No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - NLU Podcast, Episode 785: The Tall Tales of Gary Player

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

In this, the first in a series of what we’re calling “NLU Special Projects,” Kevin Van Valkenburg dives deep into the curious life story of Gary Player, the son of a South African miner who would go on to win more than 160 global tournaments over the course of his storied career. For more narrative pieces like this, you can also visit us at NoLayingUp.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey folks, this is GamerGamerGamer. Better than most. Hey, folks, this is Kevin Mann-Valkenberg, editorial director of NoLangUp. Over the past few weeks, we've started working more narrated writing into the podcast, and the reaction from listeners has been overwhelmingly positive. So with that in mind, we wanted to try something a little different this week. The first, and what we hope, is a series of NLU special projects. In each episode, we'll do a deep dive into one particular topic, unpacking it in ways you may not have considered previously. Pieces like this are also available on our website, nolayingup.com.

For our inaugural episode, there was one subject that sprung immediately to mind for personal reasons. And so now, we invite you to join us as we explore the tall tales of who else, Gary Player. Thanks for listening. In 2015, the U.S. Open was held in the Pacific Northwest for the first time in its history. The venue was Chambers Bay, a public course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. that was built on top of a sand and gravel quarry on the shores of Puget Sound. A link-style course with little rough and even fewer trees, it represented a dynamic departure

from the tournament's recent traditions. The fairways were muted in brown, and the tall wispy grasses that line the course's numerous bunkers were a stark change from the U.S. Open's typically suffocating rough. From the highest point on the property, you could see miles of calm blue water and sky. Despite the fact that the tournament boasted a star-studded leaderboard, and that it was

ultimately won by one of golf's rising stars, 21-year-old Jordan Spieth, who just a few months prior had won the Masters, reviews of the course were decidedly mixed. Henrik Stensen said the Greens were like putting on a field of broccoli. Rory McElroy said a round at Chambers Bay felt like you were playing on the surface of the moon. Several players described the conditions, particularly the greens, as a disgrace, and said the USGA should be ashamed. But the harshest criticism of the course came from someone who wasn't even competing

in the tournament. On Saturday morning, prior to the third round, Damon Hack and Gary Williams of the Golf Channel welcomed nine-time Major Winner Gary Player to the show, eager to Hack and Gary Williams of the golf channel welcomed nine-time major winner Gary Player to the show, eager to get the 80-year-old Hall of Famer's thoughts on this peculiar US Open that was unfolding. Player, who did the interview remotely from Chambers Bay's driving range, was grinning as the camera cut to him. There was no indication he was about to unleash one of the most famous course critiques and diatribes in modern history Particularly after hack opened with easily the most benign question to ever inspire a seven-minute monologue

Good morning, sir. How are you? Morning diamond and morning Gary. I'm standing in the most beautiful state in the world Washington Seattle here unbelievably beautiful and we playing the US Open, this great championship, a group of people, the USGA that I have great respect for. But this has been the most unpleasant golf tournament I've seen in my life. I mean, the man who designed this golf course

had to have one leg shorter than the other. It's hard to believe that you see a man miss the green by one yard and the ball ends up 50 yards down in the rough. I mean it's quite and can you imagine this is a public golf course. This is where we're trying to encourage people to come out and play and get more people to play the game. They're having a putt from 20, 30 foot and they're allowing 20 foot right and 20 foot left. I mean, it's actually a tragedy. He continued for several more minutes, invoking his desire to save the environment, to save amateur golf, to save marriages by helping husbands return home sooner to their wives.

But it was players hyperbolic use of the word tragedy that would stick with me and my friends. It was so absurd we couldn't resist taking it even further, inventing a parody of Gary Player where nothing felt off limits. By week's end, I'd reimagined his monologue in a cringe-worthy South African dialect, pretending he'd called the course Chambers Bay of Pigs and that it was basically the 9-11 of courses. At a bar in Tacoma, a large group of precocious golf riders burst into laughter as we each took turns trying to outdo one another. By 2015, golf media was in the midst of a seismic shift, though few people understood

it at the time. Newspapers were slashing travel budgets. The makeup of the precedent was rapidly changing. Younger voices, many of us buoyed by our Twitter followings, were filling the void with humor and irreverence, and raising a new generation of golf fans on a steady diet of podcasts. Virtually none of us had been alive during Player's Prime. I was an exception, but only technically. When he won the 1978 Masters, his ninth and final major,

