The Power of Positive Putting

With a new stroke and his old zeal, Player is cleaning up

Even in this year of years, he still has one regret. He should have altered his putting stroke long ago. "Well, actually," he says, "it wasn't really a stroke before. It was more like this." And Gary Player stabs haltingly at an imagined ball. Now he putts with a smooth, almost gentle stroke, as counseled by his wife Vivienne, and he marvels at what might have been. "If I had changed it 20 years ago, I'm sure I could have won 200 tournaments by now."

The remark is no idle comment -Player does not talk casually about his abilities -nor is he boasting. He is simply expressing the rock-solid self-confidence that has sustained him through 22 remarkable years on the tour and brought him 114 victories. This season may turn out to be the best of all. He is, to begin with, 42 years old, an age when most great golfers are faltering, if they have not already collapsed. At 42, Arnold Palmer, for example, won no tournaments on the circuit and fell from third to 25th in earnings. But despite his years, Player this season came from seven strokes back to win the Masters. The next Sunday, he made up seven strokes to win the Tournament of Champions. The Sunday after that, he started five strokes behind the leader in the Houston Open and still won. In the past 15 years, three men have won three tournaments in a row, but none has managed to include in his string a major event like the Masters.

So far this year, Player has earned more than $130,000 on the U.S. tour, raised his lifetime earnings to nearly $1.5 million and reaffirmed his long-held conviction, expressed frankly to anyone who asked, that he was the greatest golfer in the world. True, Jack Nicklaus has won more of the sport's major prizes than Player, 14 to 9, but the South African looks at the situation differently. He argues, correctly, that no other competitor has done so well in so many big tournaments around the world, coping with jet lag, strange surroundings and quirky greens. Player has won seven Australian Opens, three British Opens, ten South African Opens. "To be the world's best," he says, "you must win around the world." Player has won everywhere.

And he has won the hard way, having to compensate for the fact that he stands only 5 ft. 7 in., weighs just 148 Ibs., and must swing out of his shoes to hit the ball with power. "If only I were as big as Jack," he used to lament. "If only I were as strong as Arnold. Think, just think, how good I would be." Again, no boasting, not the way he sees it -plain fact, nothing more. To win, he has to train harder than the game's other superstars, a handicap he cheerfully accepts. Long before jogging became a national craze, Player would finish a round at the Masters in Augusta, change into shorts and run miles through the soft Georgia dusk. Today he still runs and lifts weights. "I am very fit," says Player. "When you get to be 40, your swing gets shorter. You have to compensate, and you must be fit." Player's ability to concentrate is legendary. "I do mental exercises," he says. "They're quite complicated. I can't describe them." A health-food devotee, he eats fish, chicken, bananas, raisins and roughage. Beef, salt and sugar are shunned. "When I see white bread," he says, "I see poison."

It works. For Player, it has always seemed to work, always seemed that things were getting better -were bound to get better. His sincerity is overpowering; his eternal confidence mind boggling or a bore, depending on one's viewpoint. "I tell you, I have never played the game as well as I am playing it today. I've never hit the ball so well. Never!" And he says it every day, rain or shine, birdie or bogey.

Nor does he leave it at that. He is always proselytizing, trying to get others to share his convictions, to understand fitness, to appreciate the joys of family life. Player is the most dedicated of family men. This year his wife and three of their six children are on the tour with him. At 16, his son Wayne can already outdrive his father and has much the same zeal. The thought of two dedicated Players on the circuit is almost too much for some pros to bear.

In a career filled with good memories, one of the bad moments occurred in 1969 during the Professional Golf Association's Championship in Dayton. A fan threw a drink into Player's face. "He called me a racist," Gary said at the time.

Player's record is quite to the contrary, although he is fiercely devoted to South Africa and plays golf with Prime Minister John Vorster, the defender of apartheid (who has a handicap of 13). In his own way, working without fanfare, Player has chipped away at the barriers of segregation. He has helped put up the money that allowed Vincent Tshabalala, a black pro, to play overseas. In 1971, Player invited Lee Elder, the best American black pro, to play in his country. When objections about Elder were raised by authorities in South Africa, Player insisted that if his guest did not appear, he would not either. Elder played. Still, Player does not like to talk about his country's racial problems. He says only, "We've come a long way."

Son of a gold miner, Player owns an estate outside Johannesburg and a 4,000-acre farm in the north, where he raises thoroughbred race horses. Says Player: "My stallion Welcomed has sired a colt named Welcome Boy that won our triple crown this year. I think he's the best three-year-old in the world!"

The remark captures the essence of the man -enthusiasm, an admiration for excellence, and the complete confidence that he is right, that the horse really is the best in the world. At his age, Player still hopes to become the first golfer in history to win the modern Grand Slam -the Masters, the P.G.A. and the British and U.S. Opens -in the same year. He is a quarter of the way there. Says he: "Don't say I'm an eternal optimist. I'm a positive thinker." And, of course, he will be using his new technique on the greens, ignoring the fact that smooth putting strokes are like fickle women -here today, gone tomorrow -and the older a man gets, the quicker they go. Gary Player would not let an unpositive thought like that enter his mind. qed

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