Elise Amendola, Associated Press Arnold Palmer -- Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Click photo for larger image. 69th Annucal Dapper Dan Dinner and Sports Auction Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: Arnold Palmer Sportsman of the Year: Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers Quarterback Sportswoman of the Year: Lauryn Williams, Summer Olympics Silver Medalist. When: April 17, 2005. Where: David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Schedule: 5 p.m. -- Sports Memorabilia Auction and Cash Bar Reception. 6 p.m. -- Dinner and Program. Attire: Business/Cocktail Wear. Tickets: $150 for premium seating, $100 for general seating. For tickets call, 412-263-3850, by April 11, 2005.

The 18th fairway at Latrobe Country Club rises from the tee like the Duquesne Incline, a steep slope of finely cropped grass climbing to a two-tiered green that sits aside a white wooden clubhouse with a green patio awning. The clubhouse is not unlike many in Western Pennsylvania, majestically sitting on a bluff and looking down on a quiet private course that consists of sloping fairways, undulating greens and hilly terrain.

But there is little that is ordinary about Latrobe Country Club, and no wonder. It is the home of Arnold Palmer, maybe the greatest sports person to emerge from Western Pennsylvania, and his legacy is everywhere you step. In the locker room. Up the steps from the lobby. Even around the dining room.

His presence blankets the club like a morning dew, providing a sense of history and charm and bringing to life a person who shaped the golf landscape in the 1960s. But, at Latrobe, Palmer is not revered for what he has accomplished as much as for the style and grace in which he achieved his success.

He was raised on the club grounds, the son of a greenskeeper, and he remembers nearly everything his dad, Milfred "Deacon" Palmer, always told him, especially because once, when he forgot, it cost him the 1961 Masters. To this day, Palmer does not have to look far to feel his dad's presence.

On the left side of the 18th fairway at Latrobe, about 100 yards from the green, there is a statue of Deacon Palmer, hands on hips, seemingly watching over the course he helped shape with his own hands. The statue was carved from a tree Deacon planted when Arnold was 6 years old.

This is where Arnold Palmer grew up.

This is where he became the player who changed the game of golf, all by himself.

This is where he still plays, nearly every day in the spring and summer.

Latrobe is not some adopted home like Bay Hill, the Orlando, Fla., course he purchased in 1974 and where he keeps a winter residence.

This is his birthplace. His training ground. His trampoline to greatness.

When he spoke at a dinner for his 50th high-school reunion, Palmer said to his former classmates, "We've all gone a lot of places since our days growing up here in Latrobe. And if there's one thing I've learned in all those years, it's this: Your hometown is not where you're from, it's who you are."

Associated Press File Photo Arnold Palmer at Peeble Beach, Calif., early in his career. Click photo for larger image.

So much has changed for Arnold Palmer, Latrobe High School Class of '47.

For the first time in 50 years, he will not play in the Masters, which begins this week at the Augusta National Golf Club. His farewell came last year, in a scene that moved nearly everyone to tears, and he will do little more than attend the Champions Dinner on Tuesday night.

He will not play in the Wednesday par-3 contest, and he sure as heck isn't ready to be a ceremonial starter, a role left vacant by the death of Sam Snead in 2003.

"I have no intentions of going on the golf course," Palmer said. "I'm just going to socialize. I may change that in the years to come, but, at the moment, I just feel like I want to get my feel for not playing in Augusta. For 50 straight years I played and I loved it. I enjoyed it tremendously and I would still enjoy it, but I just want to get the feel for not doing anything."

Palmer has embarked on a new life. He got married for a second time in February -- his first wife of 45 years, Winnie, died in 1999 -- and said he will not play in a PGA Tour event for the first time since he turned professional in 1955. He has even drastically curtailed his playing schedule on the Champions Tour.

Nonetheless, it is his former life that will be feted April 17 when Palmer, 74, receives the Dapper Dan Lifetime Achievement Award at a dinner at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. It is not so much the 92 worldwide victories -- 61 on the PGA Tour -- and seven major championships. It is the manner in which he achieved them.

