Gary Player — nearly 90! — still one of the greatest shows on turf   

Nobody would call elegance a growth industry, but a vestige of it will be on display this week, most discreetly, at the 153rd Open Championship, in a chic white hospitality suite along the 18th hole at Royal Portrush. There, in the Rolex suite, will be a gent named Arnauld Laborde, a Rolex executive and man you could call The Last Continental. He will welcome players, sometimes with their wives or partners or agents in tow, many business leaders and heads of various international golfing bodies, plus some invited slip-ins. I know this scene as a member of the last category, Timex on wrist, reporter’s notebook in back pocket. 

Whatever language you speak, M. Laborde speaks it, too. Whatever you wish to eat or drink, M. Laborde is happy to make the arrangements. Did you forget your umbrella? M. Laborde has an extra.

You know how some people can wear tennis shoes with a suit and make it work? That is M. Laborde. Some people just have it: true style, no statement hat necessary; a thick, no-fuss head of hair; a warm and unrushed manner; an ability to make easy, sustained eye contact; easy athleticism, too. C’est Arnaud. His age is indeterminable — and who would be so gauche as to ask? — but I can say that he is married with children in school. I have not seen his passport, but I can imagine how crowded it is with stamps and extra pages.

I have known Arnaud for some years, and last year, when the Open was at Troon, he invited me to Rolex suite as I was attempting to get myself invited to play in the 2024 Senior Open pro-am at Carnoustie, an event sponsored by Rolex and run by Arnaud. Stealing from George Plimpton’s classic book The Bogey Man, I played in a bunch of pro-ams last year, a reporting boondoggle for a new book, The Playing Lesson.  

The Playing Lesson: A Duffer’s Year Among the Pros

Nearly fifty years after taking up the game, Michael Bamberger made a pair of startling discoveries: golf had never meant more to him, and he knew almost nothing about it. He decided to cover himself in green in a whole new way. He spent a year inside the ropes of professional golf—playing, caddying, competing, volunteering, and interviewing—looking for a door into the sport’s sanctum sanctorum.

Arnaud motioned for me to join him at his table. Some distance away, Mark Steinberg, the super-agent, was waiting on a plush white leather sofa to see Arnaud. They had, I imagined, actual business to attend. I could have tried to move things along, but it would have been pointless, as Arnaud is not a man to rush anything. 

It was midafternoon, but Arnaud insisted I eat. No menu was needed. He ordered wine for both of us. It was all delicious. As we visited, Arnaud had short chats with various passersby in various languages. He and I talked about golf in the Olympics, the Ryder Cup, Tom Watson’s long association with Rolex. There was a photograph of Watson on a nearby wall, among other Open winners. We talked about various Open winners. 

“You know Gary Player, don’t you?” Arnaud asked.

He held his wineglass with a casualness I would never attempt.

I have interviewed Player often, played golf with him twice, watched him hold a long plank once, his elbows exposed to a cement walkway.

“I do.” I didn’t ask why he was asking, although I could guess.

The visit must have gone acceptably well. Arnaud invited me to play in the Senior Open pro-am, the following week at Carnoustie, with Gary Player as my partner. 

I went to the Marks & Spencer in downtown Glasgow and bought a blazer. You can’t go to a Rolex event without a blazer. Even I know that.

*** 

UNLESS YOU KNEW, you would never guess that Gary Player in approaching 90. Impossible. When I saw him on the morning of our pro-am, he was clear-eyed, dressed impeccably and all in black, the oldest living member of the first generation of global golf stars. Also the most global golf star ever, by far, including Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman. A man dripping with style in every way. In his speech. (Every sentence is a pronouncement.) In his dress. (Every item is expertly tailored). In his golf swing. (Every swing, in basic shape, looks the same. Draw shot, draw shot, draw shot.) His fitness announces itself with his handshake, the right hand coming at you like a punch. Also, the man has the happy gene. Even when he’s railing about something — juiced athletes, hot golf balls, fast-food diets — Gary Player always seems to be having a good time. His life, you could say, is a type of performance art.

Arnold Palmer was drawn to him. He and Winnie traveled to South Africa with Player and his wife, Vivienne, to see their ranch and to see their lives. (The Players had been married for 64 years when Vivienne died in 2021.) The Big Three was a real thing, Arnold and Player and Jack Nicklaus attached at the hip in the name of business and in the name of friendship. Barbara and Jack Nicklaus named the fourth of their five children for Gary. As public personalities, the so-called Black Knight and Golden Bear could not be more different. Nicklaus is as contained as Gary Player is gregarious. You can’t imagine Jack Nicklaus beginning a pro-am round with this: 

“Mike! How are you, man!”

How can you not like being greeted by one of the best golfers ever with that?

The other pro in our group was Colin Montgomerie. If Colin Montgomerie devoted himself to broadcast booth commentary, he’d combine the best of both worlds, a color commentator with Peter Alliss’s wit and Johnny Miller’s insights. But he prefers to play. His am was Neil Donaldson, the captain of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, a Scotsman and scion of a Scottish timber family going back forever, not that you’d know it. The previous week, during the Open at Royal Troon, he had an intimate view of all the proceedings. He found the winner, Xander Schauffele, to be humble and unassuming, and was struck by how gutted Justin Rose was after finishing two shots behind the winner. Deep on the back nine, Neil saw a focus in Rose’s eyes that made him think of a matador in the ring with a bull, ready to kill or be killed. He attempted to console Rose in the players’ lounge. Colin told me later that he was struck by Neil’s unassuming manner, given his status in business and in golf, and the depth of his insights.

We were on the first tee of one of the great championship courses in the world on a day with the wind down and the sun out. This was not the bleak Carnoustie of yore — the opposite.

