Gary Player turning 90 years old: 'I don't think of 90. My body is a man of, I'd say 60'
JUPITER ISLAND — As he settles into a pure white leather couch with white walls, white plantation shutters, white rug with a zebra print, Gary Player, the man known as the “Black Knight,” is in full character at his ocean-front condominium on this tony island.
Dressed in all black.
And that’s not the only enigma in the life of golf’s most famous international ambassador who is not shy about expressing his opinion on everything from declaring the Ryder Cup in “shambles” to growing up in the apartheid era in South Africa.
The “enigma,” Gary Player cites one minute into our 45-minute conversation, is him. How can a man who turns 90 on Nov. 1 have so much energy and continue to beat his age by about 17 strokes each time he plays golf?
“Here I am 90, and I’m so fit, and I work so hard, and I travel, and I play lots of golf, I represent a lot of companies,” Player said. “I can’t quite comprehend that I’m 90. I work out like a young guy. So it’s really … it’s an enigma of sorts. I keep saying, ‘you’re 90?’ “
Player is a walking enigma. At just 5-foot-6, 145 pounds and a 31-inch waist — measurements that have hardly changed since his heyday as a Hall of Fame golfer — not to mention his silver hair, always more noticeable in his black attire.
Yet, he casts an imposing figure. A man who commands a room.
Player will be honored and celebrated Nov. 1 in Sun City, in his native South Africa, where the two-day Gary & Vivienne Player Invitational at the Gary Player Country Club will kick off with a 90th birthday party.
“I don’t think of 90,” he said. “I am 90! But really, my body is a man of, I’d say 60.”
Gary Player keeps secrets in his wallet on how to live to 100
Gary Player is sitting at a table, facing the churning Atlantic Ocean, in his fourth-floor condominium on this island of less than three square miles and about 850 residents. Sitting nearby are several copies of his 37th book: ‘Golf’s Majors: From Hagen and Hogan to a Bear and a Tiger,’ awaiting his signature.
“If you’re going to be a pro golfer, you’ve got to play with the sun shines,” he said about moving to Palm Beach County about 25 years ago. “And they were all coming here. It was a sensible thing to do.”
Jupiter Island, which is split between Martin and Palm Beach counties, also is home to one of the three men with more than Player’s nine major championships, Tiger Woods.
The irony of Woods living about a mile north of Player is their lives could not be farther apart. The two legendary, Hall of Fame golfers will celebrate milestone birthdays in 2025. Woods turns 50 on Dec. 30. But the man with the broken down body, who has had difficulty playing, and even walking, 18 holes in recent years because of a list of injuries that would fill a medical journal, is the younger of two … by 40 years.
Woods was born 22 years into Player’s professional career and the year after Player won the 1974 Masters and British Open, the seventh and eighth of his nine major championships.
So what’s Player’s secret? Player will work out or play golf as many days as possible. Workouts could mean weight training in the gym at his complex, walking the beach or swimming the ocean. “But not far out,” he said. “Because I’m very wary of sharks.”
Player then pulled out a laminated card from his wallet, one he received from a gerontologist. Listed were 12 keys to living to 100:
Under eat. Exercise. Read. Prayer/meditate. Love. Ice bath. Gratitude. Sleep. Laugh a lot. Keep busy. Friends. Do things you don’t want to do.
“All the gerontologists varied to a degree, but basically what they all agreed on to live a long time is under eat,” Player said. “Everybody’s eating too much. Obesity, which is killing them. “
When it comes to golf, to most, the number 100 is unthinkable, a scarlet number. But for Player, 100 now is his goal. But not on the golf course.
Player thinks about living to 100 “every day” of his life. And he believes he will become a centenarian unless he gets a disease, “which can happen because the food is all sprayed, you know, and it’s the things that prevent you from becoming a hundred.”
Player recently shot par at Dutchman’s Pipe Golf Club in West Palm Beach. And he claims to have beaten his age more than 3,000 times in a row.
“(Lee) Trevino says, ‘what’s so good about that? You got to shoot 18 over par,’ ” Player said, laughing. “I love Trevino.”
Player hits it about 240 yards off the tee, about 30 yards shy of a typical drive in his prime. But he believes that 270 yards 50 years ago is akin to 320 yards today when factoring in modern technology. including “ball, metal heads, lightweight shafts and much shorter mowed fairways.”
Beyond his nine major championships on the PGA Tour, Player has the same number on the Tour Champions. His number of professional wins is reported to be above 160, more than any other golfer. He is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Player, Jack Nicklaus and the late Arnold Palmer were the original “Big Three.”
“I wanted to be the best, and Arnie and Jack wanted to be the best,” he said.
