GARY PLAYER
ONE
of a kind
A legend on and off the course, South Africa's finest sporting ambassador has stood the test of time
By Michael Vlismas
It was the middle of the night. Francis Harry Audley Player and his wife Muriel were in a panic. Their baby boy was having convulsions and couldn't breathe. John Mncube, the Zulu man who worked for them, was just as worried that the boy wouldn't live to see the morning.
'Francis! Go and fetch Mrs Meerholtz,' said Muriel. With his young son gasping for air, Francis rushed to call their Afrikaans neighbour. Mrs Meerholtz stormed into the room and put everybody to work boiling water in pots and pouring it into a bath. In the basin she poured cold water. Then she grabbed the boy and dipped him in the hot and cold water a few times.
The convulsions stopped, and soon the boy was sound asleep again.
As the sun rose that morning on a modest miner's house in Lyndhurst, Johannesburg, Gary Player had survived the first great challenge of his life.
This year, Player celebrates his 90th birthday.
His life has been so large as to have redefined the game of golf. He emerged as a new breed of athlete the game had not seen before, and which would lead his rival and close friend Jack Nicklaus to declare Player the fiercest competitor he had ever seen in the game.
His relentless desire to win, combined with a magnetic personality that his late sister Wilma described as 'always very likeable' so 'people took to him immediately', saw Player become a superstar of a game ready to go mainstream under the similar influence of Arnold Palmer and Nicklaus. Player built a career of too many milestones to mention, but underpinned by becoming the only man to win the Grand Slam on both the regular and senior tours, and amassing over 160 professional titles worldwide.
And so his life naturally inter-mingled with celebrities and sports stars from Elvis Presley to Charles Barkley, with presidents from John Vorster to Nelson Mandela to Donald Trump, with business icons, and even with kings and queens.
He will remain South Africa's greatest ever sportsman because of his sheer global influence, which even at the age of 90, is still strong and internationally respected.
NATIONAL TREASURE
The Golf Mag and the entire golfing world salutes a true legend as Gary Player turned 90 on 1 November. His energy, discipline, and passion have inspired generations of golfers in all corners of the globe, but his impact reaches far beyond the world's fairways and greens. Ever the embodiment of fitness, humility, and grit, the Black Knight remains a shining example of what it means to live and play with purpose. See our special section dedicated to him in this month's issue.
Of course, you do not live a life at such extreme heights of success and influence without making mistakes or being criticised – Gary Player has had his fair share of both.
But through it all, remember what Mandela once wrote in Golf Digest: 'Few men in our history did as much to enact political changes for the better that eventually improved the lives of millions. Through his tremendous influence as a great athlete, Mr Player accomplished what many politicians could not. And he did it with courage, perseverance, patience, pride, understanding and dignity that would have been extraordinary even for a world leader.'
Take note of why the world's most powerful leaders still see something they greatly admire in one of our own.
And ask yourself why major brands like Rolex and BMW still attach themselves, with great respect, to a 90-year-old man who is no longer actively competing in his sport. 'You could get no better person to work with your brand than Gary. He was the biggest value add that I could see,' says a former top-ranking Coca-Cola executive.
Remember, he helped launch an academy for young caddies at Sun City, which unearthed the gem that is Zack Rasego, a caddie to so many of South Africa's top young players. That he built a school which, 35 years later, is still educating and feeding underprivileged children. That he paid for Vincent Tshabalala to travel to Europe and compete, where he won the 1976 French Open.
It's time to just take a moment and appreciate this, and so much more, in the life of a great South African.
For 90 years, Gary Player has lived it, battled it, overcome it, been defeated by it, risen above it, been deeply hurt by it, and been fabulously blessed by it all.
And let's try to never forget that even the great and indomitable Gary Player was also once just a little boy with an uncertain future.
I will never forget sitting, late one evening, around the kitchen table on his former farm in Colesberg with his wife Vivienne still there, when he said to me, 'Let me tell you where it all began for me.'
He was eight years old. It was Christmas Day 1943. The last day he would see his mother alive before she passed away from cancer.
'It's never left me,' he said. Vivienne started to cry. 'There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about her.'
Gary Player often has the same recurring dream of his mother. 'I call out to her. But she can't hear me. I try to tell her what I've achieved, how successful I've become, how proud she can be of me. But she never hears me.'
Let's never forget what Gary Player has done for South Africa, in his own way, and be kind enough to recognise that.
And I hate to break it to you, but yes, he can still do more push-ups than you.
PETRI OESCHGER / TYRONE WINFIELD / SUNSHINE TOUR
