Redefining the fitness of a Player

AUGUSTA, Ga.

There are so many bulging biceps in professional golf these days that K.J. Choi, the former weightlifter, barely stands out. But that certainly wasn’t the case in 1957, when Gary Player teed it up in the first of his record 51 Masters tournaments. Elbow-bending in the clubhouse bar? Absolutely. Iron-pumping in the fitness trailer? Uhhhhh … no. (For one thing, there wasn’t a fitness trailer.)

“If we wanted to work out, we had to go to the ’Y’ and wait 30 minutes for our turn,” Player said yesterday after a nostalgic practice round with old friend/foe Jack Nicklaus. “Then you’d have to find people to help you put weights on [the barbell]. Now [the PGA Tour has] a physiotherapist, people to stretch you — it’s a traveling hospital.

“In my era, nobody was doing weights. Just me and Frank Stranahan. When I won the Masters for the first time [in 1961], a famous golf architect said I’d never last past 35 [because he was such a fitness fanatic].”

And here’s Player, still flat-bellied at 72, daring to compete at ever-lengthening Augusta National, a course he considers “without question the most difficult to walk I’ve ever played. You’ve got sidehills, uphills, downhills. But I’m on the treadmill a lot. I can walk it for four days and still feel great.”

Most remember Player for his nine major championships — the last of which came at Augusta 30 years ago (thanks to a 64 final-round-for-the-ages). But his contribution to the game far exceeds that. He was also, along with Stranahan, a weight-training pioneer, decades ahead of his time. How else was a 5-foot-7 South African supposed to keep up with the Golden Bear and other ferocious beasts?

Actually, “Muscles” Stranahan, who claimed to be able to dead-lift 500 pounds, began hoisting barbells a number of years before Player did. In 1950, when he won his second British Amateur, Stranahan presciently predicted, “I think someday every athlete in sports — contact sports especially — will have to take up weightlifting to put him in top condition.”

But “Muscles” spent most of his career as an amateur. It was Gary who had the greater impact on the Tour with his bench presses and fingertip pushups and endless sit-ups — 1,200 a day in his prime, he says proudly, “with an 80-pound weight on my chest.”

His fellow pros were more amused than intrigued by his devotion to exercise. (Conventional wisdom, after all, said weightlifting was detrimental to athletics, made you “muscle bound.”) They also got a kick out of his oh-so-healthy diet. Raisins were his favorite energy food for a while — until his endorsement deal with a raisin company ran out. Then he switched to bananas … and told people: “Raisins are bad for your teeth.”

One time, he was waiting to tee off when playing partner Bob Goalby came over and asked for a box of raisins. After Gary obliged, Goalby gobbled some down, then handed his three-wood back to his caddie.

“Give me an iron,” he said. “I feel stronger already.”

Player had the last laugh, of course. In fact, he’s had many last laughs — a Masters title at 42, a Senior British Open championship at 61 and now this, returning to Augusta one last time (perhaps) at 72.

“Fifty-one years [at the Masters],” he said. “That’s interesting. It means I’ve lived here for a year. If my wife and I had only bought a house when I first came here. … We could have rented it out [the rest of the time] and saved all that money.”

Player still looks like he has zero percent body fat — maybe even negative body fat. His weight, he says, is 144 pounds, 22 less than when he won the U.S. Open in ’65. (He also tied for second in the Masters that year and, even more noteworthy, showed off his weightlifting prowess on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”)

Life is good for Gary Player. He can still shoot his age, occasionally under, and continues to be a world-class globetrotter.

“I’ve traveled more miles than any human being that’s ever lived,” he said.

(We’ll have to check with NASA on that, but he could well be in the top three or four — along with Neil Armstrong and a few others.)

I asked Player whether he felt like “the Jack Palance of golfers.”

“Jack LaLanne,” he replied. “What did Jack Palance do, one one-armed push-up [on the Academy Awards telecast]?”

He’s right about that. What’s one one-armed push-up compared to 1,200 sit-ups?

With an 80-pound weight on your chest.

And a box of raisins in your pocket.