Gary Player wants to live forever
PublishedOctober 29, 2025 10:25 AM EDT•UpdatedOctober 29, 2025 10:51 AM EDT
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Gary Player will turn 90-years-old on November 1, but the nine-time major champion certainly doesn’t look, nor feel, like someone who has made it around the sun 90 times.
Beyond being one of just six golfers to complete the career grand slam, the South African is best known for being incredibly fit, energetic, and mostly unfiltered. He’s spent decades preaching about fitness and telling the world about just how in shape he is, but his often over-the-top persona doesn’t make it any less true that he’s the founder of the ‘golfers becoming athletes movement.’
Living to see 90 is a feat for anyone, not just a Hall of Fame golfer worth millions of dollars, and while Player is constantly stressing the importance of fitness, he carries around a list of reminders about how to live a longer life.
In a recent interview with Tom D’Angelo of the Palm Beach Post, Player took out a laminated card he received from a gerontologist that listed the 12 keys to living to 100.
“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,” the card read.
Gary Player at the Masters as an honorary starter. (Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Network)
It’s fair to say that the first key listed on the card is the most important for Mr. Player, who emphasized the fact that getting fat is not a way to live a long life.
“All the gerontologists varied to a degree, but basically what they all agreed on to live a long time is under eat,” Player said. “Everybody’s eating too much. Obesity, which is killing them.”
On that topic of food and eating, Player has living to 100 on his mind “every day,” but realizes chemicals being sprayed on food may keep him from reaching triple digits.
‘[Getting a disease] can happen because the food is all sprayed, you know, and it’s the things that prevent you from becoming a hundred,” Player concluded.
Player talking about diet is nothing new. He delivered an all-time statement about fast food ahead of the Masters in April.
“Well, you don’t reach 90 as I do if you eat a bunch of crap. I can tell you that. But that’s your choice. Everybody has a choice. I want to live to 100 because I love people. I love golf. I just love life,” Player began.
Player then moved to talking about death and his young girlfriend.
“I’ve got a young girlfriend — I’ve changed my life. How about that, at 90, finding a girlfriend? Tom is not as old as me, but he’s also found a new one. I’ll tell you what, guys, you all — you or your wife is going to die. One of the spouses are going to die, and it’s not the end of life,” Player continued.
“So many people that does happen and they get so disheartened that they don’t think they should continue life. The greatest gift bestowed upon a man or woman is life. So my ambition is to reach 100.”
Player may very well be swinging a driver at Augusta National as an honorary starter at the Masters for another decade, and nobody would be surprised by it.
