Gary Player: The Mind Is Key | Forward Progress

Gary Player shares his unorthodox methods of staying mentally sharp, including

intentionally driving behind slow drivers on the highway and slapping himself in the face, repeatedly.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
As we wrap up the week, we're bringing you one of the many
positive messages from our past interviews.
Each Thursday, we're sharing stories of our most watched
athletes, celebrities and leaders.
We hope these problem solving narratives inspire you to tackle
obstacles in your own life. This week Gary Player I read

(00:24):
that you used to you know, and kind of practicing patience
would be on the highway and drive behind the slowest car or
truck is that. True.
No, that's true. And there was a golf pro in
California, Mack O'Grady, very unusual man.
He used to do the same thing. I'd get behind a slow car and

(00:46):
with a lady on the highway and I'd be forced to sit there and,
and then I'd, you know, also I, I sat in front of mirrors in
that Tai chi position like that.See now that you, you try and
sit like that, you try and sit like that for 4 minutes or try
and do it for one minute. And I'd sit in front of the
mirror and I'd go, I'd slapped myself in the face till I was

(01:11):
red and say, you've got to learnto suffer because that's what
life is going to do to you and you've got to survive.
How much of golf success? 1 Success in golf is mental.
A large a large amount engulf mental and good nerves.
Good nerves are imperative. You've got to have good nerves.

(01:31):
You've got to be fit, you've gotto eat properly.
That's the new that's going to be the new technique.
That's going to be the new technology in sports will be
eating because very few eating. I might meet one person out of
10,000 that eat properly. So that's going to be the new
thing to fuel the engine, to give it the energy, to give you

(01:53):
the intelligence to make your mind work.
Well, it's very important. So I come back to the mind when
I played against Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, who were
stronger than me and in their home country, when I teed up, I
said, man, I'm going to beat you.
And it is in my mind that I believe that.

(02:13):
And if you don't believe in yourmind, you ain't going to do it
because nobody's going to give you that.
So you got to develop the mind. You can't only go to the gym and
develop your body. You got to do exercises and
reading and thought processes tostrengthen the mind.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week and
every week sharing long form interviews on Mondays and
shorter uplifting stories on Thursdays and then trending

(02:36):
clips on Fridays. We'd love to hear from you with
ratings and reviews. Do you prefer the longer podcast
episodes or are shorter ones? I'm excited to get your take.
Thanks again.