Sports needs more Arnold Palmers. Sports needs more athletes who love what they do and what sport has done for them. Sports needs more champions who are proud of what they do, unabashed in the glory of victory, anger, for a time, in defeat.

It needs those who hitch their trousers and carry on, who love the galleries and fans and show it, who can celebrate victory, temporarily grouse in defeat, then congratulate a rival who won, and whose winning countenance affects you, seeming to share the great victory with you.

Indeed, there are more Arnold Palmers in sports since the Arnold Palmer from Latrobe, Pa., arrived in championship golf in the mid-Fifties, and who is still around playing the game, pretending to know everyone in the crowd and calling those by name he did.

Well, Arnold Palmer was 80 this week — 80, happy to be what he is in Orlando, top golfer, architect of the wonderful Bay Hill course there and a foremost ambassador of his sport to the world. Nobody wants to be 80, until you think of the alternative.

We are all glad you are 80, sir. What a life you have lived what accomplishments, for golf, for golfers, for those who have benefited from your charitable involvements.

If you and I were walking the Outback Seniors course here, and Arnold was playing, but spotted us, he’d walk away from the tournament to say hello to us and suggest a beer after the round. And, at that clubhouse meeting he’d ask about someone we knew mutually, like his personal public relations man forever, Doc Giffen, or like Chris Sullivan, or Tom Pepin, and, as he did this last spring, remember our yesterdays.

I confirmed that I first covered Arnold Palmer in 1958 when he was a young tiger and in contention at the old St. Petersburg Open at the Lakewood Country Club that Skip Alexander ran then. Palmer won that tournament and that helped me with my own sports writing career. I was covering golf, and 10 other sports for Bill Beck, Sports Editor, at the St. Petersburg Times.

When Palmer won the St. Petersburg tournament, Beck told me if I could get a free ride up to Augusta, Georgia, a free room and as many meals free as possible, I could go cover Palmer in the Masters. I did that. I slept on Bill Cody’s hotel room floor, ate in the pressroom at the course (it was pimento sandwiches then) and bummed breakfast off Cody. He had money and a big white car. And, he had become friendly with Palmer’s late wife, Winnie, at St. Pete, and walked Augusta National with her daily.

Arnold Palmer won that 1958 Masters and became what he became - legendary, the commander of Arnie’s Army, the King, as well known as any golfer anywhere. He ruled Augusta during its heydays. He has never forgotten those early ties, notably 1958 when he was a nobody and I was far less.

Now, the King is 80 and I am still around to tell those who did not know what a man he was, what a man he is. On his broad shoulders and with the trousers he hitches a few times a hole, he has carried golf as far as he could without fanfare, without serious distractions to make it far easier for his disciples like Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, and now Tiger Woods to keep golf on the track Arnold Palmer trail blazed for it.

Happy 80th, King.