Today, sitting in his favorite chair, Gary Player could remember a career during which he traveled more than 14 million miles to golf courses around the world. He could also recall with emotion his victory at the Augusta Masters on April 14, 1974, when he was wearing his second green jacket. A mere 1.68m in height, Gary Player walked his golf around the world, entering the memory of fans as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport.
Born in Johannesburg, the youngest of three children, Player played his first round of golf at the age of 14 and three years later joined the professional ranks. Having cut his teeth in his native country Gary made the long journey to America where he played regularly from the mid-fifties, won the money list in 1961, and eventually triumphed on 24 occasions. Noted for being a truly international player he won the South African Open 13 times and was successful in the Australian Open on 7 occasions. He won the World Match-Play Championships and was in the top-10 of the world golf rankings from their inception in 1968 until 1981 being piped to the top spot by Jack Nicklaus in 1969, 1970 and again in 1972. I n 1959 at the age of 23, and despite a double-bogey at the final hole, he won the Open Championship at Muirfield. With further successes in 1968 and 1974 he became the only golfer in the 20th century to win the Open in three different decades. Three Masters jackets were added to his wardrobe the most notable being in 1978 when he started the final round seven strokes behind the leader Hubert Green yet took the title by the slimmest of margins when he birdied seven of the final 10 holes for a back nine of 30 and a total of 64. Further honours were added just one week later when he managed to overturn a 10-shot deficit after 54 holes to triumph in the Tournament of Champions. His major championship tally reached nine with victories in the 1965 US Open and the USPGA Championship in both 1962 and 1972. In strong winds at the 1998 Masters he became the oldest player to make the cut breaking the 25-year old record held by Sam Snead.
Known as a very outspoken person Gary Player was the first to call for drug testing on all tours and was branded a traitor by the South African Nationalist Government when he brought both black tennis professional Arthur Ashe and golfer Lee Trevino to play in that country. Further controversy arose when accusations were made that the land on which Player designed a course in Burma had been seized from farmers without any compensation but, as the designer, Player had nothing to do with how the land was acquired and, in any event, the accusations were never substantiated.
Gary Player’s business interests are many and varied and include organising events, publishing, his own wine label and a range of clothes while his golf course design company has completed over 300 projects in 35 countries on five continents. Gary Player Design has a strict environmental policy which insists on minimising site disturbance and specifying environmentally sensitive building materials. His greatest concern is about water and he is on record as saying, “Water conservation techniques are not only our fundamental responsibility, but are important to the industry of golf and the global growth of the wonderful game of golf, as real water savings also mean real cost savings.”
Maybe Gary Player’s greatest legacy will be the Player Foundation which he founded in 1983 with the intention of providing education, nutrition, medical care and athletic activities for disadvantaged children living in the suburbs of Johannesburgh. Since then it has grown into a global activity which has donated over $50 million in support of children’s charities and the expansion of educational opportunities worldwide. Funding for these heart warming projects come from Gary Player Invitational events which take place each year in America, China, Europe and South Africa and are pro-am tournaments pairing celebrities and professional golfers, from both the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour, with prominent businessmen.
Gary Player is known as much for his dedication to the principles of excellence as he is for his golfing accomplishments and is recognised as an uncompromising perfectionist who settles for nothing but the best. His impeccable set of values, together with an insistence on fitness and health, are admired throughout the world.
Nowadays his leisure time is spent on his ranch in South Africa where the Gary Player Stud Farm bathes in a worldwide acclaim for breeding top-class thoroughbred racehorses including Broadway Flyer which ran in the 1994 Derby.
In today’s world the word “Legend” is bandied about like snuff at a wake but, when applied to Gary Player, it unquestionably reverts to its true meaning.