Gary Player has made a monumental contribution to the history of golf,
but perhaps the most significant aspect may be overlooked in the passage
of time, as the traditions of a great game have been swept away on a sea of
green and professional golf has become big business.
Let no one ever forget that Player, the diminutive South African who
has never stood above five feet seven inches tall or weighed more than 145
pounds, in a career lasting with distinction well into its sixth decade, almost
single-handedly persuaded his fellow professionals that they had also to be
athletes to realize their full potential and, more important, to endure in the
white heat of world competition.
In my early days as a cub reporter, Ben Hogan and a host of his rivals
smoked cigarettes almost continually, and Arnold Palmer was little better
when he burst on the scene with such an enormous impact as the “blue
collar” champion.
Jack Nicklaus earned the sobriquet “Fat Boy” despite the fact that he,
too, smoked. Player’s guide, mentor, and early partner for South Africa in
the Canada (now World) Cup, Bobby Locke, was similarly derisively
named “The Bishop” for his bloodhound jowls and fulsome potbelly.
Pleasantly plump professionals of the Locke build, who enjoyed the
camaraderie of their colleagues over a daily postround tipple, were legion. Not today, thanks to the persistent preaching of Player, a winner of 163
championships and tournaments worldwide in five decades and still convinced that, heading into his upper sixties, he can win during his sixth.
I hope Player does so, because I remember his emergence in Great
Britain as a raw nineteen-year-old with a magnificent work ethic and overflowing determination but minimal talent or knowledge of the golf swing.
Thankfully, Gary was a quick study. I remember vividly one afternoon in
the middle of that, the 1955 season, after Player had missed yet another
cut, this time at the Royal Liverpool “Hoylake” Club in Cheshire, England. I was walking to the railway station with Player and Hugh Lewis, the
professional at a nearby municipal club, an occasional tournament aspirant
who had also been ousted at the halfway stage of the event. The rain was
beating on our umbrellas as it came at us horizontally on a serious gale. We
had nary a raincoat among us.
Player turned his big brown eyes up at the burly Lewis, who stood well
over six feet in height, and asked him urgently: “How can I possibly
improve myself, Hughie, quickly, before I’m totally broke and have to go
home?”
Lewis, in typically dour North Country tones, replied in a booming
voice: “Gary, lad, why don’t you use whatever money you have left to buy
yourself a one-way ticket on a banana boat sailing for Johannesburg, forget about golf, and find yourself an honest job? You’ve no business being
out here.”
Tears coursed down Gary’s cheeks as we walked on in silence. Many others in the game had castigated Player for his golf swing, his grip, his hairstyle, and his sloppy clothes. Later Gary was to write in his book Grand
Slam Golf: “When I went home in the autumn, having more or less come
out even and covered my costs financially, I was very bitter and shaken by
this first experience of British golf. But it did a great service to my drive
and determination.”
Player returned to Britain in 1956 as the South African Open champion
and recorded a famous first victory, battling and beating the great Arthur
Lees, a tough-as-nails Ryder Cup player and the home professional, over
both courses at the Sunningdale Club in the five-round Dunlop tournament with a record-winning aggregate of 338.
Gary was on his way, improving his technique all the time—and never
too proud to learn from any Tom, Dick, or Harry who would offer him advice—absorbing golf technique like a veritable sponge. In Grand Slam
Golf he recalled: “It led me quickly to the certainty that the crease in my
pants was not going to win championships for me. Having a beautiful
swing is no guarantee of success.”
Player has never had to worry about the latter! But by sheer hard work
and abundant courage, not to speak of self-reliance, he has made his rather
unsightly “walk through” swing work repetitively for decades. And not for
nothing has he been acknowledged widely as the best bunker player of all
time.
When Player decided that he would move on to America in 1957, I was
frankly amazed at his temerity. He had no sooner scratched the surface in
the minor league than he felt himself ready to tilt at windmills in a huge
country wholly unknown to him, when he could not even yet afford to buy
a car. Full marks for guts—or was it foolhardiness? I remember very vividly,
some years later, when Gary said to me in all seriousness that “Jack Nicklaus could become a really great player if he ever chose to play regularly
outside America.”
I asked him what the hell he was talking about, since Nicklaus was palpably the most successful competitor the game had ever known. With typical Player logic, Gary replied, “Do you know how tough it has been for
me to travel from my native land to take on the Americans—and beat
them—in their own backyard? Just remember that when I have flown some
fifteen to twenty hours from South Africa to London I have to turn left
and start all over again. Jack has no idea how hard it is to travel like that.”
Point taken.
And it is a tribute to Player’s outstanding physical condition that he has
survived, despite flying as much as fifteen million miles during his incredible career.
