| This tenacious South
African played piggy-in-the-middle to Arnold
Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. That is not a flippant
or derisory comment but a recognition of how
Player, the physically small guy (5' 7")
sandwiched between two American giants, came to
be regarded as their peer. He was the third link
in golf's 'Big Three'. He won the first of his
three Opens in 1959, the first of his three
Masters in 1961, the first of two PGAs in 1962
and his one US Open in 1965. Even today, he
believes he could win a major championship. His
strict adherence to a fitness regimen throughout
his career has meant he is in enviable condition.
He has sometimes suffered from a tendency to
overawing, but he is still acknowledged as the
master bunker player, and he never gives up. On
the way to winning one of his five World
Matchplay Championships, in 1965 he beat Tony
Lema after being 7 down with 17 holes to play. In
1978, he won his third Masters title, aged 42, by
shooting a 64 on the last day to snatch a victory
everybody else thought belonged to someone else.
Playing with him that day was a young Seve
Ballesteros, who has confessed his admiration for
Player's never-say-die attitude. Player has
become the international golfer par excellence.
He had had to overcome the logistical problems
imposed by regularly commuting to tournaments
from his family home in South Africa, where he
has won the national Open 13 times. He was the
first overseas golfer to be a dominant force in
the United States, where he won 21 official PGA
Tour titles. In 1974, he became the first man to
break 60 in a national championship when he had a
59 in the Brazilian Open, and that same season he
notched up his 100th professional title
world-wide. Player
owes much to his unquenchable spirit. That has
given him, as it did Palmer, a new competitive
life on the US Senior tour, where he had notched
up 16 victories by the end of the 1992 season,
including the four 'senior majors' - the US
Senior Open, PGA Seniors Championship, Senior
Players Championship and British Senior Open.
Player likes to point out that this makes him the
only man in history to have completed the Grand
Slam at both the regular and over-50 levels. If
nobody else pays much attention to this, that's
in part because the official line from the US
Senior tour is that a different four events from
those designated by Gary constitute the 'Senior
Slam' and in part because Player has always been
as long on hyperbole as he is short in stature.
But, equally, nobody has ever been wise to
underestimate the man's definitively dogged
determination.
"The more I practice, the
luckier I get." - Gary Player
|
 A small giant
among giants.
Despite
an impressive past, Player is always looking to
conquer new goals.
|
