Mr. Palmer: Sometimes a mentor has to smack you on the back of the head.

Excerpted from the forthcoming book Li’L Black Book of Mentorship.

For many years I lived in Bay Hill, which meant I was fortunate enough to run into Arnold Palmer around town and on the course more times than I can count. I even had the privilege of sharing a couple of cocktails with him — including, once, one of my homemade Bloody Marys, made with Ketel One, of course.

He was a wonderful man. He always seemed to have a smile for everyone, and he possessed that rare, innate ability to make every person he met feel special. I’d already watched him for years on television and in interviews before I ever met him — the kind of familiarity that usually evaporates the moment you actually meet someone famous in person. The first time I shook his hand, almost thirty years ago, I felt like I’d known him all my life, and he did absolutely nothing to discourage that feeling. He made it stronger.

Those who knew him never called him Arnold. Not even Arnie. He was always Mr. Palmer. He had earned that.

As any golfer would attest, he was more than a champion. He was a mentor, an ambassador for the game, and in many ways an ambassador for plain human decency. His name was on hospitals he supported with real generosity, not just a signature on a donor wall. He was known for handwritten notes — to amateurs, to rookies, to anyone who needed a word of encouragement — because he understood something a lot of famous people never figure out: influence isn’t something you protect. It’s something you spend on other people.

“Influence isn’t something you protect. It’s something you spend on other people.”

I think about that most when I think about a story from his tournament, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, at Bay Hill.

Mr. Palmer liked to spend time around the clubhouse during tournament week — accessible, unhurried, quietly keeping an eye on the event that carried his name while players and fans moved around him like he was just another member. One afternoon he was near Bay Window, the patio restaurant off the clubhouse, when he noticed a young touring pro at a table, deep in conversation with his friends, holding court.

A few kids and fans worked up the nerve to approach him for autographs. He didn’t ignore them, exactly. He just never looked at them. He’d take whatever they handed him, sign it without breaking stride in his own conversation, and pass it back over his shoulder like he was returning a dish to a waiter. No eye contact. No acknowledgment that an actual person was standing there.

Mr. Palmer watched this happen two or three times. Then he got up, walked over, and stood behind the kid. He took off his own hat and held it out.

The golfer signed it on reflex, still talking, still not looking up, and handed it back over his shoulder — never once registering whose hat he’d just put his name on.

Mr. Palmer didn’t say a word. He just brought the hat back down across the back of the kid’s head.

The player spun around, more startled than hurt, ready to say something sharp to whoever had just smacked him — and then he saw who it was. The shock on his face went from one kind to a much worse kind.

“Come with me, son,” Mr. Palmer said, and walked off toward the parking lot.

Nobody overheard what was said out there. But I’ve replayed that conversation in my head more times than I can count, and I imagine it went something like this:

Son, do you understand that you wouldn’t be living this life if it weren’t for the people you just treated like furniture? Stand up. Look them in the eye. Earn the gratitude you’re being given for free.

I don’t know the exact words. I know the lesson stuck, because the story did — it’s the kind of thing that gets told and retold in golf clubhouses for a reason. Mr. Palmer understood that the fans aren’t an interruption to the job. They are the job. They’re the reason any of it pays.

To be fair, that young pro was the exception, not the rule. Plenty of players — Rickie Fowler, Tiger Woods, Justin Thomas among them — held Mr. Palmer in the kind of esteem that doesn’t fade. His example outlived him.

The year after he passed, the bartender in the Bay Hill locker room told me a story I still think about. Rickie Fowler had just arrived for tournament week, and before he’d even sat down, he asked, “If Mr. Palmer were here right now, what would he be drinking?”

“Ketel One, on the rocks, with a twist,” the bartender said.

“Set up two,” Rickie told him.

That’s the kind of mentor who lasts. Not because of the trophies, though there were plenty of those. Because of the handshakes, the notes, the smiles that cost him nothing and meant everything to whoever was on the other end of them — and one hat, swung hard enough to teach a kid something he never forgot.

AUTHOR BIO

Michael Finn spent many years living in Bay Hill, where chance encounters with Arnold Palmer — on the course, around the clubhouse, and over more than one cocktail — became the kind of relationship most golf fans only ever imagine. Many of his friends knew Mr. Palmer better than he did, but Michael was fortunate enough to spend time with him on numerous occasions, including as a friend’s plus-one at Mr. Palmer’s 80th birthday celebration. Those years are the foundation for his forthcoming book, Li’L Black Book of Mentorship, a collection of the people and unscripted moments that taught him what mentorship actually looks like in practice. He lives in Orlando, Florida.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Li’L Black Book of Mentorship is a forthcoming collection of stories and lessons in mentorship, leadership, and earned respect — moments with the people who shaped how the author leads, hires, and treats others today.