Gary Player Profile & Career Highlights

Gary Player is one of the most decorated golfers of all time. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1935, he turned professional at the age of 18 in 1953 and throughout his long, successful playing career, he won nine major championships, 24 PGA Tour tournaments, and 159 events.

Gary Player’s record-setting professional golf career began when he turned professional in 1953, when he was 18 years old. By age 29, Player became the youngest – and just the third ever – player to win the career grand slam, when he completed the accomplishment by winning the 1965 U.S. Open. Player won the 1959 Open Championship, 1961 Masters, and 1962 PGA Championship prior to completing the slam with his first and only U.S. Open win.

Before his career was over, Player added five more majors to his resume, and his nine total majors tie him for the fourth-most all-time, behind just Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Walter Hagan.

In all, Player has won three Masters (1961, ‘74, ‘78), three Open Championships (1959, ‘68, ‘74), two PGA Championships (1962, ‘72) and the 1965 U.S. Open.

Beyond his nine majors, Player accumulated 24 PGA Tour wins and 159 total career wins, including 59 on the Sunshine Tour.

Player’s playing career was over before the Presidents Cup began in the 1990s, but he captained the 2003 International squad to a tie at The Links at Fancourt, a course he designed in George, South Africa. In fact, Player’s golf course design career includes over 400 courses all over the world. Player captained the International team in the two subsequent Presidents Cups, in 2005 and 2007, both of which proved to be losing efforts.

Player was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974, and earned the PGA Tour’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. In 2011, Augusta National Golf Club invited Player to become an honorary starter, and beginning in 2012 he joined Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer in that role.