Champions Tour Insider: Player takes one last trip

text size

Getty Images

Gary Player has spent over a half-century at Augusta National with players from several generations.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The evolution of golf continues and we know that it has transcended national boundaries to become a global game.

Related

European Tour Insider
Fantasy Insider: Masters
PGA TOUR Insider

If it is possible to identify one man most responsible for the early days of the globalization, that man is Gary Player. He traveled the world to play the game he cherishes more than anyone ever had -- or has -- to this day.

He circumnavigated the globe again and again and again. Still does, at age 73. No doubt he will until the very end.

But his trips around Augusta National Golf Club are coming to an end.

Player said Monday that this week's Masters, his 52nd -- the most by any golfer -- will be his last. Whether the end comes Friday or Sunday, it will come. Player hasn't made the cut in more than a decade and to suggest he might still be playing Sunday is dreaming. That's his word, not mine.

Player made his first appearance in 1957 at age 21. He has three Green Jackets in his closet, the first in 1961, again in 1974 and 1978.

Will he cry when it is over, when another chapter of his immense career fades away? Count on it. He is.

"I'll be like everybody," Player said. "I'll be very nostalgic. The mind is an amazing thing, how memories go through your mind very quickly. The mind is an incredible thing.

"The love, this is the thing, the love that I've been given by the galleries at this golf tournament; and I'm already telling myself not to start (crying). Arnold and I are two big babies with crying. Arnold and I, we just love people and we cry so easily.

"I think I will cry. And Winston Churchill, one of my all- time great heroes, always said it's never a bad thing to cry. It's a cry of appreciation and enjoyment, a cry of gratitude."

The wit and wisdom, the grace and magnitude of Gary Player are well-documented. He was a member of golf's Big Three with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. They changed the game, each contributing to the rise of golf's popularity in his own way. Palmer gave it flare, Nicklaus gave it an unmistakable aura of greatness and Player was the ambassador.

Player said he will continue to play on the Champions Tour and in its major championships. He has won nine majors on the PGA TOUR and nine more as a member of the Champions Tour. He had 24 victories on the PGA TOUR, 19 so far on the Champions Tour and 122 more worldwide.

Getty Images

Gary Player practiced with Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer at the Masters in 2007.

Fourteen times on the Champions Tour his score has bettered his age, including three times this year (70-71-71) in Hawaii.

Here, then, are some of Player's parting thoughts on the eve of his final Masters:

• On his golf game: "I'm hitting the ball so short now, I can hear it land ... And the hole is getting the size of a Bayer aspirin, you wonder whether you can press it in there or squeeze it in there."

• On dealing with the media: "A lot of athletes today, they are not always that keen to do interviews, and they are avoiding them and they don't do them. I'm very proud to say in my career, I have never refused an interview. My father, a coal miner, a very poor man, said the media is so important. (The Media) have done so much to bring people to the game, which we all love so much, and have added value to us athletes and I never understand somebody sort of pushing the media aside. So I say, thank you very much for the years that you've covered me in this particular tournament. This will be my last major championship that I will ever play on the regular tour."

• On the reason to stop playing at Augusta National: "The golf course, I'm exercising profusely, but it's very difficult at 73 to build strength. The golf course is so long. It is just so long. I mean, I'm hitting a wood (approach shot) to almost every single hole."

• On the biggest changes at Augusta National: "I think Augusta has been brilliant at the way they have altered the golf course according to the golf equipment. This course has set a trend but we have to be very careful in golf today. And I think one of the problems we are facing, they are making the golf courses too long, the greens too undulating, and members are not able to play and play to their handicaps.

"I see it all the time - these severe undulating greens on the golf courses. Costs are just abnormal, with water, which we are running out of very quickly, oil, manpower, machinery. Oh, my gosh, the costs are getting high and we have to be careful, particularly in the economic state we are in right now."

• On the future of golf and golfers: "You're going to find bionic men playing in time to come. I'd love to see it, but we are going to see some very fascinating things coming along."

• On the possibility he could be a ceremonial starter at the Masters someday, joining Palmer: "I never expect anything. Anything that happens is fine. I've got so much respect for this tournament. I'm not going to say, well, he (Chairman Billy Payne) should ask me. That's for him to decide. Would I (accept an invitation)? Of course, I would. I'll even exercise harder to make sure I outdrive Arnold."

Champions Tour Insider Notes:

• The Champions Tour returns to action next week for the Outback Steakhouse Pro-Am at the TPC Tampa Bay in Lutz, Florida. Tom Watson is the defending champion.

• Through the first six events, Bernhard Langer leads the money list, the Charles Schwab Cup points list and the Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship points list by comfortable margins. Langer has six top 10 finishes and leads the Champions Tour in greens in regulation (77.41 percent).