Gary Player: The Life Story Behind Golf's Black Knight

Gary Player was the smallest of the great golfers, and he was also the toughest. He stood only about five feet seven inches tall, and he weighed far less than the big American players he beat, but he had a will that seemed to have no limit. He came from South Africa, from a gold-mining family, and he lost his mother when he was a small boy. He learned early that life does not give you what you want just because you want it. You have to work for it, and you have to keep working when other people have stopped. That lesson became his whole career, and it took him to every corner of the world, to more tournaments, in more countries, than almost any golfer who ever lived.

He was called the Black Knight, because he dressed in black, and because he played with a dark, serious kind of determination. The name suited him, but it did not tell the whole story. He was also a man of great warmth, a man who loved to talk, who loved to teach, and who loved to tell young golfers that fitness and discipline could beat talent if talent did not work hard. He was ahead of his time in that belief. In the 1950s and 1960s, most golfers did not think about fitness at all. They smoked, they drank, and they believed that a good swing was enough. Player ran, he lifted weights, he ate carefully, and he practised until his hands were sore, and he outlasted almost all of them.

He won nine major championships, and he is one of only a small group of men who have won all four majors in a career, a feat known as the career Grand Slam. He won the Masters three times, the Open Championship three times, the PGA Championship twice, and the United States Open once, in 1965, the win that completed his Grand Slam. He did it as a South African, travelling thousands of miles from home, playing in countries where he was a stranger, and winning in front of crowds who had never seen a man like him. It is one of the great travelling stories in sport.

A Boy From Johannesburg Who Lost His Mother

Gary Player was born on 1 November 1935 in Johannesburg, South Africa. His father, Harry Player, worked as a captain in a gold mine, a hard and dangerous job, and his mother, Muriel, kept the family home. Gary was the youngest of three children, with an older brother, Ian, and an older sister, Wilma. When Gary was only eight years old, his mother died of cancer, and the family was broken in a way that a child never quite forgets. His father had to work long hours in the mine, and Gary was sent to boarding school, where he was small, lonely, and often unhappy.

Boarding school was not kind to him. He was smaller than the other boys, and he was teased, and he sometimes got into fights because he would not accept being pushed around. But he also found golf, and golf gave him something that school did not give him. It gave him a place where size did not matter as much as skill, and where hard work could make up for a lack of strength. He played at a course near Johannesburg, and he fell in love with the game at once, and he began to dream of becoming a professional golfer, even though no South African had ever become a great golfer before.

His father did not have much money, but he supported his son’s dream, and Gary turned professional in 1953, when he was seventeen years old. He was very young, and very small, and very far from home in every sense, but he had a belief in himself that was stronger than his size. He won his first big tournament in South Africa, and then he began to travel, first to Britain, then to America, and then to the rest of the world. He travelled more than any golfer of his time, and he kept travelling for the rest of his career, because he believed that golf was a world game, not an American game or a British game, and that a true champion should win everywhere.

He married Vivienne Verwey in 1957, when he was twenty-one years old, and they were married for more than sixty years, until her death in 2021. They had six children, and Vivienne travelled with him for much of his career, raising the family on the road, in hotels and rented houses, in many different countries. It was not an easy life, but it was a shared life, and Player has often said that he could not have done what he did without her. She was the steady centre of his world, while he travelled the world to play golf.

The First Major and the Road to the Grand Slam

Player won his first major championship in 1959, when he won the Open Championship at Muirfield in Scotland. He was twenty-three years old, and he beat the best players in the world on a links course that demands patience and imagination. It was a victory that announced him to the world, and it showed that a South African could win the oldest championship in golf. He won the Masters in 1961, becoming the first golfer from outside America to win at Augusta, and he won it again in 1974 and in 1978, when he was forty-two years old and many people thought his time had passed.

His greatest year was 1965, when he won the United States Open at Bellerive in St Louis, in a playoff against the Australian golfer Kel Nagle. That win completed his career Grand Slam, which means he had won all four major championships at least once. Only a small number of golfers have ever done that, and Player was the first from outside America to do it. He was twenty-nine years old, and he had already done what most golfers dream of doing in a whole lifetime. But he did not stop. He kept winning majors, and he kept travelling, and he kept proving that his first wins were not luck.

