Gary Player receives PGA Lifetime Achievement award

[Moecat]

http://onpar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/looking-back-on-a-distinguished-career/

 

Looking Back on a Distinguished Career

By EDGAR THOMPSON

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Gary Player has done it all and seen it all in the game of golf.

 

Since he turned pro at age 17, Player won the career Grand Slam on both tours, dined with presidents and prime ministers, logged more than 15 million miles in travel and raised more than $50 million for charity.

 

“I've had a lifetime in this game,” he said Wednesday. “It's been a wonderful experience.”

 

Player, perhaps the world's finest international golf ambassador, received the PGA Tour's Lifetime Achievement Award on Wednesday night at T.P.C. Sawgrass on the eve of the Players Championship. Player is the 10th person to receive the honor, joining Gene Sarazen, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Jackie Burke Jr., Pete Dye, Deane Beman, Jack Nicklaus and former President George H. W. Bush.

 

Trim, tan and impeccably dressed, the 76-year-old Player reflected on a lifetime and career like no other.

 

 

“The thing I've enjoyed so much coming from a poor family is the opportunity that the world of golf, particularly America, have given me,” he said. “Also, the education that one derives from traveling, it teaches you so many things. Golf itself is almost a college degree in teaching you so many, many things — patience, respect, being on time.

 

“You can go on and on and on what golf teaches you.”

 

As a fledgling pro, Player had the chance to tee it up with Sarazen, the first man to win the career Grand Slam, and faced Snead and Ben Hogan late in their careers. Player became a member of the Big Three in the 1960s with Palmer and Nicklaus, and played his final Masters in 2009, when Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were the favorites.

 

“It's been a long journey,” Player said.

 

Looking back, Player said Hogan was the best golfer he had ever seen.

 

Nicklaus and Woods won more, but Player said no one hit the ball better than Hogan, who like Player won nine major championships.

 

“I played with Hogan in my first U.S. Open at Southern Hills in 1958,” Player said. “The rough was a foot high, and I never saw him miss the fairway. It was unbelievable.

 

“Had you given him this equipment, these metal-head drivers, these grooves, this ball, these fairways, these jets, this prize money, etc., etc., etc., it would have been frightening to see just how good that man would have been.”

 

Player has strong opinions when it comes to modern equipment, especially the ball.

 

“If they don't slow the ball down, they're going to hit a driver and a wedge to No. 2 at Augusta National,” he said. “They're going to hit a driver and a wedge to No. 15. It's going to be a joke so they're going to be forced to cut it back.

 

“But with the heart of the game, which are the amateurs, not the pros, we've got to let them have all the technology. Let them enjoy it and have great fun.”

 

Player is still enjoying the game and shooting scores below his age “by six or seven shots now.”

 

Player, a fitness nut who says he still does 1,000 situps a day, is not looking to go back in time with his own game, especially after an eye-opening experience for a man whose playing career spanned six decades.

 

To help with a magazine article, Player teed it up Tuesday for several holes with hickory-shafted clubs like the ones Bobby Jones used in the 1920s. Player then switched to the clubs he used in the 1960s, before he finished the day swinging modern equipment.

 

“That was an experience,” Player said. “I went home to my wife and said, ‘Now I know just how good Bobby Jones was.' I always thought he was good, but I never realized he was that good.

 

“Bobby Jones has really gone up in my estimation.”

[Flv02]

It's an award he fully deserves.He's one of the best