Category: Fearless
90-year-old golf legend Gary Player reveals secrets for living to 100
Golf and PGA Tour legend Gary Player is still playing as he turns 90.
The South African was the first international player to win at the Masters in 1961, and a star was born. Even though Player broke the tournament’s rules by taking the prized green jacket back home with him in 1962 despite losing to Arnold Palmer — only the reigning champion can take the jacket home, for that year only — a lifetime later, he is still making headlines.
‘I really suffered a lot. A lot.’
In April, Player shocked the crowd in Augusta, Georgia, teeing off at 89 years old and finishing his shot with a signature high kick.
“I’m standing here for the 67th time, and I think the word is gratitude, just being here,” Player said at the time.
He turned 90 years old on Nov. 1, and now one of the sport’s oldest stars is sharing his secrets to living a long life.
“Under eat. Exercise. Read. Prayer/meditate. Love. Ice bath. Gratitude. Sleep. Laugh a lot. Keep busy. Friends. Do things you don’t want to do,” he said recently.
The secrets were not his, though. While he may have the rules written on a laminated card in his wallet, he once received the advice from a gerontologist as a list of 12 keys to living to 100.
“All the gerontologists varied to a degree, but basically what they all agreed on to live a long time is under eat,” Player told Golfweek. “Everybody’s eating too much. Obesity, which is killing them.”
Publicly declaring that living to 100 is now his goal, Player shared more of his regimen for good health.
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Arnold Palmer (L) presents Gary Player (R) with the green jacket at the 1961 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Photo by Augusta National/Getty Images
Working out or playing golf as many days as possible is part of Player’s plan. Weight training, walking the beach, and swimming are included.
“But not far out,” he said. “Because I’m very wary of sharks.”
The thought of living to 100 is in Player’s head “every day,” he explained, saying he thinks he will get there so long as he does not contract a disease. “[It] can happen because the food is all sprayed, you know, and it’s the things that prevent you from becoming a hundred.”
Player opened up about his younger years in South Africa, saying that when he was a kid he thought of golf as nothing more than a “sissy sport.”
Soccer, rugby, and cricket were more revered in his eyes.
“When you experience what I experienced as a young man, which is living like a junkie or a dog …” he told the outlet. “I went to this great school, which really helped me, but I’d go home at night, nobody there, cook my own food. I’d get up at 5:30 in the morning to travel to school.”
When he eventually started playing golf, Player said he made a promise to himself that if he ever became a champion, he would help others in a similar situation.
He continued, “So I really suffered a lot. A lot. I lay in bed for two years on and off wishing I was dead, crying in bed. That was the greatest gift bestowed upon me ever. And that’s what made me a world champion.”
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Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images
Player has 24 wins on the PGA Tour and 22 wins on the PGA Tour Champions. He has victories in nine majors, winning three Masters: 1961, 1974, and 1978. He also has 118 international wins.
Player was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.
Through all his success, Player says he knows why people die — it comes from retirement.
“I think people retire too early,” he said.
“To me, it’s a death warrant,” he explained. “They say, ‘I’ve worked hard; I’m going to take it easy.’ And yes, literally, they do. They go home and they sit there and they overeat and they watch television and they die within three years.”
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Hot take: Michael Jordan’s new show is HURTING the NBA
While Jason Whitlock respects and celebrates Michael Jordan, he thinks the six-time NBA champion is actually doing more harm than good to the league right now. “Jordan is the black shadow that hovers over the NBA like a dark cloud, and he’s a constant reminder of how things suck right now,” he says.
Jordan, who has mostly stayed out of the public eye since his 2003 retirement, has recently re-entered the NBA as a special contributor. His new show, “MJ: Insights to Excellence” — a prerecorded miniseries of interviews where Jordan shares basketball wisdom and personal reflections with host Mike Tirico — airs weekly during certain NBA games in the 2025-2026 season.
Fans and players have been soaking in Jordan’s wisdom and the tidbits of information he shares about his personal life, but Jason says this focus on the NBA’s “good ol’ days” when Jordan was the face of the league isn’t doing anything positive for the already hurting association. If anything, Jordan’s show is a reminder of how “lazy” today’s NBA players are.
On Tuesday night during the postgame show following the New York Knicks vs. Milwaukee Bucks game, episode two of “MJ: Insights to Excellence” aired. Tirico asked the GOAT his thoughts on “load management” — the strategic practice of resting healthy players during games or limiting their minutes to prevent injuries, manage fatigue, and extend careers.
Jordan, who was notorious for playing through injury and fatigue all 82 games of a season, pulled no punches: “[Load management] shouldn’t be needed … I never wanted to miss a game because it was an opportunity to prove.”
“You have a duty that if [fans] are wanting to see you, and as an entertainer, I want to show,” he added.
While Jordan’s work ethic and commitment to the game will forever be admirable, the fact that it remains unmatched over two decades later only highlights how far the NBA has fallen.
“This is not a criticism of Michael Jordan. It’s really a criticism of Adam Silver and the executives and ownership in the NBA. They can’t come up with a solution for what’s wrong with the NBA, and so they’re allowing Michael Jordan and the media to mostly drive the discussion about what’s wrong with the NBA,” says Jason.
NBC, which recently inked an 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal to broadcast NBA games, is “using the greatest player of all time to basically subtly take a dump on the NBA,” he explains.
“Fearless” contributor and basketball aficionado Jay Skapinac agrees that Michael’s words are true — load management is a reflection of how soft NBA players have become — but the NBA highlighting this is only “undermining the current product.”
If the NBA wants to move into a new era, where grit and passion define the league again, it needs to ditch LeBron James, who he says “is the only player that has left the game worse than the one that he inherited,” and “move forward with these new, bright, rising young stars in the NBA” instead of “focusing on the greatest player that ever existed in the sports history.”
To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.
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