Player shows plenty of enthusiasm
By Jaime DiazLarry David is locked in conversation with Gary Player on the set of David's hit show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and the effect carries the approximate incongruity of a Tiger Woods shank. The last juxtaposition involving a pro golfer this jarring was Chi Chi Rodriguez's appearance on the cover of the 1978 Devo album "Are We Not Men?"
Observing the chronically pessimistic comic and the incurably optimistic golfer meeting for the first time before an early morning taping at a Pacific Palisades, Calif., home, the thought occurs that they are about to enact a variation on the "Bizarro Jerry" episode from "Seinfeld" -- co-created by David -- in which Jerry co-exists with his complete opposite. Think David as Bizarro Gary, completely ignoring autograph seekers, taking three in the sand and swearing uncontrollably. Or Player, as Bizarro Larry, tipping hugely, celebrating Christmas with his in-laws, and voting for Bush.
Instead, Player appeared as himself in a hilariously intricate plot dreamed up by David that we can only tell you involves a green jacket. The 69-year-old dynamo demonstrated the same comfort before the camera that he's shown in his spots for the World Golf Hall of Fame and especially in his Vito Corleone-inspired, cat-stroking turn as "The Golf Father" for a Champions Tour promotion. Between the largely improvised takes, David spoke for the entire crew when he called out, "Gary, you're a natural. We believe you every time."
And while they may be opposites, the pair bonded in golf. David -- an avid 13-handicapper at Riviera and a huge admirer of Player's career -- couldn't wait to ask what his first thought should be at the beginning of the downswing. After receiving Player's brisk demonstration of how Ben Hogan aggressively cleared his left hip, David spent much of his time between takes pantomiming his new move. And even when -- for laughs -- he went the equivalent of Bizarro Gary, Player could relate.
"This game is a curse to me," whined David. "The whole round I ask myself, 'Why, why, why am I doing this? I don't enjoy it, but I can't stop. It's destroying my marriage.' And in two weeks I will probably be complaining that Gary Player destroyed my game."
Player chuckled: "Larry, golf is a puzzle without an answer. You end up knowing a lot about nothing."
"Really?" answered David, comforted by the nihilism and roused by the Seinfeldian "nothing." "After all you've done, even you think that?"
"Oh, yes," says Player, for the moment a kindred spirit. "It's life, isn't it?"
The nothingness has never stopped Player from leaving an indelible mark on golf history. His record -- 163 tournament victories worldwide, including nine major championships, six Champions Tour majors and three Senior British Opens -- may now be subordinate to his persona. Whereas Player as a younger man was often regarded as cartoonish, the test of time has made him a true icon. When it comes to a legacy of will, enthusiasm and energy, there has never been a great golfer remotely like him.
"I've known Gary for 40 years, and he's always been the same," says fellow South African and Champions Tour player John Bland. "To Gary, a blade of grass is not just a blade of grass, it's an example of the wonder of nature. He simply has an endless energy and fascination with life. I'm sure it has something to do with why he has always beat the hell out of us. It's as if he has some sort of unfair advantage."
It's part of a charisma that inspired his charges at the 2003 Presidents Cup, and should again in next week's matches. "Gary is a born leader," says Ian Baker-Finch, who will reprise his role as Player's assistant captain. "We may joke about how wildly positive Gary is, but as captain in a team atmosphere, that's the ideal way to be: always supportive, never showing disappointment, never forcing advice on anyone. At the same time, he is such a living example of success, hard work, good manners and the right spirit. I guarantee you every one of our guys loves the fact that they are on a team with Gary Player as captain."
As he closes in on his 70th birthday Nov. 1, Player -- like his idol, Hogan -- has his own mystique. In the competitors' dining room on Wednesday of the recent Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach, several pros sat rapt as Player theatrically recounted how he made a final 20-footer to beat Jim Colbert and Jim Albus in a money game. Although he made his audience laugh, they also were clearly studying the man, as if some key to his gift might be discerned. And when Player replayed his reaction to seeing the ball roll in the cup with his often mimicked signature move -- a solemn bowing of the head and prolonged and very still tip of the cap -- the other players smiled in salute to the heart that has made thousands of big putts go down.
The truth is, Player still can't fully fathom his own journey. "I often wonder what makes a player able to do things the others can't do," he says. "How could someone as small as me win the majors I won, beat the players I beat, hit the shots I hit, shoot the scores I shot? I mean, how did I do it?"
He suspects the main intangibles came from his parents. He saw irrepressibility in his father, a gold miner who spent most of his working life toiling 12,000 feet underground, yet was known to his many friends as Laughing Harry. But Player barely knew his mother, Muriel, who died at 44 when Player was eight.
"All that I am and all that I have become is in some way a tribute to her," he wrote in his 1991 autobiography To Be the Best. "[Her loss] has been a means for me, as it were, to settle some unfathomable debt." Seemingly connected is a later passage that is just as haunting: "What I have learned about myself is that I am an animal when it comes to achievement and wanting success. There is never enough success for me."
The hunger led him to pay a larger price for a longer period than perhaps any other champion. He worked endlessly on his swing technique, often experimenting in vain. "There were many, many times in major championships when I was lost, hitting absolute rubbish," he says. In fact, he counts the biggest mistake of his career not accepting Ben Hogan's offer in 1958 to sign with his club company for $2,000, instead taking a $9,000 endorsement deal from First Flight.
