The Black Knight and the best golfer of the present century have something very big in common, besides their passion for golf: a good handful of majors, ten for her and nine for him.
They share the fourth position in the ranking of players with the most majors won in their careers with two other stars: Ben Hogan and Babe Zaharias, also with nine and ten, respectively. Among the most famous phrases of the South African player stands out the one that says: “The more I practice, the luckier I get”. Gary Player, born in Johannesburg on November 1, 1935 (83 years old), has lived a successful life, at least on the sporting level. Nicknamed “The Black Knight” because of his golfing attire in which that color was predominant, won a total of 163 international tournaments worldwide in his long professional career, including nine majors (three Masters, three British Opens, two PGA Championships and one US Open).
Player became the first non-European and non-American golfer to achieve world stardom. The Black Knight, the son of a miner, turned professional in 1953 at the age of 18 and almost immediately dominated South African golf. When he traveled to England in 1955 it was said that he did not have enough wood to make it in the world of golf and that he would be better off looking for another profession. But the doomsayers were wrong, and when he returned to Great Britain the following year, Player won the Dunlop Masters at Sunningdale. That same year he won his first South African Open.
In 1957 he joined the PGA Tour, the United States Tour. His first Grand Slam triumph would come a couple of years later and it was on European soil, as it was the British Open. Player broke many records throughout his long and successful career as a professional golfer. For example, he became the first non-American player to win the Masters at Augusta, which occurred in 1961, a season he crowned as number one in earnings on the North American Tour. The following year he won another major, the PGA Championship, and Player completed the Grand Slam series by winning the US Open in 1965. At the time, he was only the third golfer in history to win all four Grand Slam tournaments.
His last victory in a major, his ninth, came in 1978 at Augusta National thanks to a superb final round of 64, which the South African had started seven strokes ahead of the tournament leader. His nine victories in the majors are the third best record in the history of the Grand Slam. The Black Knight was the only player to win the British Open in three different decades during the 20th century.
This Masters was his ninth Grand Slam triumph. Player’s collection of victories was extraordinary, as he collected 163 international victories, 24 of which were on the North American Tour. Player won at least one tournament per season for no less than 27 consecutive years. In his maturity, at the age of 50, he joined the U.S. Senior Tour, where he won a total of 19 tournaments.
Player was, of course, a prophet in his own land and won the South African Open championship thirteen times. He also won the Australian Open seven times and the World Match Play Championship five times.
Among the most famous phrases attributed to him, two stand out: “The more you practice, the luckier you get” and “I have studied golf for almost 50 years and I know a lot about nothing”.
Player has received countless awards, prizes and distinctions throughout his life, including his inclusion, in 1974, in the World Golf Hall of Fame or the award for the South African Sportsman of the Century.
Apart from his sporting life, Player distinguished himself for his efforts to improve the problems of racial discrimination in his native country, since he lived most of his life during the apartheid era in South Africa. The golfer founded the Player Foundation to promote the education of underprivileged South African children, and this entity built a school in Johannesburg that educates more than half a thousand students.
When the high competition began to give him more breathing space, Player dedicated himself to the design of golf courses, a facet that he has been very good at, according to the more than 200 that he has signed around the world.
One of his hobbies outside of golf is raising racehorses.
His relationship with golf and life in general mirrors that of Ben Hogan in that he practiced and prepared almost obsessively. He followed a very intense exercise regimen, and even today he still prepares himself physically as if he were several decades younger.
ANNIKA SORENSTAM, AN EXCEPTIONAL TALENT
Annika Sorenstam is the golfer with the best record of the last quarter of the 20th century. In 2008, at the age of 38, she decided to retire and put an end to an illustrious career of three lustrums in the U.S. Women’s Tour (LPGA Tour), in which she had won 72 tournaments, including 10 majors, and had pocketed 22 million dollars in prize money alone, in addition to having made history by playing against her peers in the men’s circuit.
“I’ve really enjoyed playing golf,” Sorenstam said at the last tournament of her glittering sporting career. “It’s been great years and I’ve had the opportunity to have a long career and share my memories with my fans,” the Swedish golfer said at the time.
Her fifteen seasons on the U.S. Women’s Tour (LPGA Tour) had resulted in one of the most spectacular records in women’s golf: 10 majors and another 62 victories. Only two players have surpassed her in number of victories in the history of this sport: Kathy Whitworth, with 88, and Mikey Wright, with 82. As for the Grand Slam, only three won more majors: Wright (13), Patty Berg (15) and Louise Suggs (11), and one recorded the same number of major victories (10) as Annika: Babe Zaharias.
Sorenstam retired from golf to pursue her business and have a family, and the following year she married (her second marriage) to Mike McGee, with whom she has had two children.
Sorenstam reigned supreme in women’s golf like few others, especially during a five-year period in which she won 43 titles and was in the top three nearly 70 percent of the time.
Beyond her accomplishments, including being the only woman with a round of 59, 10 major titles and one of only six women to have completed the Grand Slam, Sorenstam made a name for herself by measuring her strength against the men on the course. The Swede became only the second woman to play in a men’s tournament. The first was Babe Zaharias in 1945. Annika’s was at the Colonial in 2003. She didn’t make the cut, but received praise for the way she handled herself in the midst of so much attention.
She was named LPGA Tour Player of the Year in eight seasons, including five in a row. Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa ended that streak in 2006.
With 72 victories, Sorenstam, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, appears third, as mentioned above, on the list of all-time winners, behind Kathy Whitworth (88) and Mickey Wright (82). Whitworth, who was born in 1939 in a Texas town, became in 1981 the first golfer to accumulate one million euros in earnings on the LPGA Tour. Her last win came in 1981, and her 88 victories (ten in her best season) include six majors. Wright, on the other hand, was born in San Diego, California, in 1935, and won thirteen majors (she was only surpassed in Grand Slam victories by her compatriot Paty Berg, who had fifteen). In her best season, she won thirteen tournaments, and in another she won three majors. She retired at the age of 34 due to a knee injury.
Annika, who has a sister who is also a professional golfer, leads the list of earnings as a professional, with more than $22 million over the course of her career, more than $2 million ahead of second in the rankings, 43-year-old Australian Karrie Webb.
Having excelled in skiing and also played soccer, Annika began hitting her first golf shots at the age of 12 and, after an impressive amateur stage, she turned professional at the age of 21 in 1992. Having missed the LPGA Tour card by one stroke, she began her professional career by joining the Ladies European Tour (LET), where at the end of her first season, in which she finished runner-up four times, she was voted Rookie of the Year.
Sorenstam’s first victory as a professional came in 1994 at the Australian Open on the Australian Women’s Tour. In the United States she won the LPGA Tour Rookie of the Year title in a season in which she scored three top-10 finishes, including a second place in the Women’s British Open. The following season, 1995, was her breakthrough season. She won her first North American title, the US Women’s Open, finished number one on the money list and became the first non-US player to win the Vare Trophy for best player of the season. She became only the second golfer to be named Player of the Year and win the Vare Trophy the year after being named Rookie of the Year. She also won the Australian Masters and two more on the European Tour, and became the first to finish the season as the number one earner on both the LPGA Tour and LET.
Outside of competition, she became a successful entrepreneur in several facets, all of them under the brand that bears her name, Annika, and whose motto is “Share My Passion.” Aside from being a course designer and owning a golf academy in Florida, the former world number one has golf apparel, wine and perfume businesses.
Leave a Reply