He won the PGA Championship in 1962 and again in 1972, and he won the Open Championship again in 1968 and in 1974. His nine majors were spread across nineteen years, from 1959 to 1978, which is a very long time to stay at the top of a sport. Most golfers have a few good years, and then they fade. Player had good decades. He was still winning majors in his forties, and he was still competing in his fifties and sixties, long after most of his rivals had retired. That longevity was not an accident. It was the result of his fitness, his discipline, and his refusal to believe that age was a reason to stop.

He was also a great traveller, and he won tournaments in many different countries. He is widely reported to have won more than 160 professional tournaments around the world, a number that shows how far he went and how often he won. He played in South Africa, in America, in Britain, in Australia, in Japan, and in many other places, and he won in most of them. He believed that golf should be played everywhere, and he lived that belief, flying thousands of miles each year, often alone, often tired, but always ready to play. It is hard to imagine a modern golfer travelling as much as Player did, and it is hard to imagine anyone doing it with as much energy.

Fitness, Discipline, and the Man in Black

Player’s belief in fitness was famous, and it was unusual for his time. He woke early, he ran, he did sit-ups and press-ups, he lifted weights, and he ate plain, healthy food. He did not smoke, and he did not drink much, and he took care of his body as if it were a machine that had to last for fifty years. Other golfers laughed at him at first. They thought he was strange, and they thought his exercise would not help him hit a golf ball. But as the years went by, and Player kept winning while other golfers grew tired and heavy, the laughter stopped. He had been right, and they had been wrong, and modern golf, with its gyms and its trainers and its careful diets, is built on the ideas that Player was following in the 1960s.

He dressed in black because he liked the look, and because it made him stand out on the course. The black clothes, the black cap, and the serious face gave him the nickname the Black Knight, and he liked the name. It made him seem like a figure from a story, a lone knight travelling the world to fight his battles. But the man in black was also a man who loved to laugh, and who loved to talk to young people about the game. He was a great teacher, and he spent a great deal of time giving lessons and advice, often for free, to young golfers who wanted to learn.

His swing was not the prettiest in golf, but it was effective, and it was built for a small man who needed to hit the ball far. He had a strong grip, a fast turn, and a follow-through that seemed to use every part of his body. He also had a wonderful short game, and he was one of the best bunker players in the history of golf. He could get the ball out of the sand and close to the hole from almost any lie, and that skill saved him many times when his long game was not working. He practised his short game for hours, because he knew that a golfer who can save par from trouble is a golfer who can win tournaments.

He also had a mental strength that was hard to match. He believed in positive thinking, and he spoke about it often, and he tried to live it. He did not dwell on bad shots. He moved on to the next shot, and he believed that the next shot could be a good one. That sounds simple, and it is simple to say, but it is very hard to do when you have just hit a bad shot in front of a crowd. Player did it, again and again, and it is one of the reasons he won so often, in so many different places, against so many different players.

The 1978 Masters and Winning at Forty-Two

One of Player’s finest wins came in 1978, at the Masters, when he was forty-two years old. He began the final round seven shots behind the leader, Hubert Green, and most people thought the tournament was over. Player thought otherwise. He shot a final round of 64, which was one of the best rounds ever played at Augusta, and he made birdies on seven of the last ten holes, and he won the title by one shot. It was a round of great courage and great skill, and it showed that age had not taken away his ability to play under pressure.

That win was his ninth and last major, and it was a fitting way to end his major career, because it showed everything he was: fit, brave, determined, and unwilling to give up when the odds were against him. He was the oldest winner of the Masters at that time, and he remains one of the oldest, and his win is still remembered as one of the great final rounds in the history of the tournament. He did not win by luck. He won by playing better than everyone else on the day that mattered most, and by believing that he could do it when no one else believed it.

After 1978, he did not win another major, but he kept playing, and he kept winning regular tournaments, and he became a great senior golfer, winning senior majors and proving that his fitness and his discipline could keep him competitive into his sixties. He played in the Masters for many years, and he became an honorary starter at Augusta alongside Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and the three men together were a living history of golf. Player was the smallest of the three, and the one who had travelled furthest, and he was proud of that.

He also became a golf course designer, and he designed courses in many countries, including South Africa, America, and China. He believed that a golf course should be a fair test, and that it should fit the land it was built on, and he worked hard to make courses that were beautiful as well as difficult. He also worked for charity, and he founded the Gary Player Invitational, a series of charity golf events that have raised a great deal of money for children’s causes around the world. It was work that mattered to him, and he gave it the same energy he had once given to his own game.

