There isn’t a whole lot of talk about longevity in sports, whether from the vantage point of the team or that of the individual. There isn’t much to say because it doesn’t occur all that often. Do we really expect that some of the current crop of great 20-something NFL quarterbacks will make it into their mid-40s just like Tom Brady? Is there a major league baseball player of this generation who will ever eclipse Cal Ripken’s consecutive game streak? Can we ever imagine someone playing as long in the NBA as Vince Carter? And then there’s golf’s dynamic duo.
One can have a career that extends over the decades in the sport of professional golf. You could turn pro sometime during your teen years and plug along as a senior golfer well into your 50s. The PGA Champions Tour is a magic mulligan for golfers who reach their 50th birthday. The great majority of professionals who end up playing senior golf have their great career resurgence between the ages of 50-55. After that it gets a whole lot harder to travel, to play well, and to win.
An exception to this rule is Bernhard Langer. Langer leads the two-season-long points race for the Charles Schwab Cup, indicative of the top golfer on the senior tour. Because of last year’s shortened season due to the pandemic, the 2020 campaign has been morphed into a two-year golfer of the year race with the current 2021 season. Two weeks ago Langer won the Dominion Energy Charity Classic in Virginia to maintain his lead atop the Schwab Cup leader board. The amazing thing about Langer’s current status is that he is 64 years old. The Dominion was his 42nd senior tour win during the course of the last 15 seasons. That’s pretty amazing stuff.
Bernhard Langer is from the Bavarian province in Germany, an area not especially noted for producing top-notch golfers. In fact, when Langer was born in 1957, there were all of four golf courses in Germany. He turned professional as a 15-year-old and initially started out as an assistant golf professional. He entered small local tournaments such as the German National Open and the German PGA Championship and wandered off-season to places such as South America and Australia. He won two German Nationals as a teenager, came in first in the 1980 Columbian Open and the 1981 Hong Kong Open, and had his first breakthrough on the European Tour when he won the Dunlop Masters in England in October of 1980, defeating Brian Barnes by five strokes. The following year Langer won the German Open, beating two-time major champion Tony Jacklin by one stroke. From that point on, Langer would find a way to win multiple tourneys every year on the European Tour. His 42nd and final victory on the European Tour would come in 2002 as a 45-year-old at the Volvo Masters in Andalucia.
Yet while Langer would spend the majority of his career in Europe, he was very well known to American golf fans for his two major championship successes as well as his regular appearances on Europe’s Ryder Cup team. Although he sometimes struggled with his putting, the precision iron play of Langer was just enough to get him fitted for two green jackets after winning the Masters in 1985 and 1993. His ’85 Masters triumph was a heavyweight encounter with Langer prevailing by two strokes over Seve Ballesteros, Curtis Strange and Raymond Floyd. His Masters win in 1993 was a four-shot runaway over Chip Beck. Bernhard also played on 10 Ryder Cup teams, was on six winning teams during the time of golf’s European Invasion of the 1980s and 1990s, and served as the winning team captain in 2004.
Bernhard Langer was a very good golfer in an era crowded by the likes of Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Payne Stewart, Ian Woosnam, Sandy Lyle, Colin Montgomerie and Tom Watson. Once Langer reached age 50 and started competing on the PGA Senior Tour in America, a new streak of dominant golf came to the forefront.
Two months after entering his fifth decade, Langer won his first senior tournament, the Administaff Small Business Classic in Texas, defeating fellow two-time major champ Mark O’Meara by eight strokes. Winning was habit forming as Langer won three times in 2008, four more times in 2009, notched five victories in 2010, and added five more by his 55th birthday. Yet that magic over-55 threshold did not seem to matter too much to Bernhard. Between his 55th and 60th birthdays, Langer continued to add to his count as he would win 18 more times, including seven titles in 2017.
Senior major championships would also be a big part of Bernhard Langer’s golfing resume, even well past that age 55 hurdle. There are five senior major championships and Langer has accumulated a record-setting 11 of them. He has the senior career grand slam as well. Three years into his Champions Tour career, Langer won the 2010 Senior British Open Championship by one stroke over Corey Pavin at Carnoustie. In what was the most baffling display of head scratching in the world of tournament golf scheduling, Langer won the U.S. Senior Open the following week at the Sahalee Country Club outside Seattle. Langer had the mental strength, fortitude, endurance, and luck to win a pair of senior majors, seven days apart, and eight time zones away from one another. The start of Langer’s super-endurance reputation had begun.
From that point on, Langer started collecting senior majors on an annual basis. He won the Senior Players and the Senior British in 2014, a second Senior Players the following year, the Tradition and the Senior Players in 2016, and struck for the hat-trick in 2017 when he captured the Tradition, the Senior PGA and the Senior British. Two years later at age 61 he won his fourth Senior British, this time at Royal Lytham and St. Annes. It would be his 11th senior major and although it’s been two years since he won in England, there is no guarantee that it will be his last grand slam triumph. He was enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2002.
On top of all this success, Bernhard Langer seems to lead a very happy and a very normal life. He has been married to his wife Vicki Carol since 1984, he has four children and is a very devout Christian. He still remains connected to his homeland, Germany, while maintaining a residence in Florida. He was the recipient of Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Silver Laurel Leaf, and was inducted in 2016 to the German Sport Hall of Fame. Of course all of this is highly deserved. After all, Bernhard Langer has been successfully playing competitive golf for a very long time.
Next week: The career of Hale Irwin.