“I’ll take care of the pars, you take care of the net birdies,” Colin said to Neil before the first shot was played. Colin then made a bogey on the first and a bogey on the second. Nobody seemed too worried, not about Monty’s golf or anything else.

There was a lot of chat. Player asked Colin, “How many times did you win the Order of Merit?” That is, the European Tour’s money list.

“Seven in a row, eight total,” Colin said. 

“Eight times!” Player said. “That’s about how many wives you’ve had!” 

Pros poking at one another — once it was part of the culture. Colin seemed fine with it. Besides, Sarah is only Colin’s third wife. She was also Colin’s long-standing manager. At Carnoustie, wherever you saw Colin, there was Sarah, a portrait in new-marriage bliss.

Neil asked Gary how many times he had shot his age or better.

“Three thousand seven hundred and twenty-one times!” he said.

That was a new one on me. Other items from the Gary Player set list I knew. For instance, the 16 million air miles he had flown — “a record for an athlete that will never be broken!” Later in the round, we heard about the 18 majors he had won, counting his nine senior majors along with his three British Opens, three wins at Augusta, two PGA Championships, and his victory at the 1965 U.S. Open in a playoff, where he completed his career Grand Slam before turning 30. (The next day, Colin Montgomerie, as witty as anybody in golf, said to me, “Usually you hear about the 18 majors before you get to the first tee.”) Player made a familiar claim, that one day all pro golfers will be the size of LeBron James, and they will all be able to drive the first green at Augusta. It’s some picture.

This, too, came out of Player’s regular rotation, but I think it’s important — I think it gets to the core of the man: “I envy the ease with which Tiger Woods has been able to travel the world. His equipment. The science available to him about nutrition and exercise. But I wouldn’t trade what he has for what we had for all the money in the world.” 

We. The Big Three, along with Billy Casper, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd, Tom Weiskopf, Tom Watson, Hale Irwin, Hubert Green, Tony Jacklin, and other greatest-generation golfers from the 1960s and ’70s he didn’t need to name. Gary Player was part of a wandering tribe, golfers traveling the world and especially the United States, trying to bash in one another’s heads for money and glory, going to the bar together when it was all over. I was lucky to catch some of that era, and to get to know many of its stars.

The length and reach of Player’s life in golf is staggering. He sought swing advice from Ben Hogan, who was born in 1912. At his first Open Championship, in 1956, he and Henry Cotton, born in 1907, both finished in the top 10. At Augusta each April, he visited with Bobby Jones, who was born in 1902. When he cites any of those three legends in conversation, he’s not name-dropping. He’s telling you about people he knew well.

Player’s admiration for Jones was profound. Hogan once asked Player how much he was practicing. “Constantly,” Player said. (Probably the only answer that could land with Hogan.) Sir Henry Cotton, winner of three Opens, told Player that a golfer’s hands cannot be too strong. Player spent the rest of his career trying to improve his hand strength.

Player brought up the subject of hand strength as we were walking down the 15th hole. He told Martin, my firefighter caddie and a strong young man, that he would pay him two hundred pounds if he could hold two golf clubs shoulder-high horizontally while weaving the shafts through three fingers of one hand. Martin did not collect. Player did it with ease. All the while, three kids from Carnoustie, all golfers, had casually attached themselves to our group without any sort of parental involvement. Montgomerie was struck by the depth of the questions they were asking Player, but also how unusually engaged Player was with the kids.

Gary Player won all those majors — I’ll say nine but you say whatever you wish — hitting pretty much all draw shots. At the pro-am at Carnoustie, Player hit every last shot with a hook stance, hook path and hook spin. Every drive, every putt, every everything. I had seen it before but had never paid so much attention to it.

On the 14th hole, a short, excellent par-5, Gary had about 40 yards for his third shot from the right side of the fairway. He couldn’t see much of the flagstick from where he was because of a bunker protecting the front right of the green. Colin was standing on it. Player asked Monty for the distance from the bunker to the pin. “Ten paces,” Monty said. Gary Player then hit a low, hooded, drawing wedge to a firm green that I would consider one of the most memorable shots I have ever seen. It finished hole-high. It was beautiful. Gary Player has spent his life playing similar shots.

In my own ridiculous golf, I try to hit fades with the long clubs and draws with the short ones. Gary Player, taking an active interest in my golf, wanted every swing with every club to come from the inside. I have been told this before. But on some level, I must not have accepted it. For a reason I cannot articulate, the wedge shot Player hit into 14 was a trip switch for me.

On 18, I hit a tee shot with a driver that was a low, running from-the-inside draw shot that went forever. I almost made my short putt for par.

***

THE NEXT MORNING, as Player was leaving, I saw him at the front door of the hotel. A couple came over to talk to him and he asked, “How long have you been married?”

“Fifteen years,” the husband said.

“It’s a record!” Player said. 

He turned to me and said, “Mike, man, that was so much fun yesterday! The way you hit those shots the last few holes — you rotated, your hands followed. It was like a mirage!” 

During our round, Gary talked some about his girlfriend, his first since his wife had died. He described his lady friend most vividly. She was in her 80s, Jewish, from New York, a person who loved to golf, fish, read, work and travel. “And she has her own money!” Gary said. You could imagine them as a couple. Making his exit from Carnoustie, Gary Player looked like a movie star, right down to his black slip-on boots, the kind the young people in Lower Manhattan wear, and his sharp black suit.

I thanked him for the lesson he had given me and said, “Not that you need it, but good luck with your new lady friend.” 

Gary Player laughed, shook my hand, and said, “Mazel tov!”

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com