Part 86
In 1982, on a bus trip between Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles (three days and three nights), I got talking to one of the drivers, an African American. We discussed sport, mostly rugby versus American football. Then he said, “Guess who I think is the greatest athlete in the world today?” Bearing in mind that in America all sports are played by athletes, not just in athletics as in the UK and elsewhere, it was a tough question. I asked him who it was. His answer stunned me, “Gary Player.”
Not that I disagreed with him, but it was weird to have an African American bus driver make this statement, at the height of the Apartheid years, in praise of a South African. It was also in my mind a wonderful example of a person who clearly did not think in racial terms. He, like myself, was “color blind.” Gary was also well known for being the fittest player on the golf tour.
Anyway, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, Gary is the brother of Dr. Ian Player, the subject of my last blog. Gary Player, for those who do not follow golf, is one of greatest golfers in the history of the sport. He, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus towered above all other competitors in the 1960s and ’70s.
In 1984, when Gary was in his forty-ninth year, I was approached to write and co-direct a documentary on him. The sad thing about this project was that it was released in 1985 and Gary, in his fiftieth year, had just entered the ranks of the Senior Golf Tournaments. It was felt by distributors that we had missed the boat and had we filmed Gary at the height of his powers on the regular circuit (where he won nine major tournaments and about 150 tournaments altogether), it would have been a great success. I don’t think it was ever screened, but it was a wonderful experience and I got to know a truly remarkable man. I had only met his brother Ian a few times while I was writing the screenplay for “Rogue Lion,” but I had regular periods of a couple of weeks at a time when we recorded Gary’s life, so I got to know Gary quite well.
Gary’s story, as with his brother Ian’s, started when he was at school. His father, Harry Player, worked on the gold mines all his life. Their small house in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosettenville was right on the edge of a park. Gary was a natural sportsman. He excelled in many of the school sports, especially rugby and cricket. One day, their father gave Gary and Ian some golf clubs. He told them to go into the park and try hitting some balls around to see how they liked the game. Ian was quite good at it, but Gary instantly fell in love with golf. It suited his independent nature and offered a huge challenge. He could probably have made his mark in a number of sports after leaving school, but he chose golf.
After turning pro and winning a number of tournaments in South Africa, which at the time did not provide much prize money, he found that he was eligible to play in the US Open. He somehow scraped together the money to buy a one-way ticket to the US and some basic accommodation, but, as he said to a friend before he left, “I’d better come in the top three, otherwise I won’t have the money to fly back home.”
He not only came in the top three but won the US Open. This young South African from nowhere stunned a prestigious field and earned his ticket home.
At one point it was estimated that Gary had flown over 16 million miles in pursuit of one of the greatest golfing reputations in the world.
Gary’s agent was approached by Christopher Rowley (a top commercials and documentary director in South Africa) with the idea of making the story of Gary’s life as a documentary. The agent agreed and Christopher, who normally did not make a documentary unless he had a guaranteed sale beforehand, took a chance on this one. He believed that Gary’s name was so big internationally that he could not fail to interest some of the TV channels in the US and elsewhere.
I had written, produced and sometimes directed, if Chris were unavailable due to commitments to high-paid TV commercials, some seven or eight documentaries – including six half-hour episodes of a series called “Night Owls,” which I ended up writing, directing and producing.
We met Gary at his palatial home outside Johannesburg, which housed some of his bloodstock (horses of thoroughbred breeding) that he had been breeding for some years. Horses were his second great interest after golf. He was a wonderfully friendly and cheerful fellow, with a simple but effective philosophy on life and his career. One of his most famous quotes were “The harder I train, the luckier I get!”
Having established a sequence for the script, we next met Gary outside the former family home in Rosettenville. The Player family had left years previously, but it was still well maintained. This and adjacent suburbs were now mostly inhabited by the large Portuguese community. Many were third- or fourth-generation Portuguese but there were an increasing number who had fled from the communist Frelimo regime in neighboring Mozambique as well as Angola in the midst of a civil war. Both countries were former Portuguese colonies. In the same way as the US was a haven for refugees from troubled countries in the region, South Africa was the promised land for refugees of all colors despite the Apartheid rule at that time.
The suburb had acquired a more colorful atmosphere and tone, with a number of fine Portuguese restaurants and brightly painted homes. Gary had not been there for some years and had mixed feelings about his childhood memories. We filmed him in the nearby park where he had first hit a golf ball along with older brother Ian.
We then travelled to the world-famous casino and holiday resort of Sun City, about sixty miles from Johannesburg. By then, Gary had also started designing golf courses. In 1981, the Gary Player Country Club on the Sun City estate became the venue for the annual Million Dollar Golf Tournament. The winner’s prize of a million dollars was for some years the biggest golfing prize in the world. An elite field of twelve attracted many of the world’s top players; even Tiger Woods in his prime – who lost to Zimbabwean Nick Price by one stroke.
Gary took us onto the course and gave a fascinating exhibition of golf on camera. He explained that every golfer, and for that matter any sports person, plays their game at their own rhythm. He imitated the swings of a number of other world-class golfers and showed how some had a slow measured swing, others had a much faster swing, and so on. He added that there was no ideal rhythm. It was simply whichever best suits each individual player.
Gary then shot a few holes and showed why, even at the age of 49, he was still right up there with the best.
We filmed Gary at his magnificent estate in Honeydew, an outlying suburb of Johannesburg, featuring his wife and children. Tragically, Vivienne, his childhood sweetheart and wife for 64 years, died a few weeks ago on August 18th, 2021. My condolences to Gary. They were an inseparable couple. Well, that is when he wasn’t zooming to all corners of the globe playing golf or designing courses!
We then travelled down to Gary’s fairly new stud farm in the Northern Cape, outside of the picturesque town of Colesburg. Gary told us that he had been struck by lightning a couple of days before we arrived. It was only an indirect strike and did no real harm. It was the second time that he had been struck by lightning and survived.
We asked Gary if he would perhaps let us film him riding one of his racehorses. At first, he said no. He had a tournament coming up in the US and the last thing he would want to do is fall off a horse and maybe injure himself. Being a man who has always accepted challenges, he finally agreed and we filmed him riding one of his best racehorses – without falling off!
We then met him again at the coastal town of Plettenberg Bay. Gary was regarded as the best bunker player in the world because of his training on beach sand. We filmed him practicing bunker shots, then running across the sand for fitness. We chose a visually stunning shot of cliffs and sand, but it proved to be a difficult shot. He ran across the sand about ten times before we got it right.
When we wrapped it up for the day, he shook his head. “That was exhausting. I’m leaving tomorrow for the States to play in my last major tournament before I join the senior’s golf circuit. You’ve either exhausted me and I’ll be hopeless…or who knows, I may win it.”
He won it!
Two brothers, Ian and Gary, with very different ambitions, but two great men. Peter Warren has shared that same tenacity of purpose and refusal to give up in the face of great odds. Ian and Gary Player’s places in history are assured – but look out for Peter Warren’s name appearing as the creator of ExoTech computing systems, as he too takes his rightful place in history.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.