Gary Player

Gary James Player, born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 1 November 1935, became one of golf’s defining figures in the television age of the sport. The youngest of Muriel and Harry Player’s three children, he turned professional at 17 and built a career that stretched across continents. From the late 1950s through the late 1970s, golf grew rapidly in the United States and around the world, helped by expanded television coverage. In that era, Player stood with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus as one of “The Big Three” golfers of the mid-1960s.

Player is best known for winning more than 160 professional tournaments on six continents, including nine major championships. He won the 1959 Open Championship, the 1961 Masters Tournament, the 1962 PGA Championship, and then the 1965 U.S. Open, becoming the first non-American to win the career grand slam. He was the third golfer to complete the modern career grand slam, and at the time, at 29, the youngest to do it. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974 and later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2021 from United States president Donald Trump.

His record was marked by range as much as by numbers. Player competed regularly on the U.S.-based PGA Tour from the late 1950s, led the Tour money list in 1961, and won 24 PGA Tour titles. He won the South African Open 13 times and the Australian Open seven times, more than anyone else in each event. He also held the record for most World Match Play Championship victories, with five, from 1973 until 1991, when Seve Ballesteros equalled it. Player was in the top ten of Mark McCormack’s world golf rankings from their start in 1968 until 1981, reaching second in 1969, 1970, and 1972, each time behind Nicklaus.

Nicknamed “the Black Knight,” “Mr Fitness,” and “the International Ambassador of Golf,” Player matched competition with constant movement and discipline. He has been called the world’s most traveled athlete, with more than 26 million km, or 16 million mi, in air travel. His wife, Vivienne Verwey, whom he married on 19 January 1957, often traveled with him in the early years, along with their six children, a nanny, and a tutor. Player credited his ability to make the cut at the 1998 Masters in gusty winds, becoming the oldest golfer ever to do so, to his dedication to diet, health, practice, and golf fitness.

Player’s work in golf continued well beyond tournament play. He became a prolific golf course architect, with more than 400 design projects around the world, and authored or co-wrote 36 books on golf instruction, design, philosophy, motivation, and fitness. In 2022, after Vivienne’s passing, the Gary & Vivienne Player Foundation was established and now operates in South Africa and the United States. His most quoted line, “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” fits the public image formed by his results, his travel, and his long insistence on fitness. It is plain, memorable, and rooted in the habits that carried him through one of golf’s great competitive eras.