‘YOU NEED SIX MAJORS TO BE A GREAT’
At 83, Gary Player has lost none of his trenchant opinions. He tells Oliver Brown what makes a golfing legend, why he wants Mcilroy to win and how today’s stars lack drive
As befits his reputation for strident opinions, Gary Player has a precise benchmark for golfing greatness. “You need,” he says, firmly, “to have won six majors.” Seve Ballesteros won five, I point out. He bristles slightly.
“Well, that’s too bad. He was a terrible driver of the ball.”
To spend any time with Player is to be struck not just by his provocative assertions, but by the weight of history packed into his diminutive, 83-year-old frame. His visit to Royal Portrush marks the 65th Open in a row that he has attended, whether as competitor or grandee. These days, he can do so in luxury, thanks to the wealth accumulated over a career spanning nine major titles. But for his first Open at St Andrews in 1955, he was poor enough to have to sleep on the sand dunes.
“I had £200 in my pocket, but I didn’t realise all the hotels wanted £50 a night, an exorbitant rate back then,” Player recalls. “So, I went down to the dunes where they shot Chariots of Fire. It was a magnificent evening, and I just lay on my golf bag. It reminded me of a scene from an old cowboy film. Eventually, I found a room right opposite the 18th green for 10 shillings and sixpence. It was so tiny that if you put the key in the keyhole, the window might crack.”
Player needs little invitation to
revel in tales of yesteryear and with good reason, as the only man to have won the Open in three different decades. A contradiction arises, though, when he keeps insisting that comparisons are impossible between his era and today’s, given that he draws such parallels all the time – particularly when they apply to his own feats.
Take Player’s first Open triumph at Muirfield in 1959. He left the course distraught, believing he had tossed his chance away with a double-bogey at the last, only for everyone else to fail to match his closing 68. “Don’t forget, it was howling wind and rain, and I only needed four for a 66,” he says. “Phil Mickelson came along in 2013, at a time when the ball went much further, and his final-round score only beat mine by four. So, really, my score was lower than his.”
Deep into his ninth decade, Player continues to be an impressive advert for his fanatical fitness regime, which apparently still involves more than 1,000 sit-ups a day. Sometimes he will ask people to punch him in the chest so that he can show off the muscles in his core. When he outdrove Jack Nicklaus in this year’s opening drive at the Masters, a purely ceremonial ritual, he allowed himself a high-kick in celebration.
To some, these antics can seem a little too try-hard. Player, though, treats longevity as a badge of honour, as proof of his resilience. He is, by any standard, formidably tough, withstanding a harsh upbringing outside Johannesburg – where his father worked down a gold mine, and where his mother passed away from cancer when Player was just eight – to win golf tournaments on several continents before he even turned 20.
When considering his favourite victory, he refers not to the three times he lifted the Claret Jug, but to his Australian Open win at Royal Melbourne in 1963. “Take the journey to get there from Europe: France, New York, LA, Hawaii, Fiji, Sydney, Melbourne,” he says. “I got there three hours before my tee time. I had a shower, a shave and a sandwich, and I won by seven. It was a miracle.”
In his estimation, modern golfers lack the same commitment to the cause. One saw as much at the Rio Olympics in 2016, which several of the world’s best swerved amid exaggerated fears of the Zika virus. “We have a tournament in Sun City, South Africa, and we wanted one of the Americans to play,” he says. “One who hadn’t even won a major. He wanted £480,000 just to turn up.
“I worry that the managers are getting too greedy. Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and I, we would travel around the world for a mere pittance, because we loved the game and genuinely wanted to promote it. In Australia, I would go to places where they had never seen a pro golfer before, where the clubhouses had corrugated iron roofs. In the same way, I will carry on going to the Open for as long as I live, because I have such respect for it.” Portrush is that vanishing rarity, a place where Player has never seen the Open contested, and he makes little secret of his hopes for this year’s winner. “I hope Rory Mcilroy will win,” he says. “Northern Ireland has been through such great difficulties, I never thought I would live to see the day that the Open was played here.”
Is there a concern, perhaps, that Mcilroy has lost his edge, having neglected to add to his major tally since 2014? “No,” replies Player, long a staunch defender of the Ulsterman’s. “I think one goes through certain stages in life. Don’t forget that Rory could be affected by the draw, too. Tiger Woods got caught on the wrong side of it at Muirfield in 2002, ended up in those Saturday gales and shot 81.”
For all that Player relishes his elder-statesman guise, he still plays a prodigious amount, explaining that he has beaten his age in every one of his last 2,000 rounds, by an average of nine to 10 shots. “I never forget to say thank you for my life,” he says. “I don’t miss a day. Gratitude is important.”
Whether he perceives such a quality among his successors is a moot point. “They have all got their private jets, and they’re making tens of millions. It’s a different environment altogether.”
Ever the nostalgist, he cannot disguise the ruefulness in his voice. “I get the feeling,” Player says, “that it’s more of a business now.”