I was three months old. For that reason, and a dozen others, we did not view him with the same reverence we did Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus. Player was a curiosity, a Paul Bunyaness figure more famous to our generation for appearing naked on the cover of ESPN The Magazine than he was for winning any of his majors. When I began appearing regularly as a guest on this podcast, Solly couldn't resist goading me into sharing my Gary player caricature with the audience. The goofball in me who grew up idolizing the impressions done by Dana Carvey and Phil Hartman was happy to oblige. Everything that came out of my mouth felt a little ridiculous

and increasingly cringe, but none of it felt dishonest. Mr. On Week. That tech was despicable for us. I can't believe you would call out Jordan's feet like that and say he lacks pop. What about the crowd? What did you think of the crowd as your player? I hoped the crowd was horrendously spirited and absolutely tragically into it. So hopefully next time they will have a Ryder Cup in the United States. I personally never played in a Ryder Cup, if I did, I would want Fatty Patrick Reed to lose a few pounds and play with me. He would be a great partner if he took on my gluten-free diet. I wasn't mocking Player so much as I was embracing a version of him that felt spiritually true,

even if in reality it was more like the kind of SNL skit that they aired just before 1 AM. Besides, it was hard enough to discern where the line between fact and fiction existed for player. Earlier in his career, he would boast that he did 300 crunches every morning as part of his routine to stay fit. Later on, that claim rose to a thousand crunches four times a week. In his 80s, he insisted with Orwellian certainty, the routine had always been 1,300 per day. In 2022, he told the New York Times that he'd shot his age or better 2,400 times in a row. In 2023, he told the same story to the Palm Beach Post,

only now he claimed that number was 3,072 times in a row. It wasn't that player was lying, framing it that way felt nefarious. But it reminded me of a passage in one of my favorite short stories, Tim O'Brien's Sweet Heart of the Song Tremong, a meditation on war and storytelling. It wasn't a question of deceit, O'Brien wrote, just the opposite. He wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt. Facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around. And when you listen to one of his stories, the truth to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.

Facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around. And when you listen to one of his stories, you'd find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring out the square root of an absolute, and then multiplying by maybe. The only way to make people understand what the player had put himself through, sacrificed and overcome, was to fill every tale with biblical details, like it was a chapter in the greatest story ever told. It wasn't just that he'd befriended Nelson Mandela, it was that he'd kissed Mandela's

feet when he first met him, that he spoke up at the height of apartheid and insisted that his hero be released from prison, and he didn't care if he was branded a traitor. That the arc of their friendship was a bit more complicated was not important, at least not to player. That is how he remembered it. At some point, I realized that despite all my jokes, I knew little more than the basics about players' life. I knew he was an important figure in the game's history, arguably the most important player born outside the United States. But I knew far more about the exploits and accomplishments of Palmer, Nicholas, Woods, even Tom Watson and Phil Mickelson.

It felt like an embarrassing oversight, and one I intended to remedy. The more I read about Player, the more I realized I likely wasn't alone in my ignorance, at least among my generation of golf sickos. The best Gary Player stories seem buried in books or magazine archives. They hadn't matriculated podcasts, at least not yet. Player, now 88 years young, is showing few signs of slowing down. He has lived such a long, colorful, strange life it seemed worth examining, particularly while he is still with us.

Then again, it's possible Player may outlive me. He has never been shy about critiquing the health and fitness of journalists. It just amazes me to see a young man like that, fifty pounds overweight, he once told a reporter from the magazine Today's Golfer, referring to the previous journalist who just interviewed him. Why can't he realize he's going to die? He's such a nice young man, obviously intelligent, he asks very good questions, but he's going to die. He's going to get diabetes, a heart attack or cancer. And within the next 10 years, he's going to die. The doctors, they're bastards. Doctors should be saying to him, look, you're going to die. You've got to stop eating. I find it fascinating. By the way, I'm not doing the Gary player impression throughout this podcast. Listening back to those, it's possible we may have exhausted that bit. In December of last year, I went to work, vacuuming up as many stories as I could, sifting through three dozen sources, trying to cross-reference or fact-check both the outlandish and the absurd.

Eventually I realized it was a feudal exercise. Every Gary Player story, whether it was real or embellished, had a purpose. What he felt was just as interesting as what may have happened. And what he wanted you to feel as the listener was usually the most revealing part of the story. Gary Player was born in 1935 in Lindhurst, a small village that once sat a dozen miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, before the city grew and essentially subsumed it. His ancestors, he believes, were of French and English stock, and he credits them for his large brown eyes. In 1838, his great grandmother was part of a large wagon train, was making its way through the territory of Natal, seeking safe passage to the coastal plains of South Africa, when the leader of the caravan, Piet Retif, attempted

to parlay with Dingane, the king of the Zulus. Dingane murdered Retif and his men, then fell on all the wagons, massacring women and children, player wrote in his 1966 autobiography Grand Slam Golf. My great-grandmother was stabbed in the side by a Zulu spear, but somehow dragged herself into the bush and survived. It would not be the last time that Fortitude would play a role in his family lore. Player's father, Harry, whom everyone called whiskey, went to work in the Johannesburg Goldmines at age 13. He would spend 30 years working below ground, every day riding an elevator

that descended 10 to 12,000 feet below the surface, praying he would return at shifts in to see the sunlight. I went to visit him one day, Player told Golf Digest in 2010, and when he came off the skip, the elevator that lowered them into the mine, he immediately sat down. He took off his boot and poured water out of it onto the ground. I asked him where the water came from, and he said, Son, that's perspiration. It's hot as hell down there. Men died like flies in those mines.

