Shaking the Shadow

When Arnold Palmer's grandson Sam Saunders announced in the spring that he would forgo his final year at Clemson University and probably turn pro, Palmer said, "I guess I'm supportive of Sam, whatever he wants to do." The King sounded more puzzled than pumped, and you could understand why. Saunders, who once won Bay Hill's club championship by 17 shots, was no longer a star; one ranking called him the 370th best collegiate. That alone made it seem an inopportune time to quit school.

Plus, golf's most genetically gifted men have had mixed results as professionals: The career highlights of Jack Nicklaus II, now a course architect with his father, pretty much begin and end with his win at the 1985 North-South Amateur. Gary Nicklaus made the cover of Sports Illustrated as "The Next Nicklaus" in 1985, but peaked with a playoff loss to Phil Mickelson at the 2000 BellSouth. Now working for Nicklaus Design, Gary has regained his amateur status; he beat a 15-year-old to win the 2008 Palm Beach County Amateur.

"Everyone has different priorities in life," Jack Nicklaus says, "and rarely are a son's priorities the same as his father's. I chose to never really push my kids, so they would not be at a disadvantage. I sort of pulled back from giving that to them, so they would do what they wanted to do and not what I wanted."

Many pros' progeny want not immortality but merely a career on Tour. Only some of them get it. Dave Stockton Jr., son of the 10-time Tour winner, won twice on the Nationwide circuit in 1993 and had a productive, albeit winless nine-year PGA Tour career. Decorated amateur Robert Floyd, son of Raymond, never made it on Tour and now works in real estate in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

And so the bar will be high for Saunders if he dwells on his grandpa's 62 wins, including seven professional majors--but not so much if Saunders measures himself against the aforementioned members of the DNA Tour. "There will always be things that bother me about it," Saunders says of his royal roots, "but I'd say as a whole the positives outweigh the negatives."

HERE are some of the positives: Saunders gets to play and practice at Arnie's Bay Hill Club in Orlando, where as a hoops-loving 10-year-old he met a Palmer Invitational pro-am participant named Michael Jordan. At 18, Saunders cracked the field for the 2006 Invitational, where for 36 holes he learned from playing partners Henrik Bjornstad and Camilo Villegas. The sponsor's invite drew criticism, and though Saunders missed the cut, his scores (76-82) weren't terrible.

"I got in some events because of my dad," says Dave Stockton Jr. "My first was Quad Cities in 1991. I wrote for an exemption and they gave me one because my dad was a past champion. I shot 72-71 and realized I had to get a whole lot better."

Here's another positive: a front-row seat to the Tour. Dave Jr. and his brother Ronnie Stockton used to caddie for Dad during the summer. Little Dave didn't compete much as a kid, but he still got a leg up on his peers by soaking up so much world-class golf. "Ninety percent of the game is mental," says Stockton Jr., who left the Tour in 1998. "That's how I learned to play golf." And don't forget the freebies: Bill Haas, son of Jay, grew up wearing Jeff Sluman's hand-me-down golf shoes.

The fact that Saunders must defend the spot he received in the Bay Hill event underlines perhaps the biggest negative of being a son of fame: He's constantly under a microscope. "I was playing some really good golf," says Saunders, who at the time was teeing it up on the Future Collegians World Tour. "I'd won my last three or four tournaments."

When Kevin Tway won the 2005 U.S. Junior Amateur, beating medalist Sam Saunders on his way to the title, Tway voiced a familiar complaint when he told The Boston Globe, "All everybody's talked about is how I'm Bob Tway's son."