Gary Player is a South African retired professional golfer. He won nine major championships on the regular tour and nine on the Champions Tour. At the age of 29, Player won the 1965 U.S. Open and became the only non-American to win all four majors in a career. Player is also a renowned golf course architect with more than 400 design projects on five continents throughout the world.
About Gary Player in brief
Gary Player is a South African retired professional golfer. He won nine major championships on the regular tour and nine on the Champions Tour. At the age of 29, Player won the 1965 U.S. Open and became the only non-American to win all four majors in a career, known as the career Grand Slam. Player is also a renowned golf course architect with more than 400 design projects on five continents throughout the world. He is the brother of Ian Player, a notable South African environmental educator and conservationist who helped to save the white rhino from extinction. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. He has 22 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchild. Gary Player has logged more than 26million km air travel – in 2005 it was estimated that he had flown further than anyone else in history. His charity, The Gary Player Foundation, has a primary objective of promoting underprivileged education around the world and has raised over US$60 million in the past 30 years. He supports Arsenal, Barcelona and Barcelona. His son Marc owns and operates Black Knight International, which exclusively represents Player in all his commercial activities, including all endorsements, licensing, merchandising, golf course design, and real estate development. His wife Vivienne Verwey has six children: Jennifer, Marc, Wayne, Michele, Theresa and Amanda. Player was the second multiple majors winner from South Africa, following Bobby Locke, then was followed by Ernie Els, and Retief Goosen.
Along with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus he is often referred to as one of ‘The Big Three’ golfers of his era – from the late 1950s through the late 1970s – when golf boomed in the United States and around the World. He played an exceptionally busy schedule all over the world, and he has been called the world’s most traveled athlete in history, and has been estimated to have flown more than 25 million km in the last decade. He also holds the record for most victories in the World Match Play Championship, with five wins from 1973 until 1991, finally losing his share of the record when Seve Ballesteros equalled him in 2004, when he won the event for the sixth time. He currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa with his wife, six children, their nanny and a tutor in tow. At age 16, he announced that he would become number one in the world; at age 17, he became a pro golfer; and at age 29, he completed the Grand Slam in 1965 at the aged of twenty-nine. Player competed regularly on the U. S. based PGA Tour from theLate 1950s. He led the PGA. Tour money list in 1961, and went on to accumulate 24 career Tour titles. He held the world rankings from their inception in 1968 until 1981; he was ranked second in 1970, and was second in 1969; he held the top ten rankings from 1972 until 1981.
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This page is based on the article Gary Player published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