He said a miner's best friend was the rat, because when the rats took off running, a man a cave in was imminent. Every day the workers gave rats bits of their sandwiches tribute. Player spent much of his childhood outdoors, the youngest of three children, learning to love the land and unpack its mysteries. There was a pear tree in the yard, and from one of the branches their father hung a rope. He and his older brother Ian took turns racing to the top, the muscles in their arms and shoulders hardening with each climb.

If Ian did it once, I would do it twice, player said. If he did it twice, I would do it four times. If he jumped five feet, I would try to jump 10. You know, I forgot to put this in there, but years later, Gary player went back to that same property, climbed that tree, cut down that rope and took it home for himself. That's how crazy Gary player was. Okay, back to the story. He worshiped Ian, who taught him how to shoot an air rifle and a catapult, skills that he believed eventually translated onto the golf course.

I was exceptionally good with a catapult as a young lad, player wrote in Grand Slam Golf. I could knock over a bird once in three shots, at distances up to 50, 60, and 70 yards. And I don't suppose one person in 50,000 can do that. I don't boast about it. It was just a fact of life. When player was eight years old,

his mother Muriel died of cancer. He was too young to understand what was unfolding, though he knew that she had been sick for some time. My sister Wilma has told me how in the closing months of her life she was in great pain, player wrote. But when people asked her how she was, she would say, just fine, or a little better today. Wilma, who knew this was not true, would often chide her for this and ask her why she said it.

She would always answer, people don't want to hear you complain. They have their own troubles, and they feel better if someone else says that she feels better. Player told Golf Digest that for years, long after he became an adult and had a family of his own, he would wake up sobbing in the middle of the night, dreaming of her. Deep inside, he said, we all want and need our mothers. As a boy, he would dig golf balls out of the mud with his feet from the pond at his local course and then sell them by the dozen. But he had no interest in playing the game.

He preferred rugby and cricket, swimming and soccer. But at age 14, players's father surprised him one day by asking him if he wanted to play golf. Dad, I don't play golf, that's a sissy game, Player told him. Somehow his father persuaded him to come along anyway. The first three holes of his first-ever round, Player recalled, he made three consecutive pars. Then I got down to all the eights and nines and four putts and all the rest, but it was a fair start to the sissy game, player wrote.

Within a month he was hooked, taking countless swings, often without a ball, off the rubber mat in his garden. Eventually, he discovered his local course at Virginia Park. One afternoon he peaked his head over the fence and saw a thirteen-year-old girl hitting balls under the watchful eye of the head pro, her father. The girl, Vivian Verway, would become the love of his life. The second time he saw Vivian, he told his brother he was going to marry her. It turned out he was right. Within a few months he proposed but suggested they wait until he had enough money to support a family. He was, after all, fifteen years old.

Golf, he believed, was the ticket to fame and riches. He wanted to own a fancy car, maybe even a farm someday. When Player informed his father of the plan, Whiskey Player all but collapsed. He had promised Player's mother on her deathbed that their son would finish his studies and go to university. But Player was stubborn. In his autobiography, he says that he told his father, I want to be a professional golfer, and this is my life, and I want to do it. He quickly learned that it would not be an easy road to travel, particularly for a poor minor's son. He played with used clubs and used balls and had little money for lessons.

Player's father told Sports Illustrated, I would have had my chips under all that pressure, not him. Oh, when it was just the two of us out there, we bloody well had our fights all right. He'd tell me he couldn't make it and I'd tell him that he was talking rot. I'd tell him he was falling back off his shots and he'd say, I don't wanna hear it. And I'd say, well, the hell with you.

And then later he'd put his arm around me and kiss me and say, I'm sorry, dad. I just got to explode sometime and you were the only one I know who could take it. Player climbed his way through the amateur ranks, hitting wild hooks off the tee but somehow still finding ways to score. In certain tellings of this time period he never once doubted his destiny, and others doubt bubbled to the surface.

He was wiry and strong, but grued only five-foot-seven, seemingly half the size of his father. Dad, I'm too small, Player One Day complained. Nonsense, his father said. It all depends on the guts you have. It's what's inside of you that matters. He would practice as long as there was sunlight, and sometimes even when he missed the cut. At the 1955 South African Open, he failed to qualify but refused to leave the putting green in his frustration, practicing until 10 o'clock that night. Look at this little idiot wasting his time, his father heard someone get anywhere.

