In the 1950s, when Gary Player started lifting weights to improve his golf game, his fellow professionals told him he was wasting his time.
Some of them were less polite than that. The conventional wisdom of the era was that weight training would make a golfer muscle-bound, ruin the fluidity of the swing, and do more damage than good. Players smoked on the course. Walking 18 holes was considered sufficient exercise. Nobody took nutrition seriously.
Gary Player ignored all of it.
He was 5’7” and around 150 pounds — smaller than almost every significant competitor he faced during the most dominant period of professional golf in history. The Big Three of Nicklaus, Palmer and Player dominated the game through the 1960s, and Player was the shortest, the lightest, and — by his own design — the fittest of the three.
He won nine major championships across three decades. He has played in 52 Masters and 46 consecutive Open Championships. He became the first non-American to complete the Career Grand Slam, winning the US Open in 1965 at the age of 29. And he is, at 89, still playing golf four times a week — still walking the course, not riding a cart.
None of that is an accident.
“Weight Stops a Train”
The most important thing Gary Player ever said about longevity isn’t a philosophical observation. It’s a mechanical one.
“Weight stops a train,” he said. “When you get heavier and try to swing with the same force you did as a young person — which you can’t do — but you’re trying to do it, that’s a quick way to get an injury.”
He has said versions of this for decades. The older he gets, the more he weights the importance of diet over exercise. At 75, he said diet accounted for 70 percent of the fitness puzzle. At 86, he revised it upward: “I now put eating at 60 percent.”
The specific numbers are less important than the principle: for the golfer who wants to play into their 60s, 70s and beyond, what you put in your mouth matters more than what you do in the gym.
Player’s own diet has been consistent for most of his adult life. He eats two meals a day — breakfast and lunch — and skips dinner. “You don’t put gas in your car when you park it in the garage at night,” he has said. He avoids bread, bacon and ice cream, which he describes as some of his favourite foods. He eats fruits, vegetables, lentils and legumes. He drinks sparingly — no more than once a week. He does not smoke.
The greatest destroyer of mankind, he says, is overeating. The secret to longevity is undereating.
This isn’t crash dieting or deprivation. It’s portion control applied consistently, across decades, as a non-negotiable habit rather than an occasional resolution.
The Gym Routine That Shocked the Tour
While his peers were having a cigarette between nines, Player was doing sit-ups in his hotel room.
He was the first professional golfer to develop a weight and resistance training regime specifically designed around the demands of the golf swing. This was genuinely radical in the 1950s and 1960s — not slightly unusual, not ahead of its time, but considered by many of his contemporaries to be actively counterproductive.
The fitness trailer that is now a standard fixture at every tour event, used by virtually every player on the professional circuit — that culture traces a direct line back to Gary Player’s influence. He built it from nothing, in the face of ridicule.
His actual routine, maintained into his late 80s, is extraordinary. Speaking at 87 he described a typical session: 90 minutes in the gym, pushing 300 pounds with his legs, running the treadmill, 200 sit-ups. He also exercises his fingers — “the arthritis wants to get you. Don’t let it.” His home contains an ice bath and a warm bath for circulation: “Footballers think it’s new. I’ve been doing it for 70 years.”
At 85, he was running the treadmill at maximum speed.
The sit-ups are perhaps the most famous element. Various accounts put the number at 200 per day, some higher. Whatever the exact figure, the principle is clear: core strength was central to his approach from the beginning. Long before sports science articulated why the core is the engine of a golf swing, Player was training his accordingly.
He walked the golf course rather than riding a cart. He still does. Walking 18 holes at a deliberate pace is, he has long argued, among the best forms of exercise available to any golfer — cardiovascular benefit, fresh air, time spent on your feet. The golf cart, in his view, has done as much damage to golfers’ health as any change in the modern game.
The 1978 Masters — What Fitness Actually Produces
Abstract talk about fitness and longevity is one thing. What it produces on the course is another.
The 1978 Masters is perhaps the best demonstration of what Gary Player’s physical preparation translated into in competition. At 42 years old — an age when most professionals are considering retirement — he trailed by seven shots entering the final round.
He shot 64. He birdied seven of the last ten holes. He won by one stroke.
That final round is one of the most remarkable in Masters history. But what made it possible wasn’t primarily technique — it was the physical and mental fitness to execute at maximum intensity over four hours when everything was on the line, with more sustained focus and energy than players decades younger.
At 42, Player was fitter than most 30-year-olds on tour. He was still doing the work. The result was a major championship — his ninth and final one — achieved in a manner that no amount of technical brilliance alone could have produced.
The Four Rules
Gary Player has distilled his philosophy into what he calls four secrets to longevity. They are simple. They are not easy.
Eat half as much as you currently do. The exact ratio isn’t the point — the direction is. Most people eat more than they need. Portion control, sustained over decades, is one of the most powerful health habits available. Player has practised this his entire adult life.
Exercise twice as much. Again, not a literal instruction for everyone — “if you’re someone who exercises a lot, you don’t need to exercise twice as much,” he acknowledges. But for most golfers, who underestimate how little they actually move between rounds, the message is clear enough.
Laugh three times as much. This one surprises people. Player is serious about it. “Laughing affects the endorphins in your system, which feeds the youth cells and keeps you happy,” he says. He has always been genuinely funny — quick, warm, self-deprecating. It isn’t a performance. It’s part of the regimen.
Have unmeasured love in your heart. The fourth rule is the least quantifiable and, Player believes, the most important. Spreading kindness, maintaining connection, leaving places better than you found them. He founded schools in South Africa, raised six children, mentored countless players. The love, he suggests, is not incidental to the longevity — it’s part of the mechanism.
What Every Club Golfer Can Actually Take From This
Most of us are not going to do 200 sit-ups a day. Most of us are not going to travel 15 million miles competing on five continents. Most of us are not going to push 300 pounds with our legs at 87.
But there are habits in Gary Player’s approach that cost nothing and require no equipment.
Walk more. Walk the course when you can. If you ride a cart because it’s quicker or more comfortable, that’s understandable — but understand what you’re trading. Walking 18 holes is a significant cardiovascular event. Over the course of a season, it adds up to something meaningful.
Eat less at night. Player’s car-in-the-garage principle is simple and, increasingly, backed by research into intermittent fasting and circadian eating. You don’t have to skip dinner entirely. But being conscious of what happens in the evening, when most recreational golfers do most of their overeating, is worth the attention.
Core work. Ten minutes of sit-ups and basic core exercises three times a week. Player would laugh at the modesty of this ask. But even modest, consistent core training produces meaningful results in swing stability, posture and injury prevention — especially after the age of 50.
Don’t let the arthritis get you. Player specifically mentioned finger exercises in his routine. Grip strength is one of the strongest predictors of longevity in older populations — genuinely, in the research literature. And for golfers, it’s the foundation of club control. Use it or lose it.
Gary Player has been saying these things for 70 years. He demonstrated them across a career that produced nine major championships, 165 professional victories, and a level of physical vitality at 89 that would be remarkable in a man of 60.
“We read about people living a long time,” he has said. “On the contrary, they don’t live a long time — they exist. They’re full of medicine.”
He’s still walking the fairways instead.
