Player’s look-at-me antics are wearing painfully thin
Great is strangely insecure and – along with his son Wayne – showed he is tone-deaf at the Masters
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As if it were not grating enough that his son Wayne had hijacked Lee Elder’s role as an honorary Masters starter by hawking some golf balls in the background, Gary Player proceeded to describe the African-american veteran’s belated accolade as a “very historic moment for me – Lee experienced a lot of things that I experienced in my life”. When it comes to tone-deafness in the Player family, it appears that the apple does not fall far from the tree.
This week, Player Jnr paid a heavy price for his crassness, with brother Marc claiming that he had been banned from returning to Augusta.
“Embarrassing and illegal ambush marketing,” he called it, less than fraternally. It remains unclear whether Gary sanctioned or was even aware of Wayne’s actions on live TV. But the grand patriarch can hardly escape blame for a form of look-at-me shtick that is wearing painfully thin.
Elder had waited 46 years to be saluted on the first tee at Augusta, only for Player to declare: “Lee experienced a lot of things that I experienced in my life. In 1969, I invited him to come to South Africa, and it’s quite sad to think that in those days, with the segregation policy, I had to go to my president and get permission for him to play in our PGA.”
There was, indeed, a sadness in recalling such inequities. But Player’s retelling of events was, to put it kindly, a little rough around the edges.
For a start, the year of Elder’s appearance in South Africa – which came about less through Player’s personal intervention than a calculated attempt by John Vorster’s government to avoid international boycotts – was 1971, not 1969. And just five years earlier, Player had published a book, Grand Slam Golf, in which he wrote: “I must say now, and clearly, that I am of the South Africa of Verwoerd and apartheid … a nation which is the product of its ability to maintain civilised values and standards among the alien barbarians.”
Player has since disavowed those remarks, insisting they
are a source of regret. It serves little purpose, ultimately, to castigate an 85-year-old for statements he made when he was 30. Where fault can be found, though, is in his apparent fondness for revisionist accounts seemingly designed for selfglorification.
It is a strange character flaw, given that he already has people fawning at his feet wherever he goes. At the Masters, Player was introduced by Augusta chairman Fred Ridley as “golf ’s pre-eminent global ambassador”. There was little disputing this billing: only a few hours earlier, he had signed up as the golfing envoy for, of all countries, Saudi Arabia. In sweating his brand, Player has seldom been too selective about the regimes with which he does business. In 2007, Nelson Mandela stood him down as host of a charity tournament after discovering
Player had designed the Pride of Myanmar, a course that became an 18-hole playground for the Burmese military junta.
Player is estimated to be the most travelled athlete on the planet, accruing more than 15 million air miles. He likes to characterise it as a form of missionary work, spreading the gospel of golf. Except he is simply not wired to be the selfless kind. Last year, he claimed he could fix Jordan Spieth’s swing troubles and turn him into the “best player who has ever lived”, all in “one hour”. Previously, on the subject of race relations in his native land, he had also asserted: “I am now quite convinced that I have played a significant role in trying to eradicate apartheid.”
Peter Alliss, as so often, had the measure of the man. “He has not
got the credit for being the little man against the world,” the old sage argued, “maybe because he pontificates about too many subjects, what you should eat and where you should go to church.” On this front, Player is incorrigible.
It is a running joke in golf that nobody in his presence lasts five minutes without being reminded that he does 1,300 sit-ups a day, or being asked to punch his chest to test the strength of his core.
During the 2017 Open at Royal Birkdale, Player shot a video in which he berated several bewildered punters at the food stalls for the inadequacy of their diets. Rounding on one young boy, he lectured him: “Make a promise, you’ll never have a big fat stomach. You’ll always exercise. Study. Honour your mum and dad.” He seemed to believe he was coming across as a kindly grandfather figure. In truth, he just looked desperate for attention.
It is an enduring mystery about Player that not even an iconic career can dilute a rampant insecurity. He has every recognition he could wish for: nine major titles, a career Grand Slam, an honorary doctorate, even the Presidential Medal of Freedom of Donald Trump. But still he cannot let Lee Elder enjoy his hour in the sun without positioning himself front and centre in the narrative.
To criticise Player is not to deny his colossal body of work, or the fact that he accomplished all of it as the son of an impoverished gold miner who lost his mother at the age of eight. It is simply to wish that he would go easy, in his dotage, on the hubris. There was no starker contrast with his self-referential antics, or with those of Wayne, than the sight of Hideki Matsuyama’s caddie, Shota Hayafuji, bowing in gratitude at the course after his player’s win. Yes, Player deserves admiration for how he has treated his body as a holy temple long into his ninth decade. But on the latest evidence, he still has much to learn about the art of growing old gracefully.
Nobody in his presence lasts five minutes without being told he does 1,300 sit-ups a day