GARY PLAYER is talking about his grandfather, a man called Horace Ferguson, Glasgow to the soles of his feet. Horace suffered from asthma. Gary is guessing that's the reason he emigrated to South Africa, speculating that the Glasgow air can't have been all that healthy back then, especially for a man who probably made his money down a mine or in some other hell-hole that played havoc with his chest.
We're away back in time now; 1941 or '42. Gary is six years old and he worships the ground Horace walks on. He's coming home from school one day and a friend shouts over that his grandfather is dead. Gary runs a mile to the cottage and bangs on the d
oor but nobody answers. He knocks on the window and peers through the glass. He cries "Papa! Papa!" but the cottage is empty. "It was a sad, sad day in my young life," he says.
It's the kind of homespun tale that golf specialises in. Player is a master at telling such yarns. He's got a list of them as long and as wide as the fairways at St Andrews, where he made his Open debut in 1955. "That's when I slept on the beach."
This is one of golf's most storied events, of course. You've heard the tale a hundred times but still you can't resist. Remind us...
Player is 19 years old and he tells his friends in South Africa that he's going to Scotland to play in the Open, says that unless he conquers links conditions he's never going to amount to anything in the game. His pals tell him he's crazy. "You can't even win over here so what the hell are you doing going over there?"
He arrives in Scotland, gets a train to Leuchars, gets a taxi to St Andrews and walks into the first hotel he sees. He has £200 in his pocket, his total worth in life. The receptionist tells him they'd be relieving him of a fair chunk of his wad if he wants a bed. He says no way and heads for the beach. He pulls on his waterproofs and sleeps under a dune.
Next day he gets a cheap room. "I was in a place right opposite the 18th green. I think it was called the Golf Hotel or the Course Hotel or something like that. I checked in for ten shillings and sixpence. They said the room was facing the sea – the WC. I said to the guy on the desk, 'There's some bugs in my bed'. He said, 'What do you expect for 10/6?'"
Player missed the cut but got some stories that would last a lifetime. "Scotland," he says, "has a special place in my heart. It's where my grandparents are from, it's where I won my first major, at Muirfield, 50 years ago. It's where I won my second Open, at Carnoustie in 1968. I'm having my Foundation day there at Archerfield next month. In 25 years we've raised $30 million for underprivileged kids all around the world. It's a fantastic charity event and it's right that we bring it to Scotland now. I always said that if I wasn't born South African I would have wanted to be a Scot. That's my grandfather's influence."
Humble beginnings and all that. The little big man. Golf's underdog. His mother dies from cancer when he is eight, his big brother Ian is fighting in the war, his father Harry is down a gold mine in Johannesburg. It's just him and his sister Wilma, five years his senior. Golf is his salvation. Golf and a work ethic that was unsurpassed until Tiger Woods came along. Fitness. It's one of his staple topics. But there are others. Diet and the Bible and the golf ball and the fact that he loves people and his claim to be the most travelled man in history. He preaches love thy neighbour and hate thy bacon sandwich a little too often for some people.
Peter Alliss says: "He hasn't got the credit for being the little man against the world – maybe because he pontificates about too many subjects, what you should eat and where you should go to church."
Alliss is right. Given his greatness in a golden age of the game – nine majors between 1959 and 1972 – there is a certain reticence about putting him on the pedestal with Jack and Arnie.
His support for the apartheid regime in South Africa is something he cannot escape. He says he was naive as a young man, that he was brainwashed, that the things he believed in at 30 were purged from his mind just as soon as he started travelling the world and seeing it through a new set of eyes. He wasn't the only white South African who saw the light pretty late in the day.
There is something else, though. In a roundabout way of raising suspicions of gamesmanship in his career, you mention the Kenny Perry controversy, the one that saw the American seemingly improving the lie of his ball in the rough in a PGA tournament earlier in the year. "I don't believe that," says Player. "I don't believe that for one second. That kind of thing doesn't go on in golf."
Well, that's debatable. Certainly, Player has been asked questions about his own experiences over the years. There were allegations from the Open at Lytham in 1974 that on the penultimate hole of his third Open championship victory the ball he hit into the rough was not the same ball he hit out of it moments later.
He has described this as nonsense. But what is true is that he and Tom Watson have clashed over such matters. Watson accused him of cheating in a Skins match in Arizona in 1983. Player rubbished the allegation and fired back that Watson had won two majors – the Masters and the Open of 1977 – with clubs that did not conform.
It rather puts into perspective his oft-stated view nowadays that "we were all great friends back then". They weren't. The old heroes of the past tend to airbrush this stuff out of history. Player might be a global ambassador for the game but he is also a street-fighter, as Watson discovered.
Player has an opinion on everything and that might rub people up the wrong way but when he talks about the threat of performance-enhancing drugs in golf he is doing the sport a great service. He is the one legend who has had the guts to address the great elephant in the room. Golf does not want to know about drugs. When Player first mentioned this at the Open a few years back he was ridiculed by the tour. It was a case of, "Ah, that's Gary mouthing off again" but what he said was important.
To his eternal credit, he keeps saying it. "What's happening to sport is a tragedy," he says. "People are doping and people are dying. Golf is the cleanest but that doesn't mean we should bury our heads. People don't want to hear this. Bob Charles and I went to a top-class doctor in Florida five or six years ago and he said, 'Look, I put all my sportsmen on Human Growth Hormone. If you took it you'd both hit the ball 30 yards further within six months'. We said, 'No way'. But are you telling me all kids are going to say no? I don't believe that."
He'll be back in Scotland soon, retracing his steps. He'll be popping into Muirfield and will reminisce about his glory week, half a century on. They'd better get ready for him. Their men-only policy is something he might be mentioning.
"That policy is their business. It's a decision they've made and they've got to live with it. I have designed many golf courses all over the world and I wouldn't like to think that any of them would exclude women. Golf would not be the game it is without women. Winston Churchill said that change is the price of survival. I agree with that."
That's a hard-earned lesson from his great journey, from the poor kid who touched down here in 1955 to the man of countless millions we will see at Archerfield, talking the talk and doing some good.
The pro-celebrity Gary Player Invitational takes place at Archerfield Links from 7-8 July, with proceeds going to the Gary Player Foundation which helps underprivileged children and impoverished communities.
