Rather than trusting my fading memory, I quote from Mark McCormack’s World of Professional Golf for the 1972 season, describing the closing stages of the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills that year, played in
miserably insistent, weeping rain over another of the most daunting finishing stretches in championship golf. With three holes to play, Player
shared the lead with Jim Jamieson, up ahead on the eighteenth hole. I
quote: “Gary’s dilemma magnified when he sliced his tee shot behind and
close to weeping willow trees well off in the rough at the sixteenth.
Rodgers—Phil, that is—Player’s playing partner, told British golf writer
Ben Wright later that Gary was so discouraged over that tee shot that he
was talking like he had already blown the tournament.”
Now I will take up the story, since I was standing alongside. Player had
150 yards to the flagstick, with the insidious pond between him and the
green. He required a nine-iron loft to get the ball up quickly enough to
clear the drenched trees. That was just not enough club, but Player simply
added “heart.” The lie was a good one on long grass flattened down by the
gallery. The South African simply launched himself at the ball, then immediately ran away to his left toward the fairway, in time to see his ball land
four feet from the hole for the decisive and astonishing birdie.
The third masterstroke is the most celebrated, since it enabled Player to
win his second Masters title in his most magical year, when he also won
the British Open and a veritable host of other titles around the world.
On that Sunday afternoon in 1974 a gaggle of the world’s best were
vying for the lead down the stretch. When Nicklaus birdied the fifteenth
with an unbelievable pitch from the mud—he took off his right shoe and
sock to stand in the water—he tied Player and Tom Weiskopf for the lead.
But less than a minute later Player birdied the seventeenth to reclaim the
leadership.
I have long ago lost count of the times I have watched the diminutive
South African nail that nine-iron second shot to the undulating seventeenth
green, that glorious strike that finished six inches from the hole—but it
never gets old. The goosebumps get me every time. It is a constant source
of wonderment that the little man was able to dig so deep and so often.
My favorite of all my Player memories happened that same year, because
it lasted two weeks! I hasten to explain that I was commentating on Australian television at the 1974 Australian Open at Lake Karrinyup Golf
44 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
Club, Perth, Western Australia. Gary spread-eagled the field with a third
round—a course record 63—in wind and rain that enabled him to coast
to victory with a 73 the following day. Qantas Airlines, the event’s sponsor, held its Boeing 747 at the Perth airport—it was en route from Sydney
to London—to accommodate Player and me. Imagine my embarrassment
when Player insisted on going to the practice tee after the presentation. At
last he had found the secret to straight driving, he dared to tell me when
he eventually condescended to join us in the first-class cabin.
All the way to London, Player either slept like a baby or read me passages from one of Sir Winston Churchill’s literary tomes, of which he was,
and probably still is, an ardent student. We were met at Heathrow Airport
and whisked to my home in Epsom, Surrey, for breakfast. Then off again
this time to visit the late Brian Swift, a racehorse trainer friend, on the
Epsom Downs. After a tour of Swift’s pristine stables Player bought a fouryear-old mare called—appropriately enough—Look Lively. The horse later
became a stalwart broodmare at the Gary Player Stud in South Africa.
Then it was back to Heathrow Airport for the flight to Murcia in southern Spain, via Madrid, where we were seemingly inevitably delayed for
some hours. When we eventually reached La Manga Campo de Golf on
the Costa Blanca, I adjourned for some strong drink and bed, while Gary,
believe it or not, made for the practice tee. I shall never forget drawing the
drapes in my room, having watched the little man hitting balls in the
twilight, obviously the last man out there. But imagine my surprise on
drawing those drapes very early in the morning to see Player hitting practice balls. Was this really real, or some frightening dream, I asked myself?
It was real.
Greg Peters, an American of Russian extraction who owned the La
Manga complex at the time, had devised a most interesting format for his
seventy-two-hole pro-am by which the professionals took the team score
of their amateur partners only, not their own. He had received some scornful treatment from professionals in pro-ams because his game was perhaps
sketchy in the extreme. He aimed to force the professionals in this field to
look after their amateur partners—and, my goodness, did Player look after
my team? He coached us on every shot in the second round to a phenomenal 54 that allowed him to win the professional event at the first hole of
sudden death against Briton Clive Clark. And our team won the Amateur
The Frequent Flyer Knight • Gary Player 45
Division by no fewer than six shots! Practice, practice with dividends for
all!
While we celebrated, Player dashed off to Madrid to win the Ibergolf
tournament there over the next two days, beating another Briton, Peter
Townsend, at the second hole in extra time. And then it was home to South
Africa to win the General Motors International Classic the following week
at Wedgwood Park Golf Club, Port Elizabeth. Hard as it may be to believe,
Player then flew on to Brazil to win the Brazilian Open at Gavea, par 69,
and there cracked the 60 barrier—the first time ever accomplished in any
national championship—with a 59 in the third round. Player had halves
of 29 and 30 against par of 34 and 35, recording nine birdies, an eagle,
plus a bogey at the par-three second hole. He required but twenty-four
putts and to keep the crowd on their toes holed a bunker shot for a two at
the sixteenth hole, then dropped a fifteen-footer at the last. Phew!
In recent years Player has performed with similar distinction as a senior
and super senior, has and will assimilate most of his six children and thirteen grandchildren into his businesses, and is able to spend more time with
his wife, Vivienne, his childhood sweetheart.
Pound for pound Gary Player has to be the best golfer-athlete of all time