Listening to Gary Player tell one of his most famous stories. About the first time he left South Africa in an attempt to qualify for the 1955 Open Championship of the Old Course, it feels a bit like listening to someone recount Odysseus leaving Ithaca to join the Trojan War. He was nervous, but he knew it was what his destiny called for. Members of his club had raised the money for his airfare. Before he left, Player's father handed him two hundred pounds for the week. Money he later learned was an overdraft from the bank, a leap of faith. When player arrived in St. Andrews,

he realized he had no place to stay, so he inquired about a hotel. The cheapest available that night was 80 pounds. He dressed instead in his waterproofs, found a spot among the dunes, and slept in the West Sands, the windswept beach next to the Old Course. He slept beside his clubs. In his

suitcase, he'd packed two pairs of pants, two shirts, two sets of underwear, and a black-knitted tie that he would wear to dinner would use as a belt by day. Years later, the player said, it was the greatest thing for me to struggle like that, because the word that takes over, which is an essential ingredient, is gratitude. He failed to qualify. Rick Sheaing is opening tee shot off a fence post because he was so nervous. The starter, he remembered, laughed at him.

And he said, what would your name be? I said, no, my name's Gary Player. And he says, what's your handicap? I said, no, I'm a pro. He says, you're a pro. I said, yes. He says, you must be a hell of a chipper and putter because your cunny hit the ball very well, lad."

But the experience was invaluable. He returned home, redoubling his practice routine. In 1956, he won four times, including the South African Open, and finished fourth in the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool. When he won the Amphol Tournament in Victoria, Australia, he sent home a telegraph to Vivian with just one sentence, buy the dress. The $5,000 first place check meant they now had enough to get married.

His dreams were starting to crystallize. In 1958, he finished second in his US Open debut, four strokes behind Tommy Bolt. He finished seventh at the Open Championship. He won for the first time on the PGA Tour at the Kentucky Derby Open and captured the Australian Open, his biggest win to date. He began to develop a reputation as a man who would fly anywhere in the world to tee it up. I had to go through six different layovers to get from Johannesburg to the United States to play a tournament, player told the New York Times in 2012.

I often traveled with my family, which aside from wife, also included at some points six children. There was no such thing as a disposable diaper or a changing table. I had to get to America and win the tournament so I could make enough money to break even or get a return flight. I wasted a lot of my life sitting in an airplane seat. We calculated once and it came out to about three years. His methods for improving his craft were unorthodox to put it lightly. Some days he would purposely tailgate the slowest

driver on the highway, even if he had somewhere to be trying to achieve a state of Zen. Other nights he claimed he would stand in front of the mirror in a Tai Chi position and slap himself repeatedly just to teach himself patience. And I said, when I'm going to America now, I'm going to be playing against the best players in the world. And I'm going to have to be tough. I'm going to have to have a mind that is better than this. And I sit in front of the front of the mirror

in a tight seat position. Now you sit like this, like that for five minutes, Dave. You know what about it. And then I'd go, watch. You're going to have the patience of a line. You're never going to give up. You are going to love everybody you see on the golf course. You're gonna have respectful people. You're gonna hit more balls than any and I went through 20 points and my face was so sore every day and the pain

associated with the thoughts that I was putting there, made sure that I applied them when they were necessary. Sports Illustrated once asked him what he saw when he looked in the mirror. What I would see, he said, is just the opposite of what I am. Basically, I love to laugh. I love people. I like to have people like me to have friends. But what I would say of the person I would see out there is, well, he is a battler.

I am too sentimental, I suppose. I am not scared to fight for anything or to fight anybody." In 1959, a decade of hard work culminated at the Open Championship at Muirfield. He trailed by eight strokes going into the final thirty-six holes, which back then were played all in one day. But he told a friend the night prior that he had sensed something special was unfolding. "'Tomorrow you're going to see a small miracle,' Player said. "'In fact, you're going to see a large miracle. I'm going to win the British Open.'

He climbed the leaderboard with a round of seventy, then went on a tear over the final eighteen. Player came to the final hole needing only a par to shoot sixty-six, but with only a vague idea of where his closest competitors stood. A four would likely win the Claret jug. Then, to his horror, his drive on 18 found a potbunker. I made a six, and my entire world seemed to disintegrate, the player wrote. I had the British Open Championship all but packed up in my bag, and I finished with a miserable six. He stormed off the 18th green, signed his scorecard, and rested his head against the shed.

