"There's no one that's had a bigger love affair than Gary Player with the game of golf. People see that he's not a big man. There's truth in David and Goliath in that you got a golf club, you got a golf ball and if you're determined and work extremely hard, you can make it doing this," says Lee Trevino on ESPN Classc's SportsCentury series.

He was a peacock in black, standing out more for who he was than for what he looked like. Even apart from the nine major championships and more than 160 world-wide victories that distinguished his golfing career, Gary Player was always a sore thumb among his peers.

	Gary Player has won nine Grand Slam tournaments.

He could be brash in a fraternity where a tactful tongue was sacred. Five-foot-7, he exercised fanatically and adhered to a rigorous, nutritious diet that kept him at 150 pounds and with a 31-inch waist throughout his career, proving that not all golfers had paunches, that they could be a little athletic. He displayed a resiliency and a durability that kept him collecting championships for five decades.

That Player wore the same color clothes every time he competed, earning him the nickname "The Black Knight," was merely the most outward sign of his uniqueness. In the days when Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus dominated the PGA Tour, Player was sui generis because he was forever close behind them -- when he was not beating them, that is.

Palmer won six majors from 1958-62; Player won three. When Nicklaus was at his best from the mid-1960s to late 1970s, winning the lion's share of his 18 major championships, Player won six majors of his own.

With his victory at the 1965 U.S. Open, Player became the third player to win all four majors. Often forgotten is that Nicklaus didn't complete the Slam until 1966, and Palmer never did. "He is," Sports Illustrated's Jaime Diaz wrote of Player, "clearly the worthiest second banana in golf history."

The irony is, Player, born in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Nov. 1, 1935, wanted no part of golf until he was 14. His mother, Muriel, died when he was eight. His father, Harry, spent his days in the dark, mining gold in Johannesburg for $200 a month, and his free time on fairways as a two-handicap golfer. But rugby, soccer and swimming were the sports Gary loved -- until he joined his father for a round one day.

"I parred the first three holes I played," Player said. "The rest of them were eights and nines, but I was absolutely, completely hooked."

So hooked was he that he practiced himself into a pro by 17. He'd stand on a rugby field and launch eight-iron shots through the goal posts. "The more you practice," he said, "the luckier you get."

By the time he was 21, he had won 10 tournaments. In 1956, he won the South African Open, and after he did, Harry Player wrote a letter to Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts, the founders of the Masters, explaining that he did not have the money to send Gary to the United States to play.

"But if you could extend him an invitation to the Masters," the letter read, "I will pass the hat here in Johannesburg and obtain the necessary funds."

Jones wrote back a three-word note: "Pass the hat."

Within a year of arriving in the United States, Player won his first U.S. tournament, the 1958 Kentucky Derby Open.

The next year, he won his first major, beating Fred Bullock and Flory van Donck by two strokes at the British Open. He was 23.

On the PGA Tour in the 1960s, he'd travel from tournament to tournament with his entire family -- his wife, Vivienne, and their five children (a sixth wouldn't be born until the 1970s) -- carrying as many as 33 bags, taking four taxis and sleeping in three bedrooms in a hotel. He had to win tournaments just to break even.

But a pattern began. There was no place he wouldn't play. He is believed to be the most well-traveled athlete ever, logging more than 12 million miles. After a while, it grew clear that there was no place he couldn't win.

Without the size and brute strength of most of his competitors, Player developed an exercise routine to keep himself in the best possible physical condition. He did 1,000 sit-ups a day, many with a 70-pound weight sitting on his chest. He lifted weights, squatting as much as 300 pounds. Instead of gorging himself on dinners and desserts, he ate fruits and honey.

The gusto with which he maintained his body kept him sharper for a greater length of time than arguably any other golfer. He won majors in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and is the only player to win the British Open in three decades (1959, 1968 and 1974).

At 59, he made the cut at the 1995 British Open, and at 62, he made the cut at the 1998 Masters -- the oldest player to do so in each tournament's history.

"Gary is much younger physically than his age because he has taken such good care of himself," The New Yorker's Herbert Warren Wind said in 1978. "He believes tremendously in himself and his condition. Few of the top players work harder than he does, and his fitness allows him to put out as much determination as he does."

By the time Wind made that appraisal, Player had established himself as a persistent foil for both Palmer and Nicklaus when each was at the height of his respective powers. In the 1961 Masters, Player bested Arnie and his Army by a stroke, becoming the first non-American to win at Augusta.

	Gary Player is the only golfer to win the British Open in three decades (1959, 1968 and 1974).

In the 1962 PGA Championship, he gutted out a two-under-par victory at Aronimink Golf Club in Newtown Square, Pa. With Nicklaus making a charge, Player eagled Carnoustie's par-5 14th hole and won the 1968 British Open by two strokes.

But those days were not all delicious for Player. He never approached the popularity of either Palmer or Nicklaus, and his South African heritage made him a target for boorish behavior by those who assumed he supported his homeland's policy of apartheid. Someone threw water in his face at the 1969 PGA Championship in Dayton, and he received death threats at the 1971 U.S. Open in Merion, Pa.

The insults and threats stung him. "I had been brainwashed as a child in South Africa into believing that apartheid was 'separate but equal,'" he said in 1993, "but then as a young pro, as I began to travel the world, I began to realize that things were not equal. At that point, I stopped supporting apartheid, but it is impossible for one man to change a country's policy overnight. Most of the world did not support American's involvement in the Vietnam War, but no protesters anywhere ever took Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer to task and asked them to answer for their country's actions."

Player answered by winning -- his second PGA title in 1972, the Masters and British Open in 1974, and his memorable Masters championship in 1978, when, down seven strokes heading into the final day, he surged to victory by shooting a course-record-tying 64. Then he joined the Senior Tour and won there -- 19 times, including six majors (three Senior PGAs, two U.S. Senior Opens and one Senior Players).

Today, he lives in Palm Beach, Fla., breeding horses and designing golf courses. He still competes regularly on the Senior Tour, still pumps one-arm push-ups, and still speaks his mind.

In 2000, he questioned if Tour members had the necessary ganas to beat Tiger Woods: "I read about them saying Tiger is unbeatable, or joking that they're going to play where he doesn't."

Such words show cowardice, said the solitary man in black. "A real champion cannot allow himself to say those things. I never went into a tournament thinking Jack Nicklaus was going to beat me. That never entered my mind."