Legendary golfer Arnold Palmer has died, reminding us yet again that the great ones in sports cannot live forever. Mortality does, indeed, have a time limit. Earlier this year, we mourned the loss of boxer Muhammad Ali and hockey player Gordie Howe, two individuals who helped make their sports great, both with what they did as athletes, but more important what they did as people. Now we are feeling that aching feeling again following the passing of Arnold Palmer, who died on Sunday at age 87. Maybe he made his mark on golf, but he stitched his way into fabric of all of sports.

Imagine being paid to write about golf! Dave Perkins covered the sport in his 40 years as a sports writer, a good chunk of that with the Toronto Star. Perkins, whom I had the privilege of working beside occasionally during my 21 years with the Toronto Sun, covered 58 golf majors, 10 Ryder and/or Presidents Cups, and countless tournaments of one sort or another in the sport. He also had opportunities to play some of the best courses in the world and interview the best of the best from numerous eras.

When the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour stopped off recently at Whistle Bear in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, New Zealand-born horse trainer Tony O’Sullivan had a chance to meet fellow Kiwi Lydia Ko. O’Sullivan, who has been living in Canada full-time since 2004, is a club member at Whistle Bear. He wanted to take his daughter, Mackenzie, to the Pro-Am event at the club to meet the competitors and to talk to Ko. “There was no one there and Lydia took the time to talk to us for 10 minutes,” he told me. “We didn’t talk about golf. We talked about New Zealand and how beautiful it is. It was awesome. She’s a really, really nice person. People say ‘Lydia Ko is unbelievable to watch. She’s so relaxed and nice.’ And she is. It was pretty cool. Not just because she’s a sports star, but she’s genuinely a good person; she genuinely wanted to talk to you.”

Superstar hockey agent Don Meehan loves to golf, he just wishes he had more time to do it. As the pre-eminent representative for many of the National Hockey League star players, including Steven Stamkos, P.K. Subban, Drew Doughty, Erik Karlsson, Phil Kessel, Zach Parise and Corey Perry, to name a few of them, the Canadian-based agent who frequently travels to various parts of the world to do business is simply too busy to regularly get out on the course.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to a golf game a few days ago – it had to be called off because of rain. In one of the hottest and driest summers on record, I just happened to pick a day in which it rained. On the one hand, I felt disappointed because if you’re a golfer there’s nothing worse than getting excited about getting out on the course, only to find out rain ruins it. As bad as I felt about having to take a rain check, I also felt good because I have to believe it has been a trying season for golf course operators, who have probably had to work extra hard to prevent their courses from drying up. There’s only so much sprinkling you can do.

You can say Inbee Park won the gold medal in the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, but really the biggest winner was women’s golf. On the biggest and most important stage in the world, the women aced it – literally and metaphorically. Park, the 28-year-old from South Korea who earlier this year met the criteria for the World Golf Hall of Fame, was a well-deserving winner, trouncing the field by five strokes and a score of 16-under-par.

For the all the hubbub controversy about problems heading into the 2016 Olympic Games, the return of golf turned out to be fantastic. It came down to a thrilling finale in the 72-hole tournament that, in the end, proved to be memorable for the players, some of whom declared after it was over about how much the experience meant to them personally and professionally.

Many famous musicians also happen to be avid golfers. Probably the most famous one of all is Alice Cooper, who wrote about it in his book: Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock 'n' Roller's Life and 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict. Some other high-profile musicians include: Kenny G., Justin Timberlake, Snoop Dogg and Adam Levine. To try to understand what it is about the game of golf that attracts musicians, I asked Gil Moore, who was the drummer for Triumph, a Canadian-based rock and roll band that hit it big in the U.S., beginning in Texas in the mid-70s and went on to play in some major international gigs, including the US Festival in California in 1983. Triumph was part of Heavy Metal Day that included acts such as Judas Priest, Quiet Riot, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpion, Van Halen and Motley Crue.

Who could have ever guessed an island in Northern Michigan could have two golf courses, one of them associated with a historic building? I found that out while visiting Mackinac Island, specifically to see the 129-year-old Grand Hotel, which has lodged presidents and movie stars and was the site of the film Somewhere In Time. My wife, Jane, saw the film and said at some point in her life she wanted to see The Grand Hotel. So off we went from our home just west of Toronto in Mississauga. It took us about 10 hours.