They say that the day Bernhard Langer (1957) He finished high school, and with no sign that he was going to prosper in his studies, he approached his parents -he, recruited by the Third Reich, jumped from a prisoner train bound for Siberia during World War II- to one of the centers of labor orientation of which there were in the old Federal Germany. “I want to be a professional golfer,” he said. The official looked up: “What is that?” He went to get the catalog of trades. I came back in a bit. “There is no such profession in this country. I suggest you find a more decent job.”
Langer ignored him and a few days later, Although his only work experience had been as a caddy, he received an offer to be a teacher’s assistant at the Munich Country Club.
The anecdote, which must have taken place around 1972, a year before Jack Nicklaus visit his club and play a round with him is an introduction to the most successful career in golf history. Between 1974, “when I won my first tournament and about 500 German marks (the equivalent of 10,000 pesetas at the time) from several of the members who were in my field” and last Sunday, when he won $240,000 for his victory in the Chubb Classic, of the Champions Tour, almost 48 years have passed and a movement in the bank account close to 50 million dollars in prizes. More than half in the last 14 years, when it is sensed that the career of an athlete is over. In the American division for over 50 years he has won 43 titles, one more victory than he obtained in the golden years on the European Tour. Two of the historical record of the Champions Tour of Hale Irwin.
The German is a single stroke golfer. He is defined by statistics as rare as having played two rounds in Majors with Gene Sarazen, born in 1902, and Abel Gallagos, from 2002, or having signed a card last week of 64 strokes, the same age as he is, a coincidence that in a professional tournament has not been seen more than a dozen times.
“Golf is a matter of head and technique, although it is true that in my case there are already many fields in which I am inferior to others because of my punch”, Langer told reporters on Wednesday, recalling that although many believe that his eternity is due to the fact that the injuries respected him, “I have also suffered. When I had to do my military service, which was mandatory for 18 months, I spent six weeks in the hospital with a stress fracture in my back and two herniated discs. He was 19 years old and had just started playing in Europe. I said to myself: ‘This is as far as you’ve come'”.
Taking care of your physique has boosted your career. Fine, with a core worked daily, still capable of doing planks with one hand every morning, the Florida resident has obsessively cared for his diet.
the devoted golfer
Langer are several characters in the same body. A man of firm religious convictions, who the morning before winning the first of the two Masters looked for a church in Augusta: it was closed and he prayed at home. Or for whom the second jacket had “a special meaning because he won it on Easter Sunday 1993, when the Lord ascended to heaven.” A son of a laborer, who helped his father make bricks, and who started golf in a modest way. That he bought his first car with the 6,000 mark prize for winning the 1975 German Championship at the age of 17. That in the first years on the European Tour he slept in the car, a Ford Escort, in some tournaments or in seedy pensions in Murcia.
Or a golfer who had to overcome the yips, the disease in which the extremities do not obey the signals that are sent from the brain and block the hands or uncoordinate the movement. “I have managed to make four putts from a meter from the hole,” he said years ago. He fought with that evil for almost a decade, tried the grip with which he won the green jacket in 1985. He suffered numerous setbacks. Among them he missed the decisive putt that prevented Kiawah Island from winning the European Ryder Cup in 1991. Until he hit the broom putt in 1997. His nemesis became a fortress. He began to lead the putting stats, which anchored him in the chest. Until in 2016 the golf legislators agreed that this third support point was not legal. But Langer already had the swing and managed to make it legal.
