Aviation is not such a long shot for these professionals in the golf world.

Page 2 of 5 » Next
« Back

Pilot's Profile: Flying Foursome

Gary Player

Many people know golf great Gary Player as the Black Knight—a reference to his penchant for wearing black attire. What many golf fans might not know is Player’s other trademarked nickname: The World’s Most Traveled Athlete.

Player earned that nickname for traveling more than 14 million miles over a golf career that started in 1952 as an amateur in his native country of South Africa. More than 160 career victories later, including 18 major championships, the high-flying Hall of Fame golfer is still going strong, albeit mostly as the chairman of Florida-based Gary Player Group Inc. “There’s no question that I’ve traveled more than any human being who ever lived,” claims Player, one of only five players to win golf’s career Grand Slam (Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods are the others). “I turned pro in ’53, but I started traveling in ’52 because I played in a lot of amateur tournaments. If a pilot travels for 25—let’s say 30—years, it’s a long time. You might have a pilot who flies for 35 years, and you might even have a guy who represents the airline for 30 years and then goes another 10 years private for 40 years, but nobody flies a plane for 55 years.”

Granted, Player doesn’t pilot himself, but the mileage he’s registered over the past six decades is still quite a feat. One reason Player is still spending so much time in the air is the growing nature of his Gary Player Design business. Since he established it in the early 1980s, the golf course design firm has been associated with 230 courses worldwide in 14 countries, including such faraway places as China, Bulgaria and the Middle East. Recently, Player spent 23 days on the road, visiting Pebble Beach, London, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, Japan, and Canada before wrapping up the journey with a round-trip from his homes in Florida and South Africa.

“This is what I’ve been doing for 54 years—traveling around the world,” notes Player, whose design group currently has 40 projects on the drawing board. “If a businessman represents a company for 25 years flying, it’s exceptional. If he does 30 years, it’s unheard of. If he does 35 years, well I’ve never heard of that. I mean I’m just continuously flying. There’s no way anybody else could have flown anywhere near the miles I’ve flown.”

Over the years, Player has used a variety of jets and jet services. During a two-year period in the early ’90s he traveled in his own 800 Hawker Sidley. The high cost of having his own jet and a dream to own a sprawling ranch in South Africa forced Player to go back to flying commercial and chartering his own flights, but he still has fond memories of his Hawker jet. “It was very good—a wonderful plane,” recalls Player, who recently turned 71. “In those days I flew to the British Open and did a few international flights. But it just got so expensive with what I am trying to do. I’m building a new ranch, and I was buying the ranch next door to me. Then I wanted to buy a lot of sheep and a lot of horses and cattle, and I said hang on—this flying with my own plane will be over, and I’ll never have anything to show for it. Whereas if I buy this ranch and I buy the things I want to have there, it’ll be there forever.”

With commercial airlines becoming so much more time-consuming in the post-9/11 world, Player decided to go back to private jets, and for the past two years he’s been a member of Flexjet. “We’re designing a lot of golf courses, and for me to get to where I’m going, the jet makes a big difference,” emphasizes Player, who was named golf’s Global Ambassador by the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001. “I can sometimes do two site visits in a day, whereas commercially you cannot do that.”

Clearly though Player’s decision to invest back into a private jet has been fueled by the increasingly inconvenient nature of today’s commercial airline industry. “It’s such a pain in the butt now going to the airport and taking your belt off and your shoes off [and dealing with] your suitcases,” Player points out, “and you got to get there an hour and a half before, and then most flights are never on time—very few are.

“There are two groups of people who got you where they want you,” Player continues. One is the “builders who build houses because they always tell you it’ll be done the 10th of January and they finish on the 10th of July and there’s nothing you can do about it. The other is the airlines—they take off an hour and a half late . . . I mean that’s just unforgivable. If I arrive on the first tee late, I’m disqualified. Or if I have a business appointment and I don’t make it, they don’t do business with me. So the builders and airline people have got you by the nuts. “I got so tired of airplanes being late and the big inconvenience of going through airports now and having to get there early and missing appointments. [Fractional jet ownership] makes such a difference for me. The nice thing about it is it’s deductible and you don’t have the headaches,” Palmer adds. “It’s still a luxury whichever way you look at it, but you know after traveling for 56 years I think I’m entitled to a luxury.”

Entitled indeed—especially when you’re the ultimate frequent flyer.

Page 2 of 5 » Next
« Back

Next article » The Luck of the Irish

Previous article « FBO Pick: OPA-LOCKA Flightline