Bernhard Langer’s Secret to Success comes down to three little words

Bamberger in brief It is sponsored by Charles Schwab, host of the Charles Schwab Championship, which is being played this week at the Phoenix Country Club.

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Last year, I had the good fortune of playing in the Pebble Beach event, a pure competition. (One of the great events in golf. Bernhard Langer was at the San Francisco airport that night, too, flying a redeye jetblue to West Palm Beach. There he was, Bernhard Langer, at midnight coming again in a Blazer, all hair in place, one Wee carrying a bag on his shoulder. An old pro.

You have to think that Bernhard Langer is one of the richest student golfers of all time, at least in the non-fame division, right up there with Jim Furyk and Jay Haas. (Long careers, monogamy, modest spending habits.) Another golfer with Langer’s Hall-of-FAME STEAVE may have Netjetted his way home, flying out of the airport near Monseney Peninsula. Not our hero.

I asked him the other day if he had ever been paid to “fly privately.” (Such a flat phrase.) “It’s too expensive.”

You can think of B. Franklin and B. Comparing notes. Dirt, don’t want, really.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say, up here, that I consider the Bernhard Langer Lased One one of the most amazing people in golf. The fact that he won last year’s World Cup, at the age of 67, is amazing. This week, he’s at it again, defending the title at Phoenix Country Club. Except now he. . . 68! (March of time is funny that way.) He doesn’t expect to win. He doesn’t expect to finish the DFL (and, by the way, you’ll never hear Langer use the derogatory term). He does not expect it, because anything, without doing this: try his best. That is his whole thing, his philosophy of life in three words, the secret of his success.

Yes, of course. I know because I asked and that’s what he said. At least, that’s your gut. There are other things. Good quality and healthy living, first. (The Role of Faith in His Life rides on herds of this. In Augusta, at dinner on Tuesday night, he often sits with a row of amen at the table. Langer does not preach this as a way of life that works for everyone. His eyes are inside. He cannot explain anything to anyone, he does not discuss anything. He says that is what works for him.

Langer doesn’t do warm-and-fuzzy. There is no flood of names from him, as there is from, say, Phil Mickelson or Lee Trevino or Gary the player. After a while back, with the maître d’comence, I found myself sitting next to dinner in the hotel restaurant, tables close together. He was alone, as I found out. We exchanged heads as I sat down and that was it. I can take an idea. I left him in peace.

I have had pleasant and memorable experiences with langer, here and there over the years. When I interviewed him in his backyard, in the gated golf community of Boca Raten, south Florida. Suddenly, the afternoon rain cleaner moved inside. We were less than 25 meters from the back door. We could easily have made a dash for us. Langer called his wife’s cell phone and said, “Vikki, Michael and I are in the gazebo. Can you come out with an umbrella.”

I once went to a PGA Tour Bible study with him. He was not there looking for advanced development – God himself – God. (Some, you could tell, you were.) He wanted, time. Later, and in depth but not under the words, he told me about his birth, as a Christian, in Hilton Head, several days after his victory in the 1985 kings.

I once wrote a rotten story about him Sports are shown. When I saw him later, I was able to say something so it didn’t sit directly with him. “The story was good,” said Longer, in his usual and direct manner. “But it had a Word Here we are In it. It hurts me to look at that name. ” Langeli’s father, an incomparably magnificent man – a writer who could fix anything and grow anything – came of age with a dark background in Germany.

Langer has always said that his second masters win, in 1993, meant more to him than the first one, in 1985, because he did it on Easter, as a Christian and with a gun. He was the best player on the field that week, by far. “No one could say that I was defeated because someone else was screwed,” said Langer. In 1985, Curtis surprisingly had a three-shot lead at the Masters on Sunday but hit a second shot on the water hazards on two sides of the back nine.

