Dick Groat was the type of dogged competitor who made ‘every swing count’

Before the 1966 Masters, Herbert Warren Wind, doyen of golf writers, visited Arnold Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In classic New Yorker magazine fashion, he forensically detailed the memorabilia decorating Palmer’s recently enlarged game room, a sprawling facility built a level below the rest of his house.
Aside from all the photographs, trophies, flags, and other “objets d’Arnie”, Wind’s eye was taken by a glass case containing a cherished baseball bat wielded by Dick Groat of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series.
Palmer liked to tell a story about his unfortunate cameo in that particular campaign. During his beloved Pirates’ pennant race with the Milwaukee Braves, he popped into the locker-room before first pitch one day to wish Groat the best, then he played a bit part in his good friend subseq …

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