Gary Player - The Legend

Ageless Player’s Work Ethic Won’t Let Him Stop

Feb 09, 2008 | Filed Under: General News | Comments: 2

By DAVE GEORGE
Palm Beach Post Staff Columnist

BOCA RATON, FLORIDA — Life is a competition for Gary Player. Those scorecards he turns in, like a first-round 75 on Friday at the Allianz Championship, are part of it, but so is wanting to break 100 in years both accumulated and fully appreciated.

Watch him charge around Broken Sound’s Old Course this weekend.

You’ll be convinced this 5-foot-7 titan is out to win the tournament, even at the age of 72, and that Arnold Palmer is just up ahead, standing knock-kneed over a birdie putt and daring his old pal to catch him.

The thing is, Arnie hasn’t played a competitive round on the Champions Tour for a couple of years. Jack Nicklaus, 68, hasn’t been out here for a while, either.

Player, whose last name positively defines him, was out there trying to shoot his age again Friday, as he has already done 17 times on the Champions circuit. Through 10 holes the pace was just right, at even par, but then the putts stopped falling.

All that remained was to finish strong. Can’t get much stronger than a tap-in birdie on No. 18, which Player set up with a brilliant wedge shot from the middle of the fairway.

The crowd really came alive for that one, and Gary gave it right back, waving his putter, pointing and smiling at fans who had followed him all day. Pretending, just for a moment, that it was 1985 again. Player joined the seniors circuit that year and won, typically, in his first start, right down the road at Boca Grove Plantation.

Does that seem like a long time ago? Try 1957.

Player’s first appearance at Augusta National came that year and he’s only missed one Masters since. This April, Gary will break Arnie’s record of 50 appearances. And for those who think it’s time to transition into the role of ceremonial starter, consider that Player missed the cut last year with scores of 83 and 77 but still finished ahead of Camilo Villegas, one of the tautest and hungriest young panthers stalking the PGA Tour today.

“I feel so fit,” Player said Friday, “that I just don’t see myself stopping.”

There are signs, though, of slowing down a bit, and that’s why any South Florida golf fan with a sense of history ought to hustle out to Broken Sound this weekend.

Friday was Player’s first competitive round since last summer. Never in his career has there been a break so long. “I’ve got 20 grandchildren now,” Player said. “I wanted to spend some time with them. I’m designing a golf course on my ranch. Let’s say I wanted to smell the roses a bit.”

Over the last few years, Player’s appearances on the Champions Tour have dropped from 14 to 12 to eight. Playing at Allianz is a natural, since Gary and his wife of 51 years, Vivienne, have long kept a home in Jupiter Island.

Only once Friday, other than on abnormally long stretches between greens and tees, did Player jump into a golf cart. That was to race ahead and satisfy his curiousity about a tee shot that went boring into the wind on No. 17 and out of sight. Let it be known, however, that Gary jogged back to the cart. Another time Gary reached into his bag for an avocado, which he broke open and ate like an apple. No greasy potato chips for this guy. While waiting on playing partners Curtis Strange and Gil Morgan to hit their shots, he stood ramrod straight, as if at attention. Sometimes he even did a few squats, just scraping the surface on a 90-minute workout he does five days a week.

Is this a round of golf we’re watching or an exercise video? Hard to tell at times, but the message here is don’t go walking up to Player for an autograph request without holding your stomach in as tight as a tick. He’s liable to thump it with his finger, as if testing a watermelon for ripeness.

It’s been this way since Gary starting commuting from South Africa to play the PGA Tour, right about the time Jack LaLanne’s exercise program went national on American TV.

“Jack is a dear friend of mine,” Player said. “I’ve always said that if people only followed Jack’s fitness program, there would be no need for diets and everyone would live 15 years longer. Even the simple act of walking makes such a difference. Obesity is killing more people than all the wars in the world, yet nobody seems to want to do anything about it.”

You can today. Briskly follow the real leader, Gary Player, and let Jerry Pate and Mark McNulty and all those other guys with better scores fend for themselves. Hot streaks on the golf course last days, or maybe weeks.

Player’s constant competition against laziness and mediocrity is a lesson that lasts forever.

« Back