On the subject of Player’s fitness, I recall arriving at Portmarnock Golf
Club, Dublin, Ireland, from my hotel in the city on the first day of the
1960 Canada Cup, eventually won by Arnold Palmer and Sam Snead. I
was quickly fetched to the snooker room in the clubhouse, where Player
was laid out on one of the leather benches against the wall, suffering a severe
asthma attack. Because I had been a childhood asthmatic myself, I always
traveled with medication. I was whisked back into Dublin to fetch the stuff,
fed it to Gary, and, in the company of Locke the little fellow shot 65, then
a course record, that very afternoon. That same evening my first wife, Pat, and I were invited to dinner in
Players’ suite, to find him demonstrating his complete recovery, by walking round the room on his hands talking nineteen to the dozen!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Player hitchhiked his way around America in 1957 and returned to South Africa with a very small profit financially but with an enormous legacy, a golf education. In 1958 he finished
second to Tommy Bolt in the U.S. Open at Southern Hills, which earned
him the then princely sum of $5,000. In Grand Slam Golf he summed up
that win: “I could afford to have my pants pressed now!”
Player’s increasing fame cut little ice with the secretary at Muirfield Golf
Club, Scotland, Colonel Evans-Lombe, when he arrived there ten days in
advance to practice for the 1959 British Open, hell-bent on becoming the
event’s youngest champion of the twentieth century. Evans-Lombe coldly
informed the South African “interloper” that he could use the practice area
and chip and putt but that he could not play the course. When Player
explained that he had traveled many thousands of miles to play in the Open
and that he could see many people out on the course, Evans-Lombe countered with an immortal reply: “Oh yes, but they are members.” Enough
said. Thankfully Muirfield has improved since then, albeit mighty slowly.
After considerable to-ing and fro-ing, Lord Brabazon, then president of
the British PGA, was called to intervene. Player was finally allowed to practice. But Evans-Lombe had the last words: “Only one round per day!” Gary
used the time to good effect but was so keen to learn the intricacies of Muirfield that one day he sneaked in an extra nine holes. His caddie was
promptly banned for some days. This time the club captain stepped in and
smoothed out what by then had become an increasingly ridiculous situation, allowing Player to complete his preparation for the championship in
peace.
After thirty-six holes Player was eight shots behind the leader, Fred Bullock, an English-born teaching professional employed at nearby Prestwick
St. Nicholas. In those days two rounds were played on the final day, Friday, to allow such brethren to return to their clubs for weekend duty. Moreover the leaders were situated wherever they were drawn, and not yet
bringing home the field, so Gary Player was due to finish at least two hours
before Bullock and a more likely rival, the elegant Belgian Flory Van
Donck, who was six shots ahead of Gary in second place. On Thursday evening Pat Mathews, who represented the Slazenger
Company, told me that Player had just said to him: “Pat, tomorrow you’re
going to see a small miracle; in fact you’re going to see a large miracle. I’m
going to win the Open.” I roared with almost hysterical laughter. The South
African has plainly developed his body at the expense of his mind, I replied.
And the rest is history.
Player scored 70 and 68 on that historic Friday and beat Bullock and
Van Donck by two shots. Not without high drama, however. In the final
round Player was phenomenal for seventeen holes as he cruised past the
nine players still ahead of him at lunchtime. He stood on the eighteenth
hole needing a par four for 66, the score for which he had aimed.
Alas, the hook that had dogged Player throughout his career intervened,
and his final drive found one of the deep left-hand fairway bunkers. He
hacked out his ball a hundred yards from the green with a six iron, then
used the same club to punch a low third under the wind. Perhaps he’d
needed one more club, for the ball came up very short, on the lower tier
of the deep green from where he three-putted for six.
He was inconsolable, and one of my photographic treasures is a shot of
Gary, head in hands, quite unable to sign his card at the scorers’ hut, his
wife Vivienne’s arms around him. Player’s wonderful sponsor, South African
George Blumberg, whisked him back to the Marine Hotel in North
Berwick for a cold bath and a strong drink to await his fate. Player was
absolutely convinced that he had thrown away the championship.
Harold Henning, Player’s friend and later World Cup–winning partner
in Madrid in 1965, had backed Gary to win some eight hundred pounds
sterling. He telephoned continually from the clubhouse as the scores came
in and potential rivals fell by the wayside. When victory finally was confirmed, Player was so elated he went out and sat alone at the podium for
fully half an hour before the presentation began—basking in his moment—
to the delight of the Scottish crowd.
