Gary Player decides grandson playing partner with tense 18-hole qualifier

If you’re Tiger Woods, picking a partner for the PNC Championship is a no-brainer. Because one of your two kids does not play golf, you go with the other, who plays well. Easy, peasy. Charlie it is.

For another legend in the field this week, the selection process is more complex.

At 89, Gary Player has six children, 22 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and there’s hardly a non-golfer in the bunch.

“That’s a lot of choices,” Player told Golf.com.

What’s a patriarch to do?

Between 2001 and 2006, when his family tree was smaller and the tournament was known as the Office Depot Father/Son Challenge, Player ham-and-egged it with his son, Wayne. But as time wore on, and the clan expanded, the 9-time major winner found it tougher to settle on a teammate. What’s more, because he is competitive to the bone, he wanted to ensure that he chose the family member in the finest form.

His solution: hold a competition for the spot.

Four years ago, the South African star established what he calls—depending on the cheekiness of his mood—the Grandsons Challenge, the Cousins Qualifier, or the Choker’s Cup. By any name, the format and the stakes are the same: 18 holes of stroke play; winner gets to peg it with the paterfamilias in the PNC.

In this year’s qualifier, held just before Thanksgiving at the Bear’s Club, in Jupiter, Fla., four of Player’s grandkids teed it up, and the youngest in the group, 17-year-old Alex Hall, took the title, posting a 78, seven shots clear of his cousin and past Grandsons Challenge winner, Jordan Player.

All things considered, it was a tidy score, in blustery conditions on a tough, tipped-out track, carded by a kid who only started playing golf two-and-a-half years ago.

“I was very happy with that number,” Alex said. “There was a ton of wind and it’s a very long course.”

He was speaking by phone from his grandfather’s place in West Palm Beach, where he has been staying while getting ready for the PNC. In the short window since he took up the game, Alex has proven a quick study, whittling his handicap to a plus-1. It helps, he says, that he plays golf “pretty much every day.” It also doesn’t hurt that he has learned the fundamentals from a Hall of Famer, in training sessions that included a three-month stretch in South Africa, where he lived on a golf course and worked on Alex’s game.

“My grandfather has been helping me learn mentally and physically,” Alex said.

Alex is no stranger to tournament golf. Though he is home-schooled, he’s a stalwart on the golf team for the Perkiomen School, a high school north of his hometown of Philadelphia. He has also competed in the Pennsylvania state championship. Still, he said, the Grandsons Challenge was “the most nervous I’ve ever been.”

He got off to a rough start, and was five-over after four holes before finding his rhythm and only dropping one shot the rest of the way. Though his grandfather wasn’t on hand, a small group of family members followed the play, adding to the pressure and, when all was said and done, snapping pictures as Alex held the trophy — yes, there’s a trophy—aloft.

The real prize, of course, is a spot in the PNC.

Of the juniors in the field, Charlie Woods is bound to draw the brightest spotlight. But Alex hopes to attract attention, too. His goal is to play Division I college golf.
“And while this is a obviously a great opportunity to play with my grandfather, it’s also a chance to get some exposure in front of coaches,” he said.

In April, Alex will play in another unusual event established by his grandfather: the Gary and Vivienne Player Foundation Junior Challenge, a 90-hole challenge (in honor of Player’s upcoming 90th birthday), open to junior golfers around the country, that raises money towards efforts to lift children out of poverty in the U.S.

But first things first: the PNC Championship, at Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, in Orlando. Having won the qualifier, he was now taking aim at the main event.

“We’re definitely not just going out there to have fun,” Alex said. “We want to win.”