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said.
    â€œOh, shit,” Arnold said in casual agreement.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    Arnold’s wealth is vast. In 2000 he was worth over $300 million, despite earning only $4.4 million on the regular and senior tours over a fifty-year career. But Pennzoil loved him, and so did, at various times, Hertz, Rolex, Wilson, Callaway, Ketel One, Arizona Beverage, Lamkin grips, the Bay Hill Club & Lodge, Golf magazine, Golf Digest , Random House, Cessna, United Airlines, Sears, various auto dealers in Charlotte and Orlando and Latrobe, Golf Channel, and the long list of developers who hired Arnold as a course architect.
    That list barely scratches the surface. It also included Toro (lawn mowers), Robert Bruce (clothing), Paine Webber (money). Plus Palmer’s forays into dry-cleaning and golf-club manufacturing and, less significantly, a product called Arnold Palmer Foot Detergent. You can still find Arnold Palmer Indoor Golf, stepbrother of Bobby Hull Hockey, at your better yard sales. In that game, the toy Arnold takes the club back shut, just as the real Arnold did. Hogan hated that move.
    Mike has an abiding interest in money. He’s tried, with some success, to teach me about option trading, but it was work. Arnold is more like Mike. When he talked about money—the cost of his first house, the size of his first tour check, the expense of his first engagement ring—he was always precise. Mike was hanging on every word. One of his tests for character is how people spend and save their money.
    â€œAt what point did you buy your first home?” Mike asked.
    Arnold’s answer took him straight to Ed Anderson, the successful Latrobe lumberman he caddied for, who gradually raised Arnold’s rate from a quarter to a half-dollar to a dollar. No wonder Arnold hung close.
    â€œI said to him, ‘Mr. Anderson, I’d like to buy some land from you.’ This was in ’56.
    â€œHe said, ‘Where’s that, Arnie?’
    â€œI said, ‘Across the road from the course.’
    â€œHe said, ‘You can’t afford that land.’
    â€œI said, ‘Yeah, well, I’d like to try to buy it.’
    â€œHe said, ‘I’ll sell you enough for a house.’ ”
    Mr. Anderson sold just under two acres to Arnold. Nearly sixty years later that land was still home to the original Arnold-and-Winnie rancher, the new home where Arnold lived with Kit, and Arnold’s suite of offices at the end of Legends Lane. It was all impressively modest. It was right out of the Warren Buffett playbook.
    Living within one’s means happens to be a central tenet of Mike’s life. You don’t even want to hear him on the subject of young tour players with one or two wins who fly on private jets and live in coastal mansions with his-and-her Land Rovers on their Belgian block driveways. He knows what they don’t: Someday they will stop making short putts.
    Mike asked Arnold, “At what point did you feel secure, that you knew you were going to be a professional golfer for an extended period of time?”
    Mike once told me that he turned pro “to avoid getting a real job.” When he was starting out, he never expected he’d be able to make a living from his play.
    â€œI never took that attitude,” Arnold said. “I always remained very money-conscious.” He never allowed himself to feel secure. He never allowed himself to think he was set for life.
    They were comparing notes, pro to pro. The scale of achievement was different but the similarities were considerable.
    Arnold talked about the old tour apprentice rules, by which a player had to wait six months before he could cash his first check. Mike knew about that system, but he was appalled all over again.
    â€œSix months!” Mike said.
    Arnold made a sad nod.
    Mike then told Arnold about a prominent pro with a massive house in foreclosure, a player who’d had some excellent years and