Bernhard Langer has come full circle. Not from his remarkable professional career that started more than five decades ago. Those circles have been retraced over and over again on golf courses all over the world.
But from February, when he heard a “huge pop, like a gun shot,” looked down at the back of his left leg and knew his Achilles had just ruptured.
Langer, 67, was playing pickleball.
But Langer, a native of Germany who has lived in Boca Raton for more than 40 years with his wife, Vikki, is not your typical 67-year-old.
Unless a typical 67-year-old has won a golf tournament on all six continents where the sport is played, or won at least once in each of the last 18 years on the PGA Tour Champions, or produced exercise videos in 2020 to pass the time during the pandemic.
And not unless your typical 67-year-old has celebrated a record 47 wins on the Tour Champions, which Langer has, the last coming nine months after blowing out that Achilles. Langer added to his own mark by hoisting the trophy at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Phoenix on Nov. 10.
And he did it by shooting his age or better for third straight day on Sunday, and a 23rd time on the senior circuit. Langer opened with a 69 before carding a 64-67-66.
“I’m a very positive person, so I always thought I would be able to come back,” Langer said. “My surgeon and PT said if everything goes somewhat well, you should be OK, just you’re probably going to lose half the season or something like that.”
It has gone more than “somewhat” well for the World Golf Hall of Famer whose priorities in life are simple: his family, which includes four children and four grandchildren; and golf.
Both occupy a lot of his time – especially playing a sport at a world class level while approaching 70.
“My makeup is sort of that I want to do the best I can every week,” Langer told The Palm Beach Post last year. “That’s just the competitive nature in me. But you have to have goals. I always tried to improve if that’s possible in certain areas. Obviously, the margins get thinner and thinner.”
And even thinner after sustaining a serious injury that would sideline any 20-year-old for many months, maybe even a year.
But the man who has defied his age over and over again was back playing competitive golf in three months. And you know that dedication to fitness, which has grown as Langer has aged, is a big part of the reason. That passion led to Langer producing videos from his yard and pool during the pandemic he titled: “Burn Baby Bern.”
Hashtag: FeelTheBern.
‘He just defies anything,’ Ernie Els on Bernhard Langer
Langer returned early May at the Insperity Invitational in Texas, placed 31st, and was off and … not quite running, but playing. He would enter 14 more events and finish with eight top 10s, re-establishing himself as arguably the greatest golfer in the 44 year history in the 50-and-above circuit.
“Incredible, just incredible,” Ernie Els, the 55-year-old Jupiter resident, said about Langer. “He just defies anything. He’s an absolute incredible golfer.”
Langer clearly has found fame and wealth beyond the PGA Tour. After earning $10.8 million on the Tour, he has won $37.4 million in prize money on the Tour Champions, plus another $8.2 million in Schwab Cup bonuses.
How long will he play? Langer admits more candles on a birthday cake translates to less distance on the golf course. That is the biggest reason he planned on 2024 being his final Masters. That farewell has been pushed to 2025 because of the injury.
Langer’s two major championships were at Augusta in 1985 and 1993.
“That course is just so long,” Langer said of Augusta. “The last five or 10 years when I played there it’s just playing very long. It’s not much fun hitting 3-woods into par 4s, and 2-hybrids. The holes are made for 7-, 8-, 9-irons and I’m coming in with some metal and other things.”
One of Langer’s calves ‘half as big’ as the other
The Tour Champions offered the perfect alternative with shorter courses and the option to use a cart if necessary. Which Langer has taken advantage of since the injury.
“My calf is only about half as big as the other one,” he said. “I just can’t walk very far and I can’t run and jump and all that kind of stuff. I’m not really in a lot of pain, it’s just not totally right.”
Everything was right in Phoenix, especially when he drained a 30-foot birdie putt on the final hole on the final day to win by one shot over Steven Alker and Richard Green. Alker already had secured the Charles Schwab Cup that goes to the winner of the season-long points race.
Langer celebrated by dropping his putter, raising his arms and tossing his trademark visor to the ground.
Langer played the putt two cups to the left and was not sure if it had the distance while tracking it from 30 feet. But when it disappeared, “all hell broke loose kind of emotionally.”
Emotions brought on by a painful journey that comes with recovering from surgery to repair an Achilles tendon, and not knowing if that streak of at least one win every year on the senior tour would hit 18. The record for consecutive years winning on the PGA Tour is 17 by Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer.
And because “winning never gets old.” Langer became the oldest winner on the Tour Champions in 2021 when he was 64. He now has broken that record three times.
“People say why am I still playing,” Langer said. “Well, this is why, because I enjoy the adrenaline, I enjoy being in the hunt and I still feel like I can win and be there on the leaderboard.
“I’ve just proven that again becoming the oldest winner again and again out here. It’s been great to compete against these guys. It never gets old.”
Tom D’Angelo is a senior sports columnist and reporter for The Palm Beach Post. He can be reached at tdangelo@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Bernhard Langer keeps shooting his age, winning on PGA Tour Champions
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