventually bought it.
"We have a beautiful, signed copy of a photo of my dad with Mr. Palmer's clubs on his shoulder," Michelle said . "At Weston he was always referred to as 'Arnie's caddy.'"
Slater was the last caddy picked, and he got the man who would finish first and go on to become the most popular golfer in the game. His daughter hopes to reach Palmer to inform him of her father's death.
"They met [some time ago]but the next time Mr. Palmer came up he was in a nursing home, so he didn't see him."
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein