It May Not Affect What You Watch This Weekend, But Arnold Palmer Is Retiring

I could be wrong, but I believe this is going to be the first ever Deadspin post about Seniors - excuse me, Champions Tour - golf. And ideally, that post would come for some reason like an old man got his blood pressure medicine confused with his Levitra and played a round of golf with a four-hour erection.

No such luck, though. Arnold Palmer fought through tears to tell the world yesterday that he was done with competitive golf after four holes of the Administaff Small Business Classic. On the fourth tee, he hit two shots in the water and officially withdrew from the tournament. He played the rest of the round without keeping score, and had this to say afterwards:

"I've been doing this for a long time and, first of all, to stand out there and not be able to make something happen is very traumatic in my mind," Palmer said. "The people, they all want to see a good shot, and you know it and you can't give them that good shot."

Forgive my sentimentality, but that's not just tugging at my heart strings, that's whaling on them with a 9-iron. I know it's hard for every athlete to let go, but to have to come to that realization in the middle of a competitive event, when everyone's watching and waiting for you to do what you've done for over fifty years, and you just don't have it in you anymore, and there's nothing you can do about it... that can't feel good.

Though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to this happening to Brett Favre in the middle of the second quarter in a game of November.

Palmer's tournament golf career ends at Administaff [Chron.com]