AT THE AGE OF 60, THE GERMAN HAS BECOME THE BEST SENIOR PLAYER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
It’s a stellar pedigree of golfers. Major winners born in 1957, and who turned 60 last year (with varying degrees of turmoil), include Nick Faldo, Mark O’Meara, Wayne Grady, Nick Price, Marta Figueras-Dotti and Nancy Lopez. Severiano Ballesteros would also have reached six decades on Sunday of the 2017 Augusta Masters, just the same day Sergio Garcia finally captured his first Grand Slam title.
And then there is Bernhard Langer. The two-time Masters champion (1985 and 1993) was born on August 27, 1957. Before he turned 50 and joined the senior ranks, he had carved out one of the most impressive international careers of any player of his generation. In the last decade, however, he has not only fattened his resume of sporting triumphs, but has greatly surpassed his pre-2007 achievements.
In May 2017, he won the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in what was his ninth major on the Champions Tour, the U.S. Senior Circuit, surpassing the record of senior majors held by Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus. In the last ten years he also became the first player to win the “super slam” of the five majors of the Champions Tour.
In July he managed to complete the last of the five annual majors by winning, for the third time in his career, the British Senior Championship. He thus silenced the dissenting voice of Gary Player, who had argued that his three British senior titles (1988, 1990 and 1997) should retroactively count towards his total number of majors (otherwise they would be “only” six), although the British was not officially added to the Grand Slam elite until 2003.
However, Langer’s exploits did not end there in 2017.
He won another Champions Tour tournament in September, just turned 60, and the first two of the final three tournaments of the season-ending series. That made him a clear favorite to win last year’s Charles Schwab Cup, but in the end his dreams were dashed by Kevin Sutherland, who was winning it for the first time, and his own tournament curse. He just needed to finish high enough in that tournament to seal the Schwab Cup (equivalent to the PGA Tour’s FedExCup) for the fourth consecutive year and the fifth time in his career.
His tournament struggles continued, however, when he finished tied for 12th place after a mediocre start in the first two rounds. The season finale was one of eight tournaments on last year’s schedule of 26 that Langer had not won during his stellar senior career. He closed with a 64 to finish second in the final standings, the sixth consecutive year he placed first or second in the Schwab Cup.
Despite his setback in the final week, it wasn’t a bad year at all for the 60-year-old German: he finished the season with a Champions Tour-record 3,677.359 in earnings; he won the Tour’s highest money-earning title (Arnold Palmer Trophy) for the sixth consecutive season and ninth in 10 years since turning 50 (the only season he didn’t play a full season was 2011, when he underwent thumb surgery); his seven wins in 2017 were a personal best (including an impressive three in the aforementioned five majors); and his 36 senior career wins make him second only to of Hale Irwin, who has 45 wins. Faced with such a great season, Langer said, “I have to pinch myself. I’m really grateful.
Overcoming the yips… and the broom putt controversy
One of the many admirers (and frustrated opponents) among his peers is Fred Funk, who calls him the German robot. “I’d love to throw Bernhard into the saltwater ocean and see if he rusts,” the American has said.
At the Senior PGA in May, Langer, having trailed Viojay Singh by one stroke down the stretch, had beaten the Fijian, who is five years younger, hits drives 30 yards longer and still competes regularly on the PGA Tour with reasonable success.
“I think what really frustrated him was my putting,” Langer said. “I just putted a lot of putts to hold on and he really didn’t have things go right for me.”
Langer has struggled with yips (shaking hands when kicking) from time to time throughout his career, and faced a new challenge in 2016 when the authorities governing world golf banned the long putter or broom putter he had been using since before playing on the Senior Tour. Langer was allowed to continue using that type of putter, with his top hand two or three centimeters away from his chest, although there is an ongoing controversy over whether this is in the spirit of the new rules, and even whether it is legal.
“I found a way that I now feel reasonably comfortable most of the time, not always,” Langer said. “It’s encouraging for me to see that even under pressure I can make some putts.”
