Gary Player is as much a legend for the countless
miles he has traveled as for the worldwide victories he has amassed upon
arrival. In 1974—arguably Gary’s greatest season ever—I was very much a part of those
ceaseless travels, during a memorable stretch that began at the Qantas
Australian Open in Perth,
Australia. There
Player shot a course-record 63 in howling winds and blinding rain at Lake
Karrinyup CC to spreadeagle the field after three rounds. Up in the broadcast
booth Tom Kite, who had just shot 68, told me, “I never played better than I did
today, and he got me by five!”
Player’s final round of 73 was caused by a hook
that crept into his game on the inward half. He still won by three shots, giving
him his seventh Australian Open title. Afterward I went straight to the airport
to catch a Qantas 747 to London. Gary, meanwhile, went straight to the practice
tee to eradicate the hook. We had to wait for him on the tarmac for two
hours—Qantas could hardly leave without its newly crowned
champion!
We were scheduled to travel on from London to southern Spain, where we would compete in La
Manga Campo de Golf’s big-money pro-am. Gary, who had alternately slept and read
a work by his idol Sir Winston Churchill en route to London—but never eaten more
than a morsel of all the food offered in the first-class cabin—agreed to come to
my home in Epsom, Surrey for breakfast. At his request I then drove him to the
stables of a mutual friend, the late Brian Swift, where he purchased a
four-year-old mare, Look Lively, that became a cornerstone of his thoroughbred
breeding program in South
Africa.
Our plane was delayed in both Heathrow and
Madrid, and I was thoroughly exhausted after a
lengthy drive from Murcia to La Manga. Not Gary, though. As I pulled
the drapes in my room overlooking the practice tee, I noticed a lone golfer out
there beating balls. I slept fitfully, then at first light drew open the drapes.
I thought my eyes were playing tricks: Player was out there
again!
Greg Peters, the American owner of La Manga, had
conceived the idea of a pro-am in which each professional posted no individual
score, but instead carried forward the net score of his team. (Greg had been
perturbed for some time because he, a palpably inferior golfer, had been treated
poorly by many a professional partner.) My fellow amateurs (Alan Mouncer and
Frank Fritchey) and I reaped the
extraordinary benefit of Player’s diligent
coaching, recording a second round of 54 that sealed victory for our team.
Gary literally
ran from one of us to the other on every shot, not permitting anyone to draw
back the club without his earnest exhortation.
Our man next flew to Madrid, where he played 36
holes against first-class international opposition and won the Ibergolf
Tournament—on very little sleep—in a sudden-death playoff against Briton Peter
Townsend. He left immediately for Lisbon,
Portugal to catch a flight to
South Africa, and there won
the General Motors International Classic in Port Elizabeth by birdieing the last two
holes.
Most people would have headed home to rest after
such a whirlwind tour across three continents. Not our intrepid hero—the
following week Player won the Brazilian Open at the short La Gavea course
(par-69, 6,185 yards) and in the process recorded the first-ever round of 59 in
a national Open.
By the end of that
incredible 1974 season Player had won 10 times around the world, including the
Masters and the British Open. I feel tired just thinking about the distances he
traveled that year—and practically every other through six dogged
decades.
