Giving Player Returns To Site Of His 1965 Win

By Ken Klavon, USGA

Town and Country, Mo. – On the final day of the 1962 U.S. Open at Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club, Gary Player walked off the 18th green and made a promise to then-USGA Executive Director Joseph C. Dey.

"I said, ‘One day when I win this great championship,' " said the 68-year-old Player Wednesday, " ‘if the prize is $20,000, $50,000 or $100,000, it's a little secret, I'm going to make a donation.' "

It would be three years later that the South African ‘Black Knight'  would

	Sixteen-year-old Frank Pagel, left, and Gary Player strategize during the 1965 U.S. Open. (USGA Photo Archives)

own up to his word after winning the 1965 Open at Bellerive Country Club, the site of this week's U.S. Senior Open. The title gave Player the career Grand Slam, putting him with Ben Hogan and Gene Sarazen as the only players to win all four (Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have also since done it). He became the first modern player to do it before he turned 30.

At that time, the top prize for winning the Open was a paltry $25,000 compared to the $1.125 million Retief Goosen earned this year. Player immediately handed his caddie, Frank Pagel, a check for $2,000 before donating $5,000 to cancer research (his mother died of the illness) and the rest to the USGA to promote junior golf. The donation provided the impetus for what is known today as the USGA Foundation.

"It was very simple," said Player. "I think I realized to the full extent having traveled so much just what this great country has done for the world. America has been the great Samaritan. … I appreciated what American golf had given me."

The Open of ‘65 presented a few firsts. It was the first time the championship was broadcast in color on television. It was the first time the event was conducted over four days with an 18-hole final. The change came after Ken Venturi nearly collapsed from heat exhaustion in the 1964 Open at Congressional when the final two rounds were played in one day.

And, unofficially, it marked the first time a caddie had to also lug around a jar of honey.

"They didn't have energy bars back then," said the 55-year-old Pagel, a computer architect who revisited briefly with Player at Bellerive Wednesday. "Every two or three holes, he'd take a big swig of honey. It was pretty sticky."

Player, a fitness nut at the time who could squat 300 pounds, chugged a pint of the sweet stuff per round that week when, according to Pagel, temperatures hovered in the mid-90s.

Back then, the USGA required players to use local caddies. In fact, most major tournaments had this provision with the Masters last to change in the late 1980s. Pagel, an innocent 16-year-old in 1965, had already looped at the club for three years. He showed up with his twin brother, Steve, looking for a bag that week. His brother wound up with Player during practice rounds. But as fate would have it, "[Player] pulled my name out of fishbowl," said Pagel, and off they went.

Time hasn't salted away Pagel's memory from that week. Up until the final day of the playoff, he recalled, Player would ask his advice on club selection.

"He was in such a trance," said Pagel, "I don't think there was anything you could do about it."

In the playoff Player needed just eight holes to get up by five strokes against Australian Kel Nagle, the 1960 British Open champion. Carding a 71 to Nagle's 74, Player became the first non-American to win the Open since Ted Ray in 1920.

When Player won, he was on such a high that he invited Pagel to be his caddie in South Africa.

"I think he was half in shock," said Pagel, who used the money to buy a motorcycle so he wouldn't have to hitchhike to the club anymore.

Or, perhaps, Player was actually being half serious.

 "I remember this man as a boy very well, walking around and being so efficient and so enthusiastic," said Player.

The victory solidified Player's stature in the game, with wins in the 1959 British Open, 1961 Masters and 1962 PGA Championship among many other triumphs. It also afforded Pagel to embark upon his proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

The next day Pagel received a call from producers for the game show ‘To Tell The Truth' in New York. They wanted him on. Because Pagel had a fair complexion and lived under the hot rays of the Missouri sun, the star panelists were thrown off. They chose the wrong Frank Pagel.

"The other two imposters were life guards with tans," said Pagel.

His Place

Frank Pagel sat in on Gary Player's interview Wednesday before revisiting with the ‘Black Knight.' (John Mummert/USGA)

Looking over Player's career, there's no doubt he'll leave behind a consummate legacy as one of the all-time greats. Historically speaking, he is the only player in the 20th century to win the British Open in three different decades (1959, 1968 and 1974). Taking it a step further, he is also the only person to win majors in five different decades when Senior Opens are thrown into the mix. He won this event in 1987 and '88.

As he prepares to make his 17th Senior Open start, Player has no inclination to slow down even if his last victory on the Champions Tour was in 1998 at the Northville Long Island Classic.

So the correlation could be made that Player may be transitioning into a celebratory figure with the victories becoming a thing of the glorious past. At least that's how one legend sees it.

"He's getting to the point where he's becoming an entertainer, not a golfer," said Arnold Palmer. "But he's good at it, and people like that."

Player, of course, still teeming with competitive juices, partially pooh-poohed such thoughts.

"It's a mixture of both," he said. "I'm still athletic enough to win. I haven't been playing particularly well this year, but golf changes in a matter of seconds, minutes.

"I love people, I love travel. [The experiences are] without question the best education that one can obtain, better than any college degree or university."

Ask him about his proudest achievements and one would think the hallowed grand slam in his heyday would be tops. Not so. Think of a different grand slam. One accomplished on the Champions Tour.

Player conveyed a story that when he recently told that to a reporter, the scribe thought he went bonkers. But Player articulated it his own way.

"I said I had a long many, many years to win the grand slam on the regular tour, and when you're young, you're going to every tournament and you expect to win it," said Player. "Every time Arnold teed it up, every time Jack teed it up, every time I teed it up, we really thought we were going to win the tournament, and we had 30 years to do that.

"The rest of the world has no idea just how tough it is to win on this Champions Tour. You've got a short window to do it. You've got a maximum of eight years to do it."

And a lifetime to bask in the grandeur.

Ken Klavon is the USGA Web Editor. E-mail him with questions or comments at kklavon@usga.org.