Vivian put her arms around him, attempting to console him. In his book, he included a picture of the scene and couldn't resist addressing it. It is reported that I cried. I didn't. But I certainly felt like it. Not so much out of self-pity, but from sheer anger and temper with myself. To have botched a great round, to have squandered a championship in that way was criminal. He retired to his hotel, still furious, and in need of a stiff drink. As scores began to trickle in, his friends encouraged him to return to the course, but

the player refused. He snapped at a friend. Remember when Sam Snead threw away the US Open with an eight, and has never won it to this day? Well, I've just done that today. I'll never win this British Open." He was wrong. His closest pursuers, Fred Bullock and Florie Van Donk, struggled in the windy conditions. Players' friends eventually persuaded him to return to the course as they were coming up eighteen. It turned out that each man needed a birdie to tie. Neither came close. At 23 years old, Gary Player was the youngest winner of the British Open since 1868. In those days, it was the responsibility of the winner to commission someone to engrave his

name in the Claret Jug. When Player returned the Jug to the RNA the following year, they noticed his name had been engraved larger than any of the previous winners. He was determined to be remembered. Of the victory player wrote, all the long hours of sweating in the South African sun, all the work and travel, all the faith that my wife and family and friends have shown me over the years had been justified. It seemed like a marvelous ending, but it was only a beginning. This episode is brought to you by Roback Activewear. Y'all know Roback, the fit, the feel, the quality,

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Now, back to our program. Gary Player promised his father that he would quit playing golf when he was 35, that he would retire comfortably and live out the rest of his days running a farm. It proved to be a hard promise to keep. He became addicted to competition and yearned to prove he was just as good as his American contemporaries. When he followed up his open championship victory in 1959 by becoming the first foreign-born man to win the Masters in 1961, his financial health changed dramatically. There were offers from equipment companies, offers to play a series of televised matches

against Arnold Palmer, and clothing and ball endorsements. After he appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, his manager received a telegram from Elvis Presley insisting the two men meet. Player practically leapt at the chance. I said, I'm coming down to LA, I'm going to come and meet him. I walk in there, he's doing the movie called Blue Hawaii. So as I walk in there, he says, cut. I had a tie on and a jacket, I was gonna meet the king.

He goes into the room and he puts the jacket on and he comes out and he says, how do you do, sir? You know, with that Southern accent. And he says, I wanna play golf. Well, he had a grip. It looked like a cow giving birth to a roll of barbed wire, like this. Or he'd been, either that or he's brought

up on a Holly Davidson motorcycle so I'll get his grip right he says what's important I said Elvis you've got to use those hips man you've got to wind up with those hips and unwind with the hips he says the hips he says baby watch out to that screen he says you're touring the right man there boy and he gives that little knee that he goes zip zip zip zip zip zip zip you know how he moved those hips man, could he move those hips. But even as a celebrity grew, his heart remained tethered to South Africa, particularly after he was able to purchase a farm where he could breed race horses. You must go up and see my farm,

player told a writer from Sports Illustrated. Then you will realize how wonderful a life that is. On my word of honor, it is so beautiful up there, it is fantastic. The trees, the mountains, the horses, you really are living when you are farming. It's true. I would rather farm than play golf. I would rather ride a horse than play golf. His friend George Blumberg told him he did not buy it. Sports Illustrated captured him teasing player saying, quote, it is my opinion that you would be a fine farmer for about two months. And then you would read in the paper that someone else is the best golfer in South Africa,

and you would come running down out of those hills as fast as your little legs would carry you. That is what I think of your farming, Gary Player. The manual laborer of Farm Required, however, had unlocked ideas in him about healthy eating and strength training. He had cut out all processed foods and begun treating his body like an instrument. Not a guitar or something disposable, but something both powerful and rare, like a Strativarius. His rivals might be longer than him off the tee at the moment, but he was convinced that he could catch them. As player later told Sports Illustrated, you have to remember that I expect to be outdriven by Arnold and Jack, so it doesn't bother me.

Arnold weighs 25 more pounds than I do and Jack 50 pounds more. Yet I'm confident by the time I'm 30, I'll be hitting the ball almost as far as they do, not quite as far, but almost. This is because I have started doing my exercises again. Every day I can feel myself getting a little stronger. It's amazing what a man can do with his body in three years by exercising. Until about a year ago I was doing a lot of push-ups and other exercises that built up my chest, but those aren't the best muscles for golf, I decided. So I

stopped my exercises for a while. Now I'm doing things that build up my arms and shoulders and legs." The more golf tournaments he won, the more caught between worlds he began to feel, particularly as the politics of his homeland began to feel impossible for the rest of the world to ignore. After years of being asked how he felt about his South African heritage, the player tried to offer a final word in his autobiography. I am an African. My land is the land of the Niger and the Nile, the Limpopo and Zambezi, the Sahara and the Kalahari, of the Atlas and Dregensburg and Kilimanjaro, an immense continent, a prodigious land mass, abundant game, thick with rainforests, barren with deserts, white with rushing waters,

populated by millions of people as diverse as can be. In strange moments I have a revelation of the whole thing, the immensity of Africa. Layed out in my mind's eye as though in one compassing glance I seemed to see the whole long history of the continent, not so much unfolding as unfolded, in one piece in my consciousness. All the native tribes of the north to south, all the invaders from the Romans and the Greeks down to the French and the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Italians, the Dutch and the English, all bringing civilization and devastation with them. And I have a very powerful sensation it is all a part of me, that I am an African just as the Cacuyo or a Zulu or a bushman or a toreg or a nubian is an

African. History and the collective thinking and habits of a people over the years influence a man as much as a physical environment, and I am influenced by all these things. This is my land, I am South African, and I must say now and clearly that I am of the South Africa of Vervoord and apartheid. When you examine Gary Player's past, all of it, it inspires an interesting ethical question. Should a man get credit for evolving with the times, or was his gradual transformation little more than wallpaper meant to cover up the worst of his sins? In Grand Slam Golf, his 1966 autobiography, Player did not hide his feelings about segregation. In his home country, he supported it unequivocally.

