[2][3] His high public profile and visibility during Palmer's rise to fame made Avery one of the first caddies given attention by the media.
[2] During this time in the early 1950s, Avery would often boast he could easily carry the heaviest bags, first earning him the nickname "Iron Man".
[a][2] Avery began caddying for then-rookie Arnold Palmer in 1954 at the age of 16 – "Even though Ken Venturi was the heat," he would later tell the Augusta Chronicle.
His scowl was eerily reminiscent of the disapproving glare Pap used to give me as a kid whenever I threw a club or failed to keep my mind on the job.
[1]After Palmer's win at the 1962 Masters Tournament, the Associated Press spoke with Avery, who described the scene: He just hitch his trousers, jerk on his glove, starts walking fast and says, "The game is on."
[6] Palmer once said of Avery, "Most caddies on the tour are real quiet, but Iron Man and I have been together for so long that we kid around a little.
[1] Palmer wrote of Avery in his autobiography A Golfer's Life: Iron Man wasn't the greatest caddie.
His distances were often inaccurate, and I relied, instead, on my own calculations and the knowledge of the course to get around Augusta.The 1965 Masters Tournament was less successful for Palmer, during which Avery complained that "We done cold hit it straight, but we ain't found the hole."