Player, Gary J.
Golf
b. Nov. 1, 1935, Johannesburg, South Africa
Like Ben Hogan, Player was small for a professional golfer at 5-foot-9 and 155 pounds, and he worked very hard to achieve success. A physical fitness proponent whose ideas sometimes verged on the mystical, he worked out daily, ate raisins and sunflower seeds on the course, and wore black clothing because he believed it absorbed energy from the sun.
Soft-spoken, sincere, eternally polite, and deeply religious, Player was suspected by some of seeming too good to be true, but he converted even his critics in 1965 when he gave away his entire purse of $25,000 after winning the U. S. Open, some of it for medical research and the rest to help support junior golf.
Player finished fourth in the 1956 British Open, when he was only twenty, and the following year he beat the established South African golfer Bobby Locke in a 108-hole match. He won his first major championship, the British Open, in 1959. He was also the British Open champion in 1968 and 1974.
Player won the Masters Tournament in 1961, 1974, and 1978 and the PGA Championship in 1962 and 1972, giving him a total of 9 major titles. He finished in the top four in the major tournaments fifteen other times. He won the South African Open 13 times, the Australian Open seven times, and the World Match Play Championship five times.
The PGA tour's leading money winner with $64,540.45 in 1961, Player spent less time on the tour than most other pros in ensuing years, preferring to stay with his wife and family on their ranch in South Africa.
He won the PGA Seniors Championship in 1986, 1988, and 1990 and the U. S. Senior Open in 1987 and 1988.