FIFTY years ago this month, a young Arnold Palmer is playing a practice round ahead of the Masters with Ben Hogan, Dow Finsterwald and Jackie Burke. Afterwards Palmer overhears the sport's icon, Hogan, inquire: "Tell me something, Jackie, how the hell did Palmer get an invitation to the Masters?"

The jibe rankles. It inspires Palmer the next day to an opening round of 70, and he birdies the final hole three days later to win by a single shot from Doug Ford and Fred Hawkins.

He collects a winner's cheque of $14,000. His wife, Winnie, is so excited that she misplaces the comma in writing his caddie's 10% cheque. Nathaniel Ironman embarressedly points out that she has signed it, not for $1400, but for all of her husband's winnings.

The winner's cheque now tops $1m. It took Palmer until 1968 to amass that in career winnings, making him golf's first millionaire.

That $14,000 at Augusta was a fortune to him. Just three years earlier his tax return had reported previous year's earnings at $2950, of which $1700 was from his job as a paint salesman, and $1250 as representative of the Wilson sports goods company. The return noted he had played just one tournament, the greater Miami Open in 1954 (he missed the cut). The accountant who filed the return charged Palmer a fee of 24 golf balls.

Palmer, who had arrived down Magnolia Lane for the first time in a two-door Ford, towing a trailer, teamed up with Mark McCormack and was soon piloting his own jet.

Palmer was far more popular, down-to-earth and charismatic than Tiger Woods, and he was a much later starter. Though he was hitting balls with cut-down clubs at the age of four at Latrobe Country Club where his father worked, Palmer was so distraught by the death of his friend, Bud Worsham, in a car accident, that he quit his college golf scholarship. He joined the US Coast Guard, playing sparingly for three years, turning pro in 1954. He was 28 when he won that first Masters title.

Explaining his motivation, Palmer said: "I was so scared to lose. Just terrified of it . . . the fear of doing my best and it not being good enough."

McCormack, the godfather of sports marketing, built his IMG empire on Palmer and then on golf. His secret, he said, was to link Palmer's name to quality, rather than a winning golfer, "because I knew he would stop winning events."

More than three decades after claiming the last of his seven majors, Palmer was still earning $15m annually from endorsements. For 30 years his endorsement income was the highest of any professional sportsman in the world. He last topped the PGA money list in 1963, and won his fourth Masters a year later, yet only in 1991 did basketball's Michael Jordan overtake him in global endorsement annual income.

Dr Charles Sifford, first black Tour player, said of today's players: "If it wasn't for Arnold, some of those scraggly wimps would be out picking cotton today."