65-year-old Bernhard Langer keeps on playing
Golf is commonly thought of as an old man’s game, but this perception is wrong.
Like all sports, golf tends to be dominated by younger men. Tiger Woods won 13 of his 15 majors between the ages of 21 and 32. Similarly Jack Nicklaus won 11 of his 18 Majors between the ages of 22 and 33.
This is true of the Senior PGA Tour as well which is open to players over age 50. Those in their early 50s typically win the most often. After all it’s natural that as the body and mind age, skills deteriorate, and motivation drops. Yet over the last decade one man has bucked this near universal trend – the seemingly ageless Bernhard Langer.
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Amid all the furore over the PGA Tour vs the LIV Golf Tour, the now 65-year-old Langer won for the 44 th time on the Senior PGA Tour two weeks ago, and he did so in dominating fashion. He shot 63 in the second round of the TimberTech Championship, breaking his age by two shots. He went on to win by six shots, the 10 th time in his Senior career that he had won by at least five shots (for those counting at home, that works out to 22.7 per cent of his wins).
At 65 years and 71 days, he also broke his own record for the oldest winner on the Senior PGA; a record he had set earlier this year. Somehow Langer has maintained his motivation and his fitness, both physical and mental.
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“You’ve got to be healthy, hungry, willing to work, have a good support system, a great caddie and good coach, many, many other things,” Langer explained after his win. “As I said, the willingness to put in the hours, because many people when they get to 50, 60, they’re going to say, ‘Well, I’ve had a good career and I’m going to take it a little easy and all that.’ You can’t do that out here, there’s too many good players.”
Langer now stands just one win shy of Hale Irwin’s all-time record on the Senior Tour. It would be hard to bet against him at least tying the record over the next couple of years. Doing so would certainly cement his place as the best senior tour player of all-time, but Langer has a pretty good case even if he doesn’t. He has won a record 11 Senior majors and is the only golfer to have won all five of them to complete the career senior slam. He has also topped the money list seven times in a row and a record 11 times in all.
If that’s not enough, he has won at least two events in 10 straight seasons and at at least one in every season he has played on the Senior Tour. That’s a robot-like level of consistency at any age, let alone for someone in his mid-60s.
While Langer’s achievements are unique, he is also a testament to what is possible as you age. He is an inspiration not just for future pros on the Senior circuit, but also for club golfers everywhere. While most of us don’t have the same resources or amount of time to work on our game and our fitness as Langer does, we can potentially extend our window for playing good golf if we put in the effort. This goes beyond winning tournaments too. It means we can enjoy playing the game for longer, which is the whole point of playing golf in the first place.
Credits:-
Photo – NY Times