I was only fortunate enough to witness one of Player’s thirteen South
African Open victories, at Royal Johannesburg Golf Club in 1972. Then
it was that Bobby Cole, South African pretender to Player’s throne, was
having troubles with his swing and phoned Player for advice on the eve of
the championship. “I’ll see you and talk next week,” said Player. And the
South African press—to a man—unloaded on him.
The Frequent Flyer Knight • Gary Player 41
Yet perhaps the most apocryphal Player story concerned Ben Hogan,
who was Gary’s idol when Gary was a young man. On one of the many
occasions, in even such a distinguished career, Player was having trouble
with his swing, he phoned Hogan for advice. “Whose clubs do you play,
Mr. Player?” asked Hogan tersely. “I play Dunlop at the moment,” replied
Player. “Then go ask Mr. Dunlop for advice,” Hogan is said to have hissed
as he put down the phone.
In 1960, when Player was defending his British Open title at St.
Andrews in the centenary event, I was called from the dinner table at the
Association of Golf Writers Annual Dinner in Rusacks Hotel. I was working for the Daily Mirror, London, and Hugh Cudlipp, then the managing
editor, whom I had yet to meet, came on the line to tell me to go and ask
Player if there was any racial significance in the slacks that he had worn on
the Old Course that day—with one black and one white leg! A suddenly
ashen-faced Player told me at the top table that he would never wear that
pair of slacks again—nor did he.
In more recent times Gary Player, the self-styled Black Knight, has
become the darling of the media by usually saying absolutely the right
thing. For example, when asked for his thoughts about a particularly
obnoxious and unworthy golf course, he will say, quite deadpan, “It is probably the best of its type I have ever seen.” But when the great man wags his
index finger in your face and says “I’ve got to tell you one thing,” you can
be on the receiving end of a lengthy but never, ever boring monologue.
Player has no illusions about himself, however, or about how seriously
people take some of his public and private utterances. In Grand Slam Golf
he described himself as “Small, dark, deliberate, painstaking, the feeling of
the man without talent who has done it all by sheer hard work and nothing else, a highly-strung faddist who bores the ears off you with weightlifting and diets and nuts and raisins and talk of God, dark clothes, somber
under the big peaked cap, and above all, a little fellow, a little man.” And
the name Gary Player? A plain, honest Anglo-Saxon pairing, good enough
for a golf player but without any identifiable flavor to it. Non-vintage. But
there is a little more to Master Gary Player than that.
For a start he was recognized as one of the “Big Three” with Palmer and
Nicklaus for his stature as a golfer. And he more than held his own. He
became one of only five players to win all four major championships and
42 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
accomplished the feat at the age of twenty-nine in his lone U.S. Open victory in a thirty-six-hole play-off against Australia’s Kel Nagle at Bellerive
CC, St. Louis, in 1965. At the time only Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan
preceded Player. Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods joined this exalted group
in 1966 and 2000.
His nine majors include three Masters titles (1961, 1974, 1978), three
British Opens (1959, 1968, 1974), two PGA championships (1962 and
1972)—a record by far and away the best ever of any non-American—while
his career record around the world is vastly superior to any compiled in the
entire history of the game, regardless of nationality. And, oh! that travel!
Player won five World Matchplay titles at Wentworth, England, in the
days when his manager, Mark McCormack, who conceived the event, rarely
allowed into the field anyone but his own stable of clients. But a match is
a match is a match. And Player’s semifinal victory over the late Tony Lema
in 1965 was without doubt the best match I ever had the privilege to witness. In a nutshell Player was one up after nine holes, six down after eighteen, seven down after nineteen—with seventeen holes to play—five down
with nine to play, and all square after thirty-six holes. Player won at the
thirty-seventh. Lema scored 67 in the morning, Player 68 in the afternoon
on the completely tree-lined course measuring over seven thousand yards,
known as the “Burma Road.”
Over his career three Player strokes stand out in my mind, having
watched them from close range, each possibly representing the best of his
extraordinarily complete repertoire. Each ensured a major championship
victory and in sum are perfect examples of the little South African’s
indomitable courage under the fiercest pressure.
In 1968, at Carnoustie in the British Open, Player was battling Nicklaus, Billy Casper, and Bob Charles down the stretch in the final round.
With Nicklaus miraculously close to the green at the fourteenth hole after
an amazing three-wood second from the copse to the right, Player, with
the ovation for Jack’s shot still ringing in his ears, launched his own threewood shot between the “Spectacles” bunkers in the middle of the fairway
at this great par-five hole. His ball pulled up no more than two feet from
the cup, having never left the flagstick. Nicklaus chipped and putted for
his birdie, but Player’s marvelous eagle allowed him to prevail over the most
arduous finishing stretch of holes ever faced in the British Open.