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"The first time I ever saw Arnold Palmer, I said, 'There's a star,'" said Gary Player, one of the "Big Three" (along with Jack Nicklaus) from the Palmer era.

Sports Illustrated referred to him as an "authentic and unforgettable hero" after he won the Masters in 1960, the second of four green jackets he would win at Augusta National. He was that, and more.

He enthralled people with the way he played, enchanted them with his smile and warmth. He broke down the social layers that enveloped the game and brought golf to the people. He was one of them, a kid from Latrobe, smiling and warm, yet dashing and full of tenacity. When he played his final competitive round at the Masters last year -- a record 50th consecutive appearance in the tournament -- even Palmer couldn't remember a crowd so large ringing the 18th green.

It was that way when he played his final U.S. Open in 1994 at Oakmont, his backyard. And when he played in his final British Open in 1995 at St. Andrews, the home of golf.

The British Open is the oldest major championship in the world, but it didn't become accepted in America until Palmer went there in 1960 as the Masters and U.S. Open champion. After that, American players began streaming to the British Open like tourists to the Eiffel Tower.

The British never forgot.

Palmer didn't win the British Open in 1960, but he did each of the next two years. And when it came time to say goodbye, when Palmer stood on the Swilcan Bridge at St. Andrews in 1995 and waved to the massive crowds that lined the 18th fairway, the Brits embraced him as though he were a member of the royal family.

"When Palmer went, all the other Americans went, too," said former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan. "And the British Open was restored to its former majesty."

Palmer's career almost never got started. In the fall of 1950, his close friend and teammate at Wake Forest University, Bud Worsham, was killed in a car accident. Palmer was so distraught he quit college and enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard. Golf was no longer a priority.

During his three-year hitch, though, Palmer slowly came back to the game. While stationed in Cleveland, he entered and won a few amateur tournaments. After leaving the service, he won the Ohio Amateur twice, then won the U.S. Amateur in 1954, an event that set the stage for his glorious career.

Palmer, who was selling paint at the time, beat Bob Sweeney, 1-up, in the 36-hole championship match. Sweeney, 43, was the antithesis of Palmer, an Oxford-educated socialite who belonged to two of the most prestigious clubs in the world -- Seminole in Jupiter, Fla., and Sunningdale in London. He was a former British Amateur champion who often played with and beat Ben Hogan in matches at Seminole. But Palmer, 24, outlasted him at the Country Club of Detroit, with his dad and mom, Doris, walking every step.

"This meant the world to me," Palmer said in his book, "Arnold Palmer: A Golfer's Life." "I felt my own tears coming. I'd finally shown my father that I was the best amateur golfer in America. It was the turning point of my life, and I don't know if I ever felt as much happiness on the golf course."

Palmer turned professional shortly after the victory, and the game of golf was never the same. He won the Masters in 1958, the first of his four green jackets, and won 29 times between 1960 to 1963. Included in that run were five more majors -- the 1960 and 1962 Masters, the 1960 U.S. Open and the 1961 and 1962 British Open. Palmer never won the PGA Championship to complete the Grand Slam.

He almost won the Masters in 1961, too, but a mental lapse at the 72nd hole cost him a one-shot defeat to Player. And reminded him of something his father always told him.

Palmer had come to the final hole at Augusta National with a one-stroke lead. A par would have made him the first player in history to win back-to-back green jackets.

But, after hitting his tee shot on the left side of the fairway, leaving him a 7-iron to the green, Palmer saw an old friend, George Low, motioning to him from the gallery ropes. Palmer walked over and Low began patting his arm. "Nice going, boy. You've won the Masters," Low said to Palmer.

The premature congratulation ruined Palmer's concentration. He hit his next shot in the greenside bunker, blasted over the green and made double bogey to lose by a stroke to Player. Afterward, Palmer remembered something his dad always said -- never lose focus on the golf course. And Palmer had done it.

"My father taught me that a long time before 1961," Palmer said. "I had just forgotten that. I was pretty elated at the time and I just let it slip by. That was a costly one."

But Palmer learned, just as he has never forgotten. His father, his friends, his home.