The second chapter of his book, in fact, is devoted entirely to the topic, and much of the time is spent pointing a finger back at the rest of the world for sitting in judgment of South Africans. He writes, The Americans, the Russians, the British, the French, and the Chinese have the atom bomb. These people, all of them, without the slightest of doubt, have the power to destroy all the living world simply by throwing a few switches, and yet these are the people who are loudest in their

criticisms of us and our color problems. The civil rights movement in America, had little correlation to what was happening in his homeland. In the book, he writes, the American Negro is sophisticated and politically conscious. He was imported to the United States and has long lost contact with Africa. He has become an integral part of the Western community with its habits and attitudes. The African is still tribal in his attitudes, owing his allegiance to the tribe rather than a country. And in South Africa alone there must be a dozen different tribes, each with separate languages, customs, and a tribal system. The African may well believe in witchcraft and primitive magic, practice ritual murder and polygamy. His wealth is in cattle. More money, and he will have no

sense of parental or individual responsibility, no understanding of reverence of life or the human soul which is the basis of Christian and other civilized societies. Player said the criticism lobbed South Africa's way for proceeding slowly toward a more equal society made his blood boil. Besides, he wrote in 1966, segregation exists around the world in many forms. Millionaires, Player wrote, don't mix with postmen, and that is wrong. Maybe the millionaire's loss, but it is a fact of life." He writes,

We do not believe that everything can be done overnight. And of course, everything that can be done is being done has to be paid for by the white man. I have no evidence that I live in a police state, a Hitler state, and the people who write these things and read them and believe them are doing a disservice to the progress of people everywhere. We in South Africa believe that our races should develop separately, but in parallel. When Gary Player wrote those words, Nelson Mandela had already been in prison for three years. He would spend another 24 years behind bars before he was released. In 1966, a year after Player won the U.S. Open, became just the third golfer in history to win the career grand slam.

The South African government got its soccer federation re-suspended by FIFA when they proposed, in the name of racial harmony, sending an all-white team to compete in the World Cup in England, and then an all-black team to compete in Mexico in 1970. At the time, player wrote, I do believe that the South African government of the day is doing more for the native than any other government we have ever had. I just wish the people who criticized my country would make a little effort to understand it more fully because I am proud of it. It is my country. It is where I live and it is where I shall always live. Americans did not know what to make of player, frequently a foil to Nicholas and Palmer, but he worked hard in an attempt to win them over.

When he won the US Open in 1965, he donated his entire purse, $25,000, back to the USGA, asking that it be used to support junior golf. As he said to the media after the victory, the American people have been so kind to me since I first came over here that I feel it is my duty to do something. By the way, if $25,000 doesn't sound like a lot of money, that's $400,000 equivalent today. There are so many dozen stories like that throughout players history, like the time he paid for 20 orphans to vacation on his farm for 10 days, or the millions that he eventually gave to charity. It did not, however, win the hearts and minds of everyone.

At the 1969 PGA Championship in Dayton, Ohio, a group of anti-apartheid protesters interrupted play during the third round, heckling player and Nicholas as they reached the 10th green. Years later, recounting what took place, player and Nicholas described the events with the same intensity as if they had come under attack during a tour in Vietnam. They threw telephone books at my back twice, Player said. They threw ice in my eyes several times. They charged Jack and I on the green on number ten as I was getting ready to hold an important putt and the balls between my legs and they screamed in my backswing.

He tried to return to his state of zen. He taught himself as a young man, back when he did Tai Chi in front of the mirror. I just tried to make the adjustment with my mind, Player said. I met people and I said, if you want to kill me, you don't have to threaten me. I'll come to your office tomorrow and you can kill me. I'm not going to go home because I don't have a guilty conscience." In Nicholas's recollection of that PGA, he was prepared to commit manslaughter in defense of his competitor and friend.

I remember one fellow who was probably about 6'4, 250 charged on the green. He was coming at me, Nicholas said. I had my putter in hand and I swear I would have killed the guy because I had my putter. I didn't know what he was going to do. I reared back like this to hit him because I would have, and he swerved off, saved his life, and saved me and everything else." Dan Jenkins, writing for Swartz Illustrated, took a slightly different view. As disturbances go these days, it was strictly minor league and totally inept. You could have found a better protest in a number of Dayton restaurants when the check came. But everybody said, boy, they've done it now, those shaggy-haired pigs.