If you missed Strange’s White-Hot Run through the 1980s, you missed some of the most compelling, powerful golf you’ve ever played. Langer came of age in golf at the same time. Curtis and seve, woosie, Sandy Lyle, Faldo, Watson, Jerry Pate, Lee Trevino and Hubert Green and Jack Nicklaus still ride a lot, all the hundreds were a lot of riding. Langer had 10 top-10 finishes in the majors in the 1980s, five more in the ’90s – and more this century. His bed at home is a humanoid charging station. Sam Sniad, Gary player, Jack Nicklaus, Hale Irwin, Tom Watson, Bernhard Langer: the bigger you are over time, the bigger your thumb. Mickelson can still do ittette, if he can turn things around here. Langer has never wanted anything more than golf, not in his professional life.

Interesting and memorable, dirty:

Langeli, who seems to be dying of nothing, once said to me, “Will you come to Yose, son, this year?” . Bernterhard knew, and the bress and the public didn’t, that Tiger Woods would be playing at PNC for the first time, with his son Charlie. I found myself there. That was 2020 when Charlie was only 11 years old, the youngest ever participant in that event. Last year, Langer and his son, Jason, beat Tiger and Charlie on the first playoff hole when Langer made an 18 bogey. After a while, as I read Tiger’s lips on the NBC Telecast, the tiger said to Langer, “Bernhard? You’re the best. You’re the best.”

“I don’t remember exactly what he said but it was something like that,” Langer told me the other day, after flying from the West Palm to Phoenix for this Schwab bag. (Commercial, of course. “The flight was great,” Langer said. “You’re sitting there in the airport wondering if you’re going to make it to your destination.”) Bernhard doesn’t play guessing games, lip-reading quotes or anything else. His stock-in-trade is straightforward, detail-oriented. The facts. The facts!

In the summer of ’81, my friend Brad Klein took Langer to the World Series of Golf, Fairiron, Ohio. (Brad spoke German.) He converted with a book that turns his yaryage book into a metage book, since Langer uses the metric system. Brad took ten percent off each number, so the 200-gauge shot was 180 feet. In other words, he multiplied each number of yards by .90. Langer got him straight: Use a .91, which snapped 200 yards to 182 yards. Langer still uses meters. (Also, an AOL email address. It works just fine!) That World Series event was Langer’s first game on US soil. Finished T6. It was the beginning of a good relationship. Langer has played in 327 PGA Tour events and 375 PGA Tour Champions events. He now spends more of his time in Florida than in Germany. He played and won all over the world. Wiki has him down with 126 wins worldwide.

I sent him the other day (via aol email) a collection of photos, under the heading of Bernhard over the years. On the phone, we watched them together.

Here he is in the late 1970s, with blond hair – a fancy moustache. “I’m not losing a bet or anything, I thought I’d try a mustache,” Langer said, offering the caption nearly half a century later.

Here in the year 1985 after winning the kings, at the event Trowoy was presented, in red pants and a red shirt, a low amateur, Sam Randolph, sitting next to him. Randolph was then the US Amateur Champion. Had a T18 Finish at the ’85 Masters. The following year he turned pro. That ’85 Kings was Randolph’s first of 11 majors where he played. It was his best ending. “We don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” Langer said. “Golf is more complicated than life.”

Here’s to the kings of ’93, the 2024 Cup competition, when he missed the par-foot set that would have meant that Europe kept the cup. He could see the pain running through his hands, his neck, his face.

“Did you ever, even for a moment, worry that night so you wouldn’t get over that mistake?” I asked a langer the other day.

“I didn’t,” Langer said. “Because I knew I tried my best.”

He won the following week on the European tour, in Germany.

The first time I saw Langer close was Hilton Head in 1985, a week after his master’s win. I was looking for the destruction of George Archer there and after the start of Sunday – in the afternoon I finished and went out and joined the crowd to watch Langer try to win consecutive weeks. His caddy was an Englishman, Peter Coleman. His Yardage book was used in meters. His approach was unanswered. He was in charge. He won. Everyone in the golf course admired how he went about his business. Forty years later, nothing has changed. The man is 68 and defending his title at the Charles Schwab Championship.