3-time Masters winner Gary Player turns 80

Gary Player turned 80 Sunday and isn’t slowing down – which for him is the whole point.

In the 54 years since the South African became the first international player to win the green jacket, he’s kept the throttle wide open as one of golf’s most ubiqitous ambassadors.

“I’ve been a pro for 60 years and if there’s a man on this planet who’s traveled more than I have I’d like to meet him,” Player told me last year. “I’ll probably travel another 8-10 years to design golf courses and give clinics.”

You never quite know what you’re going to get from the Black Knight when you ask him a question. One day it might be allegations that he knew of players in golf who used performance enhancing drugs, as he said before the 2007 British Open. Another day he might be asked how he’s doing and embark on a rant about the “tragedy” of Chambers Bay and how it might turn people away from public golf and misuse water resources, as he did at last year’s U.S. Open.

But usually, Player’s passion beyond the game he won nine majors playing is physical fitness. He still travels the globe as much as he ever did as a player, crusading against obesity and promoting good health.

A favorite story retold for years happened at Augusta National when a pudgy young boy approached Player for an autograph. Player happily obliged, though his blunt lecture about the health risks associated with his weight sent the boy whimpering away.

“Was I too harsh?” a puzzled Player asked nearby witnesses.

He’s always been like that, even as a young pro routinely beating all his peers in South Africa.

“We thought he was crazy because he was the only one eating bananas and peanuts and doing press-ups and all that bloody stuff,” fellow South African pro Simon Hobday said. “So we all thought he was, you know, a lunatic. Meanwhile he was right and we were all wrong.”

“We laughed at him – like everybody else,” said Dale Hayes, another South African peer. “Gary said to Simon, ‘I’ve never had a drink. I’ve never had a cigarette. I’ve had very few women. I’m celebrating my 70th birthday next week.’ Simon said, ‘Well, how are you going to celebrate?’”

Player heard the snickers (which incidently happens to be the same word as the candy bar allegedly one of his rare guilty pleasures).

“There were two of us who exercised with weights on the tour – Frank Stranahan and myself,” Player said. “We were ridiculed. We had to go to the YMCA and wait your turn. We kept on doing it profusely and eventually we had a great impact on golf. That for me is the biggest thrill I had in golf. I won a tournament at 63. I can still play well because I’m in good shape – not on Augusta but on a regular golf course. I’m the only one to win a Grand Slam on both tours. You know why I did it? Because when I was 50 I was in almost as good a shape as when I was 30. Very little difference. Now you have a traveling gymnasium on almost every tour in the world. They are blessed to have what they have on the tour today.”

There’s no concern that Player won’t be fit and ready to make his 59th trip to Augusta in April to hit his honorary tee shot – hopefully sharing the stage again with his Big Three mates Arnold Palmer, 86, and Jack Nicklaus, 75.

“I don’t know whether I’d be able to go on the first tee at Augusta more than 20 more years,” he said. “That depends, you know.”

Reaching 100 at the Masters seems like a reasonable Player goal.

“That’s longevity, which is my great passion as I’m trying to get the youth of America that’s so obese and so out of shape interested in,” Player said. “It’s nice still to be around. Most of my friends are dead.”

Player served as “wellness ambassador” at the PGA Tour event in Palm Springs, Calif., which partners with the Clinton Foundation promoting global health. It’s a subject guaranteed of eliciting all of his passion.

“These are some of the stats that break my heart because I love this country,” he said. “Twenty-five percent of the youth of America are obese. America is rated 25th in the world health wise. Not in the top 20 education wise. This country should be No. 1 across the board. We need athletes to play a very prominent role in telling children and not using any of these damn performance-enhancing drugs. We want them standing up and saying, ‘You’ve got to exercise. You’ve got to be fit. You live in America and owe America something.’ Get these kids to get their butts off computers when they come home and the parents have got to stop feeding them all this junk and start feeding them fruits and vegetables and salads and not all these fatty snacks and sugar drinks. You wouldn’t even give that to your dog. So we’ve got to get America to wake up and we as athletes have got to enhance that.”

In 2013 at age 77, Player was talked into posing (discreetly) nude for ESPN Magazine’s fitness issue – holding up a globe like Atlas. While he has no plans to reproduce that image at age 80, he says the publicity it generated served his higher purpose.

“We had more tweets and emails and telephone calls – it’s one of the best things we ever did,” Player said. “A man in Iowa sent an email and I phoned him from my ranch in South Africa I was so impressed. He said, ‘I’m 40 pounds overweight, my children are little porkies and after looking at you at nearly 80 and seeing no body fat I’m now exercising and watching my diet and my family are as well.’ This is my passion to speak to the world about this terrible obesity because more people are dying of obesity-related diseases than all the wars put together, It’s very simple: get everybody to walk and eat half of what they eat. That’s the secret. Eat only when you’re hungry. Don’t eat like it’s the Last Supper.”

So in honor of Player’s 80th birthday today, perhaps we should all skip the cake.