A Life of Travel, Family, and Giving Back

Player’s life was a life of travel. He is said to have flown more than fifteen million miles in his career, a number that is hard to believe and hard to check, but that gives a sense of how far he went. He travelled to play golf, and he travelled to design courses, and he travelled to raise money for charity, and he kept travelling into his eighties, because he loved the world and he loved the game. He was a man who never seemed to be at home for long, but who always seemed to be at home wherever he was, because he carried his family and his beliefs with him.

His family was the centre of his life. He and Vivienne had six children, and many grandchildren, and he spoke about them often, and with great pride. Vivienne died in 2021, after a long illness, and her death was a great sadness for him. They had been married for sixty-four years, and they had shared a life that most people cannot imagine, a life of travel, of golf, of children, and of work. Player has spoken about her with love and with gratitude, and he has said that she was the best thing that ever happened to him. It is a simple thing to say, and it is a true thing, and it tells you a great deal about the man.

He also became a voice for South African golf, and for golf in Africa, and he worked to bring the game to young people who had never played it. He believed that golf could change lives, and that it could teach young people discipline, honesty, and respect, and he tried to live those values himself. He was not a perfect man, and he had his disagreements with other people in golf, as most strong men do, but he was a man who believed in the game, and who gave his life to it, and who left it better than he found it.

In his later years, Player has remained active, playing in charity events, designing courses, and speaking about fitness and about the game. He is in his nineties now, and he still exercises every day, and he still talks about golf with the same energy he had when he was a young man. He is a reminder that a life can be long and full, and that a person can keep working and keep giving, long after the trophies have stopped coming. That is a fine legacy, and it is one that belongs to a small boy from Johannesburg who lost his mother and decided to become a champion anyway.

What the Black Knight Proved to the World

Gary Player proved that a golfer does not have to be big to be great, and does not have to be American to be great, and does not have to stay at home to be great. He proved that fitness matters, that discipline matters, and that a small man with a big will can beat bigger men, again and again, for decades. He proved that golf is a world game, and that a champion should win in many countries, not just in one. And he proved that a life of travel and work can also be a life of family and charity, if you keep your values clear and your heart open.

His nine majors are a record that will last, and his career Grand Slam is a feat that only a few men have ever achieved. But his real legacy is larger than those numbers. It is the idea that a golfer should take care of his body, should respect the game, should travel the world, and should give back to the people who need help. He lived that idea, and he taught it to others, and the game is better for it. The Black Knight may have dressed in black, but his life was a bright one, and it is still shining.

The Big Three and a Rivalry That Made Golf Famous

Player was part of the Big Three, alongside Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, the three golfers who dominated the 1960s and who made golf a global sport. Palmer was the most loved, Nicklaus was the most successful, and Player was the traveller, the small man from South Africa who won everywhere, and who proved that golf did not belong to one country. The three men were very different, and they were rivals, and they were also friends, and they pushed each other to be better, year after year. Player has often said that playing against Palmer and Nicklaus made him a better golfer, because he had to be at his best to beat them, and he had to work harder, because they were both bigger, and stronger, and more famous than he was.

Their rivalry was good for golf, because it gave fans three men to follow, three styles to admire, and three stories to tell. Palmer played with heart, Nicklaus played with his head, and Player played with his will, and together they covered every part of the game. They played in the same tournaments, in America, in Britain, and in South Africa, and they travelled together, and they ate together, and they became friends, even though they wanted to beat each other every time they played. That is how a great rivalry should work. It should make everyone better, and it should make the sport more interesting, and the Big Three did both, for more than a decade.

In later years, the three men stood together at Augusta, as honorary starters at the Masters, hitting the first tee shot on Thursday morning, and the sight of them together, old men now, smiling, and still loving the game, moved everyone who saw it. Player was the smallest of the three, and the one who had travelled furthest, and he was proud of that, and he was proud of his friends, and of what they had done together for golf. The Big Three are a part of history now, and Player is the last of them still living, and he carries their memory with him, and he speaks about them with love, and with respect, and with gratitude for the years they shared.

