The Des Moines Country Club had never seen anything like it. For a week in July, more than 250,000 Iowans, including Governor Tom Vilsack, came in droves to applaud, cheer and gawk at the stars. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED called the event, the 20th Senior U.S. Open golf tournament, "the biggest thing to hit the state since Pope John Paul II's visit," which happened 20 years earlier. The mere arrival in town of Arnold Palmer, about to turn 70, made headlines in the statewide newspaper, the Des Moines Register.
This hubbub in the heartland, yet another sign that the sports phenomenon known as...
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