It wasn't so bad when they just shot people, burned down cities, and tore up universities. Now the lazy, dope-crazed, oversexed, communist, Nazi, welfare, Medicare, hippie, treasonous, red Chinese spies have picked on golf. Jiggins continued, it's not what anyone particularly wanted to have happen in a championship, of course, since player Nicklas were at the time trying very hard to catch Raymond Floyd. But then again, anyone who has ever played much golf on a municipal course would have known that these were normal hazards. Player, who finished a stroke behind Floyd, took a less humorous view. I definitely would have won that PGA championship, player said.

There's not even a doubt. For years, he stewed over the protest and the implication that he was a propagandist for the apartheid regime. In 1978, he told The New York Times, I really don't understand how you can say that you must penalize an athlete for the policies of his country's government. I mean, what would Americans have said if somebody had suggested keeping Jack or Arnold out of the British open because of the war in Vietnam? Besides, if you're going to talk human rights, why stop at South Africa? What about the Russians, the Cubans, or some of the black countries in Africa?

In players telling, he was, in fact, a critic of apartheid behind the scenes. He claims to have called for Mandela to be released from prison in the early 1960s, although evidence of such a claim is difficult to find. Player did, however, go to South African Prime Minister B.J. Vorster in 1969 with the hopes of persuading him to end apartheid in sport. Player wanted to invite Lee Elder, the first black man to play in the Masters, to compete in the South African PGA championship. By his account, he was shaking in his shoes when he made the request.

But to his surprise, Vorster, a vehement supporter of segregation, eventually agreed. I was called a traitor, Player told the magazine's C-suite quarterly in 2016. In those days, you could get 90 days in jail for even suggesting it. Luckily, I played some golf with Vorster, and I was criticized for doing so. The criticism included death threats, although he kept them quiet for years. Player was so scared while traveling abroad, when he heard noises in the hotel hallway, he would hide behind his bed. Lee Elder, reluctant at first, took Player up on his offer in 1971, but only on the condition

that black spectators be allowed to watch him play alongside whites. Player had convinced him that his views on apartheid had changed as he traveled the world. A friendship began to bloom. Fifty years later, when Elder was inducted in the World Golf Hall of Fame, Player was the man he selected to introduce him. Elder told the San Diego Tribune in 2021, I love Gary very much. There's not a segregated bone in that man's body."

As the years went on, player says he realized that neutrality was not a position he could live with. He came to believe that he'd been brainwashed into supporting a, quote, cancerous system. As player told the Independent in 1996, the injustice was so obvious and the implications quite chilling. I am now quite convinced that I have played a significant role in trying to eradicate apartheid. He continued to win golf tournaments at a remarkable pace, including two majors in 1974. His swing was so dialed that season, he stopped shaking hands with friends. I feel I've got tremendous power within myself now, players said.

I don't want to shake hands too often because I don't want to transmit my power to someone else. But controversy still had a way of finding him. At the Open Championship at Lithum that year, he produced one of the greatest performances of his career, grabbing a first-round lead that he never relinquished. His caddy, Rabbit Dyer, also became a star that week as the first black caddy in the history of the Open Championship. As Rabbit told the press that week, "'My man complains a lot. I just stick some paper in my ears and say, don't give me no jive, baby, and I make him laugh and loosen him up.

But on the seventeenth hole of Player's final round, while leading the tournament by six strokes, he fanned his approach into knee-high grass near the green. A nervous search for the ball commenced. Seconds before Player's five minutes was about to expire, Dyer found the ball. Player was able to salvage a bogey and limp to victory with another bogey on 18 after he had to play a shot left-handed when his approach nestled against the brick clubhouse. No one ever publicly accused him of anything underhanded, but for years there were whispers. Most of them implying Dyer must have dropped a second ball for player to find at the nick

of time on 17. Years later, addressing the rumors for the first time, player said, There are certain things that are possible and certain things that are impossible. First of all, they had TV cameras on during the whole incident. For anybody to say, Rabbit dropped a ball is dreaming. I would put my life on the fact that he wouldn't do something like that. It's impossible. The grass was so thick. That he never felt as venerated by the fans or the press as Nicholas or Palmer clearly bugged player especially in the twilight of his career.

No matter how many tournaments he won or how much he achieved he always found himself feeling like the third fiddle of the big three. That feeling would follow him for the rest of his career and you could argue it lingers even today. In the 1978 Masters, Gary Player entered the final round tied for 10th place, seven shots behind the leader. What unfolded was one of the greatest comebacks in Masters history. Gary Blair with this putt for a share of the lead with Hubert Green and Rod Fonseth. This to go nine under and it's a tricky putt that goes a little to the left. goes a little to the left. Safely negotiated, we have three co-leaders.

