ORLANDO, Fla. — In a fashion befitting someone born in 1929, Arnold Palmer valued a certain comportment, like men removing their hats when they went indoors. Rory McIlroy, born in 1989, played in the famed Arnold Palmer Invitational for the first time in 2015 and watched with a bit of wonder as the hat protocol was politely enforced in the players’ dining room, sometimes by a smiling Palmer.
“I came to really like it,” McIlroy said of the etiquette still practiced at the event in honor of Palmer, who died in 2016. “It’s one of the ways you still feel Arnie’s legacy and presence.