After winning the Regions Tradition for the second consecutive year last year (his 105th victory worldwide, he proudly noted at the tournament press conference), Langer spoke of his eight Grand Slam titles: “Yeah, that’s great. Not many people can say they match Jack Nicklaus in anything. To have won as many majors on this Tour as he has is outstanding, obviously, and a thrill for me. However, I’m still way behind in his number of majors on the PGA Tour.”
Langer was also embroiled in a controversy of a non-golfing nature in January 2017 after Donald Trump said he was his friend and mentioned the German in comments about alleged voting fraud. The U.S. president said Langer, who lives in South Florida, told him about an incident when he was turned away from a polling station, while others who appeared to come from foreign countries were able to stay in line. The reality is that Langer is a German citizen and ineligible to vote in the United States. He then pointed out that the voting story was about a friend of his, and another acquaintance had relayed it to the president. Langer confirmed that Trump had phoned him and apologized for the confusion.
Overcoming adversity with a tenacious spirit
By achieving international fame and fortune on the world’s professional tours, Bernhard Langer brought golf in Germany out of its lethargy. He was a pioneer in his homeland, where there was only one public golf course (the others were all private) and 130,000 golfers. Both figures grew enormously due to Langer’s success.
Langer fell in love with the challenge of golf at an early age. At the age of eight he followed in his brother’s footsteps as a caddy at Augsburg Golf Club, before leaving school at the age of 14 to take up golf as a profession.
In 1976, Langer joined the European Tour but, just as he became a successful player, he developed the yips. Suddenly his hands stopped following the instructions his brain was sending and the putter head seemed to act on its own. However, the German is one of the few players who has discovered a cure, four times, to overcome his problems. “When I was young,” he recounted, “I never thought twice about hitting short putts, but when I switched to fast greens in tournaments my confidence was shattered and I had to start all over again.”
Langer experienced his breakthrough in the United States using the cross-handicap method. Ironically, he overcame his struggles to win the world’s most demanding putting tournament, recording his first major victory at the 1985 US Masters. He rallied from a four-shot deficit in Sunday’s second round and birdied four of the last seven holes to edge Curtis Strange in the end. His victory was a testament to his hard work in creating a reliable stroke under pressure, and his magic touch continued a week later when he won the Sea Pines Heritage Classic on Hilton Head Island. It was 1985, as he himself acknowledged, “my best year”. Not in vain, he won seven tournaments in five continents and became the number one golfer in the world. And also the first historically, since when the Sony World Ranking was inaugurated in April 1986, Langer was the first number one.
Eight years after his first Masters win, Langer returned to win at Augusta with a decisive eagle on the 13th hole and a four-stroke victory over Chip Beck. Langer won 42 times on the European Tour and recorded victories in Australia, Japan and South Africa. The last nine came with a broom putter. Americans probably know him best from the 1985-91 Ryder Cup, when the tournament was transformed into one of the most exciting sporting events. He helped Europe win on U.S. soil for the first time in 1987, but in 1991 it was his narrowly missed two-meter putt on the last hole of the final singles match against Hale Irwin that allowed the U.S. to reclaim the Cup for the first time since 1983.
In the era of long-distance ball, Langer still thrives. His remarkable consistency is perhaps best reflected in his European Tour records for consecutive cuts made (68) and consecutive years with a victory (17, shared with Seve Ballesteros). Langer was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame by international ballot in 2001, but chose to defer his induction until 2002. “I have tried to achieve a level of consistency throughout my career and to have it culminate in this election (the first German inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame) means a lot to me,” Langer said at the time. As he prepares for his first full season as a 60-year-old player, one more question remains about his legacy. More than two percent of the tournaments played on the Champions Tour have been won by golfers 60 and older. “There are always exceptions,” he said on the eve of his 60th birthday last year, “and I hope I’m one of those exceptions.” As it turns out, he is, and few would bet against him in 2018…and in years to come.
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