Player is the first non-American to win the PGA Tour Grand Slam — Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, British. And the only man to have won the Grand Slam on the PGA Tour and Tour Champions. He is convinced if he was born in America he would have won at least three more majors.
As it is, he trails only Nicklaus (18), Woods (15) and Walter Hagen (11). He is tied with Ben Hogan.
“There are things that are just … you wonder how you could be so gifted to do that,” he said. “Particularly coming from another country, traveling.”
Player says growing up with apartheid ‘brainwashed’ you
During his early years on tour, Player was surrounded by security. Because he was from a country that practiced apartheid from 1948 to the early 1990s, he was branded a racist.
Guards slept at his home. Extra security followed him around the golf course. People threw objects at him. They screamed at the top of his backswing. One time, in Australia, a group of men charged after him on the course.
“I’d walk up alongside the gallery and this guy would say, ‘you f****** racist. I hope you lose.’
“I wasn’t bitter,” he added. “I said, ‘you know I’m from a country that’s practicing apartheid. It’s a good message to South Africa to get rid of it.’ Unfortunately, I’m being used.”
Player’s opinion on apartheid evolved over the years.
“When I was a young man, I thought maybe it’s the right thing because we were brainwashed like Germany,” he said. “And if you said something detrimental, they gave you 90-day policy in jail. This was like Hitler’s times, man. They threw people off buildings.”
Player was born in 1935 in Johannesburg, South Africa. That was the year Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo over the Pacific Ocean, appropriate considering Player estimates he has flown more than 15 million miles.
Player’s mother died when he was 9. His father was a gold mine captain, which helped his start in golf.
“You could see all the golden mountains with the sand that came out of the gold mine,” Player said. “And if you worked in the gold mine and you played golf, you could play for 20 pounds a year.”
At first, he was not sold on the sport. Player remembers thinking of golf as a “sissy sport,” nothing like soccer or rugby or cricket. But he caved.
And then he made himself a promise. Player vowed if he ever became a champion he would help people who are suffering.
“When you experience what I experienced as a young man, which is living like a junkie or a dog …” he said. “I went to this great school, which really helped me, but I’d go home at night, nobody there, cook my own food. I’d get up at 5:30 in the morning to travel to school.
“So I really suffered a lot. A lot. I lay in bed for two years on and off wishing I was dead, crying in bed. That was the greatest gift bestowed upon me ever. And that’s what made me a world champion.”
Gary married Vivienne Verwey in 1957, four years after he turned professional. They had six children. Vivienne died of cancer in August 2021. Today, the Gary & Vivienne Player Foundation operates in South Africa and the United States. The U.S. office is run by their daughter, Amanda Player-Hall.
One of those children, Marc, was at the center of a legal depute with his father that was settled in 2020 in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. Gary won the legal battle and was awarded $ 5 million and the rights to his name, image and likeness back from the Gary Player Group, operated by Marc.
Marc attempted to sell his father’s memorabilia despite an agreement requiring the items be returned to Gary.
Player’s passion in life is his foundation. And he’s always looking for donors that will “enable us to go on in perpetuity.” The foundation has made significant donations to Place of Hope, a faith-based, state-licensed children and families organization with campuses in Palm Beach and Martin counties. Gary and Vivienne founded the Blair Atholl School in South Africa that educates underprivileged children.
“To me, philanthropy isn’t optional,” said Player, who has 22 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “It’s a responsibility, and it has given me some of the greatest satisfaction in my life.”
Gary Player calls retirement a ‘death warrant’
Gary Player would rather pull a 3-foot putt, shank a wedge, than think about retirement.
“I think people retire too early,” he said. “To me, it’s a death warrant. They say, ‘I’ve worked hard, I’m going to take it easy.’ And yes, literally, they do. They go home and they sit there and they over-eat and they watch television and they die within three years.
“I don’t believe in retirement. If you don’t use it, you lose it. But it’s easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get people to exercise today, to look after their bodies. And I say, ‘look, you don’t have to go to weights like I do. Just get up and walk. That’s all. If you do that, you’ll stay fit.’ “
Player ended with one more story about working out. He referenced his 1965 appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” one in which he promoted the advantages of weight training at a time when that was taboo for golfers.
“In 1953, when I started it, I was condemned,” he said. “Arnold Palmer, my brother, said, ‘Gary, you can’t do this weight training.’ Bobby Jones said ‘Gary, you can’t do all this weight training. You’re going to get muscle bound. You won’t win tournaments after 35.’
“Well,” he said, as he starting laughing knowing what he was about to say, “they’re all dead. And I’m still going.”
And going strong.
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Gary Player, on turning 90, credits golf, working out to maintaining good health
