Happy Birthday, Gary!

Gary Player turns 75 today. Earlier this year, I predicted:

Gary Player, the Jack LaLanne Perry Como of professional golf, will celebrate his 75th birthday on November 1 with a 40th anniversary release of his album, "Gary Player Sings."

As far as I know, this is not going to happen. In the absence of a Gary Player serenade, however, here's a link to an interview at golf.com, which includes this enlightening snippet about Martin Kaymer:

"I like his manner, and the way he shaves every day."

Yes, Gary Player is unique, a man with his own way of thinking and of doing things. After I made the above prediction, I posted this reflection on "The Legend that is Gary Player." An excerpt:

I find Player absolutely fascinating. He has an inspiring backstory, having grown up dirt poor in South Africa, where his father was a miner. His mother died when he was 8. He's gotten where he is today by working harder than anybody in the history of the game (even Hogan, by my estimation), both on and off the course. The winner of nine (yes, nine!) major championships, he was an amazing player, even as he labored in the shadow of Palmer and Nicklaus. Because of the "golden era" in which he played, I think he sometimes doesn't get enough credit today for what he accomplished on the course. Who knows how many majors he would have won had he peaked in, say, the 1980s?

That's two more majors than Arnie! Yet, who comes more readily to mind as one of the greatest players of all time? Probably Palmer over Player – a common perception that's really not supported by their respective records.
     So happy birthday, Gary! May your stature one day grow as large in the minds of fans as it already is in your own!

Open Championship Tap-Ins

A few stray shots on the recently concluded 2010 Open Championship at St. Andrews ...

Tiger's Putter. I found the whole Tiger Woods putter drama fairly interesting. On one hand, it probably wasn't that big a deal, because his new Nike Method putter was very similar to his old Scotty Cameron Titleist model – which he'd use to win 13 of his 14 majors. The new one no doubt had been set up to feel as much like the old one as possible; the difference being the "hotter" face on the Nike to get the ball moving a little quicker on the slow St. Andrews greens. But to me the bigger surprise was not the switch but the switch back on Sunday. It made me wonder two things: 1) Had Nike been pressuring Tiger at all to switch to a Nike putter? As I understand it, Tiger's club contract allows him some flexibility with club choices. But it's not hard to imagine something like this coming from Nike, either stated of implied: "Tiger, we stuck with you through all of this, now it's your turn to do something for us." 2) Conversely, how did Nike feel about him abandoning it after three rounds? After all the ballyhoo, they could not have been too happy.

     More significantly, you have to wonder if Tiger's putting switcheroo is a sign of desperation. Could Tiger's putting stroke be starting to abandon him – for good? It's astonishing how many all-time great golfers had their putting strokes go south at some point – or at least not be what they once were. Palmer, Hogan, Watson, and Snead come immediately to mind. Lower on the list are guys like Singh and Langer, who try all kinds of different methods to regain their putting touch. It's been easy to think of Tiger as being immune to such "human" frailties. But, as Joe Posnanski (one of the most consistently thoughtful writers on all things Tiger) writes, Tiger may be closer to descending back to earth than a lot of people are willing to admit.

UPDATE: A little more on Tiger's putter saga from David Dusek at golf.com here (in which the author, among other things, briefly addresses the "conspiracy theory" posed above about Nike's role in the switch. In short: He doesn't buy it).

Rory's Roller-coaster. What to make of Rory McIlroy? For one, I just love the fact that he still has never shot in the 70s at the Old Course – it's just that one of those non-70s rounds is now an inglorious 80. His 63 on Thursday was very impressive. Yes, it was shot in extremely benign conditions, but you still have to hit the shots and make the putts. And he bested the field by two strokes with his major championship record-tying score. As impressive as he was on Thursday, he looked just as lost in the high winds on Friday. But he showed a lot by bouncing back with 69-68 on the weekend to finish tied for third. Makes you wonder if anyone has ever finished so high in a major with an 80 on the card.

     And speaking of benign conditions ...

St. Andrews without Wind. It really was amazing how easy the course looked on Thursday morning. It was tempting to think that maybe St. Andrews has been "outgrown" by the caliber of today's players and the level of today's technology. I don't think that's the case. It seems to me that it's really just a matter of the elements being an essential part of the Old Course experience. It played tough enough the rest of the week. And if they "tricked up" the course any more to guard against the windless onslaught, the course could get almost unplayable when the weather changes – which it can do at a moment's notice. It seems unfair that the guys who played Thursday morning had so much better scoring conditions than the afternoon group, but that really is just part of the game – especially in links golf. The ones who accept that – even embrace it – are the ones who will succeed (see: Watson, Tom). The ones who don't ...

Phil's Demeanor. I have to say I was disappointed in Phil Mickelson's performance. Not with his ball-striking so much as his attitude. He felt cheat by having to play in the bad afternoon weather on Thursday, but rather than shrug it off, do his best to look at it as an extra challenge instead of a tragedy, he seemed to pout his way around the golf course. He looked defeated before his was halfway through his first round. Again, see: Watson, Tom. Story goes (retelling from memory) that Watson's longtime caddie Bruce Edwards, who went to work for Greg Norman for a couple years later in his career, explained the difference between his two bosses this way: He said that if Norman would hit a perfect drive only to subsequently find his ball in divot, he would get upset and curse his luck. Watson, on the other hand, would say something like, "Watch what I can do with this shot!" It takes only looking at Norman's and Watson's respective records in majors to understand which approach is more effective. (Are you reading this, Phil?) Speaking of attitude ...