My Take:

I think Gary Player is the golfer in this group who teaches the most useful lesson, and the lesson is a simple one: work beats talent when talent does not work. Player was not the most talented golfer of his time. Nicklaus was more talented. Palmer was more talented. But Player worked harder than both of them, and he worked longer than both of them, and he kept working when other men stopped. He ran, he lifted weights, he practised, he travelled, and he did it all with a discipline that most people cannot imagine. I think about that when I look at my own life, and I see how often I give up too early, or I tell myself that I am too tired, or too old, or too small. Player was small, and he was tired, and he was old, and he kept going anyway. That is a lesson I need to hear, and I suspect many other people need to hear it too.

I also think about his childhood, and about losing his mother when he was eight years old. That is a terrible thing for a child, and it changes a person in ways that are hard to describe. Some children who lose a parent become bitter, and some become lost, and some become determined to make something of themselves. Player became determined. He did not let his loss make him small. He let it make him strong. I do not want to say that losing a parent is a good thing, because it is not. It is a sad and painful thing. But I do want to say that Player took his sadness and turned it into work, and that work became a great career. That is a brave thing to do, and it is a human thing to do, and I respect it deeply.

What I admire most about him is his fitness, not because I care about exercise for its own sake, but because it shows a kind of respect for yourself. He treated his body as if it mattered, and he took care of it, and he did not waste it. In the 1960s, when other golfers were smoking and drinking and eating whatever they liked, Player was running and lifting weights and eating carefully. People laughed at him. They thought he was strange. But he was right, and they were wrong, and modern golf proves it. Every top golfer today has a trainer, and a gym, and a diet, and they all owe that idea to Gary Player. He was ahead of his time, and being ahead of your time is a lonely place, but it is also a great place, because you get to see the future before anyone else does.

I also think about his travelling, and about how much of his life he spent on aeroplanes and in hotels, far from home. That is a hard life, and it is a lonely life, and I wonder how he did it for so many years. He did it because he believed in golf as a world game, and because he wanted to win everywhere, not just in America. I think that belief is a generous one. It says that the game belongs to everyone, not just to one country, and that a champion should prove himself in many places. Player proved himself in South Africa, in Britain, in America, in Australia, and in many other countries, and that makes his nine majors feel larger than nine. They feel like nine wins in a world championship, not just in a local one.

His win at the Masters in 1978 moves me, because he was forty-two years old, and seven shots behind, and he shot a 64, and he won. That is a story about not giving up, and about believing that a good round is still possible when the odds are against you. I have been in situations in my own life where I was far behind, and I wanted to give up, and I told myself that it was over. Player did not give up. He played the best round of his life, and he won. I want to remember that the next time I feel like giving up. It is not over until it is over, and sometimes the best is still to come.

I also want to be honest about something. Player was not always an easy man, and he had strong opinions, and he sometimes clashed with other people in golf. I think that is part of who he was. A man who works as hard as he did, and who believes as strongly as he did, is not always going to be soft and easy. He will have opinions, and he will say them, and some people will not like them. I do not think that makes him a bad man. I think it makes him a real man, with real beliefs, and I would rather have a real man with strong opinions than a polite man with no opinions at all. But I also think it is worth remembering that strength can sometimes look like stubbornness, and that a person can be right about fitness and still be wrong about other things. That is true of all of us.

His marriage to Vivienne also stays in my mind. They were married for sixty-four years, and they raised six children, and they travelled the world together. That is a long time, and a long journey, and it is a reminder that a great career is not built alone. It is built with a partner, with a family, and with a home that stays steady while you travel. Vivienne was that home for Player, and her death in 2021 must have been a terrible loss. He has spoken about her with love, and I believe him. A man who can love one person for sixty-four years is a man who understands something important about life, and I respect that as much as I respect his nine majors.

I think about his charity work too, and about the Gary Player Invitational, and about the money he has raised for children. That work matters, because it shows that a famous person can use their fame for something good. He did not just win tournaments and keep the money. He gave it away, and he raised more, and he helped children who needed help. That is a good use of a life, and it is a good example for young golfers who are starting out now. Winning is fine, but giving back is better, and Player understood that.

If I had to pick one thing that a young person should learn from Gary Player, it would be this: take care of your body, take care of your mind, and do not let your size decide your future. Player was small, and he was told he was too small, and he proved them wrong. He did it by working harder than anyone else, and by believing in himself, and by never giving up. That is a lesson that works for a golfer, and it works for a student, and it works for a labourer, and it works for anyone who has ever been told they are too small for their dreams. You are not too small. You are only too small if you believe it.