And there's little Gary Player, who will be 42 years of age on November the 1st, making one of the great charges of his distinguished career. The 42-year-old player shot a sizzling 64, birdieing seven of the last 10 holes to win his ninth and final major. Yes for player! Yes for Gary player!

A 64! A course record! A birdie at 18, he is 11 under par. It remains to this day the lowest final round fired by a winner at Augusta. Player credited a new putting technique suggested by his wife as a catalyst for his victory. I've always been a jabber, player said.

I knew everyone says the firm wriststroke is better and all the young guys that have been putting so well with that, I finally decided to do as my wife suggested and try it. But when he spoke to the press after the green jacket ceremony, player seemed as interested in settling scores as he did reliving his triumph. Last week at Greensboro, I was called a fading star, players sneered. People kept asking me why I haven't won anything in three years, why I've been winning all over the world.

I won my last three tournaments last year. This is a sore point to me. They do play golf in other places besides America. He was, it turned out, just getting warmed up. I make five round trips a year between South Africa and here, players said. That's 8,000 miles a trip. I'd like to see Jack Nicholas travel like that to South Africa and see how he did.

He wasn't criticizing Nicholas, he clarified. He loved Jack Nicholas. You could argue that no one loved Jack more than Gary Player. Once when Nicholas was traveling to South Africa to play a series of exhibition matches, Player spent $3,000 to increase the size of a lake on his property and stocked it with $1,500 worth of trout so that Nicholas, an avid fisherman, might better appreciate his homeland. But Player had been a global ambassador for the game in ways that no one else had. I have the greatest golfing record in the world, players said.

The world, not the United States. Player also couldn't resist taking a swipe at golf course architect Robert Trent Jones, who had been quoted saying that players' exercise routine wasn't good for golfers, that it would, quote, tie you up and rob you of necessary flexibility. You do have the last laugh, you know, players said. Tie you up, crap. Well, Trent know, player said tie you up crap. Well Trent Jones's courses are all tied up. That's what I think of them.

Here is a guy with a stomach out to here and he's talking about physical fitness. I was 150 pounds when I was 16 years of age and I'm 150 today. The night before I won the US Open in 1965. I squatted 350 pounds. I think of a man stays fit. He can play as well at 50 as he did at 30. Nobody has ever done it, but I plan on doing it. Player never won another major after 1978, although he never truly faded from the spotlight,

which to him was its own reward. In a lot of ways, it overshadowed just how great he was at golf, how driven he was for more than 50 years. He won 165 times around the world, and countries big and small. I could spend another hour on all the fascinating, controversial twists that unfolded in the second half of Gary Player's life. Like the time that Tom Watson accused him of cheating in the skins game, or his genuine friendship with Mandela, whose feet he really

did kiss when he met him, or the time he sued his own son, Mark and grandson Damien for selling his golf memorabilia, or the time his other son, Wayne was banned for life from Augusta National for hawking golf balls during a first tea ceremony for Lee Elder, or the time he was accused of breaking US sanctions by designing a golf course in Burma for the military junta. By the way, he designed over 300 golf courses. Or the time he joked that everyone joining the live tour was doing it because they were broke and needed money. Or the time he was awarded the Medal of Freedom on January 7th, 2021. Yes, that's January 7th from President Donald Trump. But it is his press conference after the 1978 masters

that I think captures him at his pugnacious best. And so for the third time in history, Gary Player is the master's champion, 61, 74, 78. The night before he shut 64 to win the masters at the age of 42 He wanted everyone to know that he had been up until midnight exercising He was going to celebrate winning his third green jacket the oldest man to date ever win one, but he did not intend to rest Audio of the press conference no longer exists, but if I close my eyes I can hear his defiant voice in my mind as clear as anything.

I swear to you, even though I just won the Masters, I will exercise tonight. I never miss my exercises. Anything else in his mind would have been a tragedy. Thanks for listening. Many of the anecdotes for this podcast came directly from Gary Player's autobiography, Grand Slam Golf, which was published in 1966 but is now out of print. The archives, sports illustrated, and golf dig digest were also essential for research, as well as stories from the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Independent, ESPN.com, Golf.com and the Associated Press. Sound editing and mixing for this podcast was done by Justine Pajowsky. Story editing by DJ Pajowsky. If you enjoyed the tall tales of Gary Player, you can find more writing like this on our website, nolangup.com, which is free to everyone. But we'd also encourage you to join the Nest, our community of avid golfers. Nest members get a 15% discount on our Pro Shop, access to exclusive content like our

monthly Nest podcast, as well as the chance to sign up early for our Roost events held all around the country. We appreciate your support. If you'd like to leave a comment about this podcast or ask that I never do another Gary player impression again, you can reach me at KTV at no laying up.com. Cheers. Be the right club today. Yes. There you go. That's better than most.

How about in? That is better than most. Better than most. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different.

Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different.

Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different. Expect anything different.