Louie Ooie. I'm not sure which was more impressive, Louis Oosthuizen's ball-striking (especially his driving) or his calm on-course demeanor. Everybody, myself included, seemed convinced that he was a "rabbit," one of those no-name early leaders who sets a torrid pace in the early going but then inevitably fades. But he surprised us all with an historic display of precision ball-striking and all-around good play. He won by SEVEN! That's huge. That's Tiger big. His win was no fluke (even though he did benefit from the benign conditions on Thursday morning). Only time will tell where he goes from here, but he's easy to like and easy to root for. And I love the little red dot that he has on his glove to think about when he's trying not to think about anything. You can bet you'll be seeing a few more red dots around the golf world in the near future.

Gary Player and the Claret Jug. Finally, I got a big kick out of a story told near the end of the ESPN telecast – I think by Mike Tirico – about the engraving of names on the legendary trophy. Back in the day, it was once the responsibility of the winner to have his own name engraved on the trophy (such as is the case with the legendary WLC traveling trophy). However, when Gary Player won it (likely either in 1974 or 1968, Tirico did not specify) he had his name engraved LARGER than the other names! Ever since, the R&A has taken the responsibility of engraving the names on the Claret jug. This story strikes me as one that could be apocryphal, but I want to believe it because it's so consistent with what I've written about Player previously: that even though by all accounts he's a warm, charming, gracious, and generous individual, his ego sometimes gets the better of him!

Update: Gary Player

Fellow blogger Phil Capelle (Capelle on Golf) weighed in with an insightful comment on my previous post about Gary Player, whom he calls "one of the most underrated golfers of all time." He wrote in part:

He won nine [majors], as you said, but Player swears that he won 10 because he felt he was robbed of the 1969 PGA, which he lost by one shot due to hecklers in the crowd.

Player was the target of local protesters (remember, it was 1969!) who came to the Dayton, Ohio, tournament to object to, among other things, the hated apartheid government of Player's native South Africa. As legendary scribe Dan Jenkins recounted in his Sports Illustrated write-up:

What happened was, Gary Player got a rolled-up program thrown at him, a cup of ice tossed at him and a golf ball hurled out onto the green by a girl while he lined up a putt. Jack Nicklaus, meanwhile, had a big guy come out of the crowd and onto a green and start toward his ball, which in turn made Jack draw back the putter as if he were offering a new tip—always hold the club high when swinging at a demonstrator. And everybody went crazy for a moment or two with shouts of "Club 'em, kill the pigs," meaning the hecklers. It was not what anyone particularly wanted to have happen in a championship, of course, since Player and Nicklaus were at the time trying very hard to catch Raymond Floyd [the eventual champion].

Did this cost Player the championship? It's impossible to say for sure, of course. I'm of the mind that it's always very difficult to say that one thing would or would not have changed the outcome of a sporting event, because you just don't know what else might change as a result. Though I have no doubt Player feels it did. And it's clear from Jenkins's story that both players were rattled by the events:

The Legend that is Gary Player

In my first official post on Whiffling Straits, in the context of making some 2010 predictions, I pointed readers to Gary Player's website; specifically, the page dedicated to his 1970 musical release, "Gary Player Sings." This was a bit of a cop-out. The item I originally wrote for him went something like this:

Gary Player, the Jack LaLanne of professional golf, will celebrate his 75th birthday on November 1 by pulling a dump truck full of self-esteem across the Nelson Mandela Bridge – with his teeth.

The link on "self-esteem" goes to the biography page on his official website, which begins: "Gary Player is a legend in his own time." The rest of the site is sprinkled liberally with similar bombast about his status as a near-mythical figure. But I changed the entry because I didn't want to misrepresent how I feel about the man who claims to have hit more golf balls than anyone in history.
     I find Player absolutely fascinating. He has an inspiring backstory, having grown up dirt poor in South Africa, where his father was a miner. His mother died when he was 8. He's gotten where he is today by working harder than anybody in the history of the game (even Hogan, by my estimation), both on and off the course. The winner of nine (yes, nine!) major championships, he was an amazing player, even as he labored in the shadow of Palmer and Nicklaus. Because of the "golden era" in which he played, I think he sometimes doesn't get enough credit today for what he accomplished on the course. Who knows how many majors he would have won had he peaked in, say, the 1980s?

Player also seems to be a fine man, well-respected in the game, and extremely respectful of the game in return. In 2006 he received the PGA Tour's Payne Stewart Award. After he played his final Masters in 2009, it was very moving to see other South African golfers waiting to pay their respects as he came off the 18th green for the last time. He greeted each one warmly and sincerely, as though each small, private encounter meant the world to him -- as no doubt it did. (Photo: Michael O'Brien, Golf Magazine/Golf.com)
     He's relentlessly optimistic, a whirlwind of positive energy that never seems to wane. I love a story Dr. Bob Rotella tells about him in his book, "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect," to illustrate the value of positive thinking. As recounted by a fellow competitor he was rooming with at the time, the story goes that Player would return to the room one week just raving about how much he loves putting on fast greens. Then, the very next week, he would come home raving about how much he loves putting on that week's relatively slow greens. The point was, Player didn't really love both fast and slow greens, but convincing himself that he did helped his confidence tremendously. It's an attitude worth emulating, in many aspects of life.