In the end, I think Gary Player’s story is a story about a man who refused to accept limits. He refused to accept the limit of his size. He refused to accept the limit of his country. He refused to accept the limit of his age. And he refused to accept the limit of a game that told him to stay at home and play in one place. He travelled, he worked, he won, and he kept going, and he is still going in his nineties, exercising every day and talking about golf with the same energy. That is a remarkable life, and it is one I admire more the longer I think about it. The Black Knight may have been small, but his life was large, and it is still growing.

I will finish by saying that I hope young golfers read his story and understand that fitness is not a fashion. It is a way of respecting the gift you have been given, and of making it last. Player respected his gift, and he made it last for decades, and he is still using it to help others. That is a fine way to live, and it is a fine way to be remembered. When people think of Gary Player, I hope they think not only of the nine majors, but of the small boy from Johannesburg who lost his mother, who worked harder than anyone, and who became a champion of the world.

I keep coming back to the number of miles he travelled, because it tells me something about his character that no trophy can tell me. He flew millions of miles, to play golf, to design courses, and to raise money for children, and he did it year after year, when he could have stayed at home, and played in America, and earned more money with less travel. He chose to travel, because he believed golf was a world game, and because he wanted to win everywhere, and because he wanted to share the game with people in many countries. That is a generous belief, and it is a belief that cost him time, and comfort, and rest, and he paid that cost gladly, because the game mattered more to him than comfort did. I think about that when I feel tired, and when I want to stay at home, and I wonder whether I am being lazy. Player was not lazy. He travelled, and he worked, and he won, and that is a good example to follow.

There is also something in his story about being small, and about refusing to let size decide your future, that I want to hold on to. He was five feet seven inches tall, and he weighed far less than the men he beat, and people told him he was too small to be a great golfer. He did not believe them. He lifted weights, he ran, he practised, and he became strong, not by being big, but by being fit, and by being determined. I have been told I am too small for things, in my own life, and I know how it feels to hear that, and to wonder whether it is true. Player shows me that it is not true, and that size is not destiny, and that work and belief can beat size, again and again, for decades. That is a hopeful message, and it is one I will carry with me.

I also think about his six children, and about the life he and Vivienne built together, travelling the world, raising a family on the road, in hotels and rented houses, in many different countries. That is not an easy life for children, and it is not an easy life for parents, but they made it work, because they loved each other, and because they shared a purpose. Vivienne was the steady centre, and Gary was the traveller, and together they built a family that is still close today, even after Vivienne’s death. That is a remarkable achievement, and it is one that matters as much as any golf title, because a family is a harder thing to build than a career, and it lasts longer, if you build it well.

Finally, I think about his age, and about the fact that he is still exercising every day in his nineties, and still talking about golf with energy. That is a wonderful thing, and it is a reminder that a life does not have to end when a career ends. You can keep working, keep giving, keep learning, and keep loving the game, long after the trophies have stopped coming. Player is doing that, and he is a living example of a long and full life, and I hope I can live a long and full life too, with the same energy, and the same discipline, and the same love for the things that matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Gary Player born and what was his childhood like?

Gary Player was born on 1 November 1935 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his father worked in a gold mine. His mother died when he was eight years old, and he was sent to boarding school, where he found golf and began to dream of becoming a professional, turning pro in 1953 at the age of seventeen.

How many major championships did Gary Player win?

He won nine major championships: three Masters, three Open Championships, two PGA Championships, and one United States Open. His win at the 1965 United States Open completed the career Grand Slam, making him one of only a few golfers to have won all four majors.

Why is Gary Player called the Black Knight?

He was called the Black Knight because he often dressed in black on the golf course, and because he played with a serious, determined style. The name became famous around the world, and it suited a small, tough golfer who travelled the world to compete.

What did Gary Player believe about fitness in golf?

He believed that fitness, discipline, and a healthy diet were essential for a golfer, and he ran, lifted weights, and practised for hours every day. At a time when most golfers did not exercise, his ideas were unusual, but they helped him stay competitive for decades and they influenced modern golf.

How old was Gary Player when he won his last major?

He was forty-two years old when he won the Masters in 1978, coming from seven shots behind with a final round of 64. It was his ninth major title, and it remains one of the great final rounds ever played at Augusta.

What charity work has Gary Player done?

He founded the Gary Player Invitational, a series of charity golf events that have raised a great deal of money for children’s causes around the world. He has also designed golf courses in many countries and worked to bring golf to young people in South Africa and elsewhere.