"At that time, I had no money, so it really wasn't a choice," says Player. "But if I had accepted Hogan's offer, I believe I would have won another three majors. Because Hogan had taken a liking to me, told me I would be a great player, a very rare thing for him. He would have taught me things very early that would have saved me spending years experimenting unnecessarily. Technical things, mental things, things about golf clubs -- just across the board. But when I turned him down, he got really cross, became very hard, and he never let it go. A big regret."
There is no doubt Player has spent more hours in the air than any golfer in history. In the 1960s his trips from Johannesburg to New York were 45-hour, propeller-driven ordeals on which Player and his wife, Vivienne (now married 48 years), brought their six children. Player, not surprisingly, makes a bigger claim. Adding all the flights he has taken as a course architect to the more than 200 projects he has around the world, along with his many international corporate outings, Player says flatly, "I've traveled more than any human being who's ever lived."
Player also bucked all conventional wisdom in the 1950s and '60s in building his body with weights, ultimately proving to be ahead of his time. A natural gymnast who regularly won bets walking on his hands around snooker tables, Player wanted to transform his 5-foot-7 frame into a power plant that could keep up with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. In 1965 he hired former Mr. America Roy Hilligan to train him with a regimen that included full squats with 325 pounds. It produced muscle that got his weight to a lifetime high of 166 pounds (he currently weighs a constantly exercised 146) and later that year, at the age of 29, he completed the career Grand Slam with his victory at the U.S. Open.
"I got so strong I felt like a giant," Player recalls. "When I stood on the tee with Arnold and Jack, I was tiny compared to them. But I never believed they were bigger than me. So the mind is so fascinating."
Ultimately, Player's greatest strength has been mental. "You can conquer a lot with attitude," he says. "Most people think life is 90 percent what happens to them, and 10 percent how they react. Actually, it's 10 percent what happens to them, and 90 percent how they react. One thing I know, being a champion has nothing to do with hitting the ball. If that were true, Tom Weiskopf would have been the greatest champion."
Musing aloud after completing his television taping, Player went on an original riff. "In golf, in life, no one escapes adversity," he said. "At some point, you have to go to the well. The question is, have you made your well deep? Have you learned to appreciate not only just the good things that happen, but the bad things through which you develop resiliency? If you don't, you will have a shallow well. Weiskopf, for example, had a shallow well. Tony Jacklin, Ed Sneed -- shallow wells. They couldn't overcome when adversity hit. I can say with honesty that I had a deep well." After pausing to reflect, he says, "You know, I've never said this before about the well. Isn't that remarkable? Life is constantly new."
His physical golf game, however, even Player admits, has been ravaged by time. His last victory on the Champions Tour came in 1998, and Player no longer speaks of his goal of being the first professional to win official events in six decades. But whereas Palmer and Nicklaus have endured profoundly ambivalent exits from competition, the man many of his peers call "Laddie" remains young in playing spirit with no intention of leaving the arena any time soon.
"I'm too athletic to stop now," he says. "If I can stay in the shape I am now, I'll probably keep playing until I'm 75. If I didn't have a good short game I'd get out, but I'm still a very good putter, good bunker player, good chipper. At the same time, I know I can't do the things I did. Augusta might just be too long for me to keep playing the Masters. We'll see. I used to think, wherever I played, 'I'm going to win.' Now I think, 'Will I ever win again?' If I do, it will be a miracle."
But what's inspiring about Player is the joy he still gets from playing. A day after he shot a 67 in a friendly round at Cypress Point ("Man, what a thrill that was," he effused), Player played a practice round at Del Monte GC and took open delight in good drives that now only travel about 250 yards, and perfectly nipped sand shots. "Listen to that fizz," he says, demonstrating how to produce maximum backspin. "You must light the match!" Upon watching a crisply struck iron shot trace at the pin, he says, "I cannot tell you what a kick that shot gave me." After the ball nestles next to the hole, he intones, "You must never forget to appreciate a good shot." Three days later in the tournament proper, Player came to Del Monte and shot his age, the seventh time he has matched or bettered it on the Champions Tour.
Player insists he will not miss tournament competition when the time comes, saying "I've got too much I want to do in life."
That would include what he calls his "greatest happiness," the time he spends on his 12,500-acre thoroughbred ranch near Colesberg in the midst of his beloved South Africa's vast grassland. He has recently added a 1,000-acre game reserve in which zebras and wildebeest roam freely, as well as a nine-hole golf course that lies at the foot of the "dream home" where he and Vivienne love to frolic with their 14 grandchildren.
Always one to commit to memory meaningful sayings from historical figures he particularly admirers -- he recently quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Trust instinct to the end, though you cannot render any reason" in defending his captain's choice of Trevor Immelman for the Presidents Cup -- Player also tries to emulate his models in philanthropy. For more than three decades, his Player Foundation has built schools in Johannesburg, with facilities for more than 500 mostly underprivileged black students from pre-school to seventh grade.
Similarly, he hopes to make his ranch a golf academy in which promising international juniors can come for intense tutorials on the secrets of the game. "I want to really help these young players with the things I've learned," he says. "I believe it's a tragedy if you don't leave the world what you know."
Even if it's a lot about nothing?
Player laughs. "There are great lessons in nothing," he says. "You mustn't stop trying to make some sense of it. In the end, nothing is all we've got."
