📍Johannesburg, South Africa
1935 – 1953“Gary Player was born in Johannesburg in November 1935, the youngest of three children of Harry Player, a gold miner who spent most of his working life far underground, and Muriel. The family lived in a modest home in a working-class part of the city, close to the mine dumps of the Witwatersrand. When Gary was about eight, his mother died of cancer; his father was working long shifts and his brother was away at the war, and Gary has described travelling home alone on the tram to an empty house, feeling that loss deeply. He found his strength in sport and discipline. He was a small but determined boy who excelled at rugby, cricket, swimming and athletics at school, training harder than anyone. When he was fourteen, his father bought him a set of golf clubs, and he began playing at the Virginia Park golf course in Johannesburg, where the professional, Jock Verwey, taught him; Gary later married Jock's daughter, Vivienne. He practised from dawn to dusk, convinced that hard work and physical fitness could make a small man a champion. He turned professional at seventeen in 1953, and travelled the world on a shoestring, often sleeping rough. He became one of the Big Three of golf with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and one of only five men to win all four major championships, winning nine majors in all. Known as the Black Knight, he has always credited his father's sacrifice, and the discipline he learned as a boy in Johannesburg, for everything he achieved.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today