Augusta, Ga. ? Hey, kid, you want to know why this sport and this tournament are so big?

You want to know why ESPN so desperately wants to televise the Masters?

You want to know why Tiger Woods has made nearly $100 million on the golf course?

Take a look right over on the first tee box. See the old man gingerly bending over and sticking his tee in the ground? He’s the reason.

He’s pushing 80 now, but you should have seen him 50 years ago when he won his first Masters and his first major.

He was 28 then. Svelte and sculpted. Dashing and daring.

“The ball,” Arnold Palmer said and smiled Thursday after hitting his ceremonial first tee shot at the Masters, “went a lot further 50 years ago.”

Physically, philosophically, allegorically.

Arnie’s first tee shot in that 1958 Masters has symbolically traversed generations and transformed golf. It helped make the Masters the most popular tournament in golf and helped golf become one of the most popular sports on the planet.

All the talk this week is rightfully about Tiger Woods, but even Tiger knows that without Arnie captivating the world a half-century ago, golf might rank somewhere below hockey and horse racing on America’s sporting hierarchy.

“We would not have had the growth in our sport without him,” Tiger said in Orlando a few weeks ago. “He promoted the game all around the world. He bent over backward to make the game better, and he has. He ushered in the modern age of TV. Without Arnold Palmer we would not be playing for the things we are able to play for now.”

Without Arnold Palmer, I would not be at Augusta National right now writing about golf. But, because of him, here I am at the Masters on the 50th anniversary of Arnie’s first green jacket.

Two TV networks – CBS and ESPN – are televising the Masters now. Back in ’58, this tournament was just a blip on the TV screen with only the 15th through 18th holes covered by television. The Masters today is arguably the toughest ticket in sport with a waiting list said to be years long. Back in ’58, you could actually walk up to the front gate and buy a ticket.

You want to hear something eerie? Everything they say about Tiger now, they said about Arnie then. He brought golf to the masses. He brought bigger purses to the sport. He brought athleticism to the sport. He brought TV ratings to the sport.

The Tiger legend was hatched when he won his first Masters and first major in 1997 just as the Arnie legend was born after he won his first Masters in ’58. Tiger has resurrected talk of winning golf’s first modern grand slam, but take a guess which golfer was first mentioned in relation to the feat. Yep, it was Arnie after he won the Masters in 1960 and the U.S. Open a few months later.

The beauty of the Masters is not just how the caretakers of Augusta National cultivate the azaleas and the dogwoods, it is how they cultivate the club’s history and heritage. Even though living legends like Arnie are decades past their prime, there is still a place for them to be honored here.

There is a dinner for former champions. There is a locker room for former champions. There is an exemption for former champions.