It may not be fair to hold a legend in one aspect of life to a similar standard in another. When such a prominent figure makes an effort to repeat his/her achievements in another realm, there is a responsibility to assess performance fairly and thoroughly.

Gary Player, aka The Black Knight, and Revolution Golf have released a DVD set of instructional videos titled “A Game For Life.” A more appropriate label might be “A Fun Week With Gary: Learn What You Can.”

Most knights offer a noble effort and Player does no less. What he fails to do is winnow, organize and edit. What results is a sometimes confusing attempt to communicate his mind’s eye on the games of golf and life.

The discs are titled Sand Play, Scoring and Life and each focuses on specific elements of golf/life that he has deemed essential to improvement and enjoyment. As a successful tournament competitor, Player was known to be relentless when it came to preparation, but also promoted creativity in shotmaking. Player found no benefit in monotonously hitting shot after shot with the same technique traveling the same distance.

As such, theories of touch, feel and creativity permeate throughout this instructional series. Unfortunately, there seems to be too much creativity and a lack of consistency when it comes to the organization and execution of “A Game For Life.” The result is an unbalanced effort, albeit one with plenty of useful information and instruction.

Presentation

Remember how the excitement of opening your first DVD instructional set diminished when you realized it was only one disc, or an overwhelming ten discs? Too little or too much is detrimental to a program. With his set of instructional DVD’s, Player found the happy medium. A proper amount of information is critical to maintaining the attention of the viewer and maximizing retention of the material. If the presentation is offered in a welcoming way, the student will return to the DVD time and again, seeking the next useful point of improvement. This is where the instructional series excelled.

“A Game For Life” comes in a compact, all-black box with nothing cumbersome about it. The discs are stored within, in accordion-fold sleeves for convenience. The first disc includes the sections Sand Play and Practice; the second contains Short Game and Putting; the third holds Fitness and the Player Family Diet, followed by a brief, sit-down Interview.

Something that Gary Player offers that few can match is a combination of swing knowledge and competitive success. This comes across best in his section on putting. Player is, at heart, a feel player. He is most accurate, therefore, when explaining the element of the game that is most centered on feel: rolling the ball across a green. What he is not is a day-to-day teacher who has logged hundreds of thousands of hours watching the flawed swings of students, both in person and on video. His knowledge of full-swing technique is not communicated with precision, but when it comes to putting and sand play, it’s not about pure technique. It’s about repetition and feel and creativity. At the heart of the artist, you will find these three critical elements.

Execution

There will come a time when the voice of Peter Kessler jumps the shark, but for me, that just hasn’t happened yet. During the 1990’s and 2000’s, when Kessler’s distinct timbre was associated with The Golf Channel, his presence in a supporting or promotional role was quite beneficial. Now that he is no longer associated with that network, one must make an effort (podcasts, for example) to hear him. For now, I consider him to be a knowledgeable, mildly-elder statesman of the game and as narrator of this DVD series, a benefit to Player’s efforts.

Player may or may not be thrilled to have so much emphasis placed on his ability to escape bunkers, but the seasoned professional that he is, Player begins the series with instruction on how to play from green side bunkers. Player offers this nugget: he knew that major-championship flags were typically tucked behind or next to bunkers. He felt that you had to be aggressive in order to win major championships, and that meant flirting with, and often hitting, bunkers. Therefore, Player practiced sand shots for two hours each morning before work and became who many consider the greatest bunker player of all time.

Every nuance of Player’s approach to sand play connects directly to the single word: Aggression. Player wants a wide, stable strong stance. He wants an early and strong cocking of the wrists. Most important, he demands acceleration through the sand, so that there is no trace of deceleration. The great irony is that the average golfer is so timid in the bunker, so afraid of the relationships between the club, the sand and the ball, that he invariably decelerates. The notion of aggression is transferable to all other facets of the swing, so Player’s revelation in this segment of the DVD series should not be taken lightly.

At the 18-minute mark of the Short Game segment, Player pauses to tell an anecdote on Bobby Jones. He mentions that he wanted the secret to making birdie on the third hole at Augusta National Golf Club. Jones answered that the hole was designed to be parred, not birdied. Player rolls this nugget into the proper way to play the most difficult of bunker shots: the downhill lie. His advice is to take your medicine, play for bogey and avoid the larger number.

Around the 21-minute mark of the Short Game segment, he exchanges his pitching wedge for a seven-iron and continues to hit explosion shots. Therein lies the greatest lesson of this disc: never lose your childlike sense to learn and to create. So many of us restrict our options to avoid embarrassment, disallowing ourselves to accept a challenge and have fun with the game.

Player has no fear whatsoever of embarrassing himself. Whether he is captured imitating the sound effects of his favorite martial arts film, in order to accentuate his perceived speed and strength, or dancing with his wife to the strains of Elvis Presley singing “Teddy Bear,” Player never forgets to keep life and golf entertaining.

He also perceives himself as a man on a mission.

With nothing else to prove in championship competition, his stump is aimed directly at obesity and overall lack of awareness of healthy eating and fitness. For every instance he says “We’re not preaching, but…” he preaches a little louder, a little longer. This is not destructive preaching, if you listen hard enough. Gary Player wishes to share what he has learned over time, but he is acutely aware that most folks need a kick in the pants to get the engine started.

Picayune details

Just as successful instruction finds a proper balance between too much and too little, it also seeks equilibrium between too general and too specific. When poor-to-average golfers are asked to do too much with too much precision, the result is frustration and abandonment of the method.

An example of this picayune instruction comes about nine minutes into the Sand Play section. Player is discussing the benefits of hitting the sand one-inch behind the ball for over two minutes when Kessler asks, “is it the leading edge or is it the bounce” that strikes the sand behind the ball. The difference between the leading edge and the bounce is less than half an inch. For the best amateurs and aspiring professionals, it’s a valid question. For the other 98 percent of us, let it go.

Fortunately for us, Player decries the minutia and demands that we avoid paralysis by analysis. One disc later, in the Short Game section, Player begins with the two most advanced shots. Instead of building the confidence of the golfer who has purchased the discs, Player spends too much time discussing and hitting the shots, then reveals how long (a month!) it will take to master one shot or the other.

At the 14-minute mark, Player discusses using a pitching wedge on uphill-sloped bunker shots. Kessler asks if he is swinging into the slope or along the slope. Player replies, “into the slope,” but I’m not so sure. His shoulders, hips and swing path suggest the opposite. If he were to swing into the slope, he would bury the wedge into the sand. In this instance, word choice is poor and a bit of editing would serve the paying public.

No one but a fool believes that every shot is struck perfectly by an instructor. A top touring professional is more likely to hit shots perfectly, but not all of them. In the first five minutes of the Short Game section, Gary Player gives us a sample of high chip shots hit to a green with no trouble in front.

Why he isn’t running them up isn’t the point. What matters is this: he allows us to see his mistakes and I applaud that decision. However, the producers got a little careless with the editing on this one. On the final shot, the cameraman makes an effort to catch the ball in his camera shot as it grabs the green, but the ball is nowhere to be seen. Later on, he drops to a 9-iron and tries to hit pitch-and-run shots. With all the green to work with, he bangs his first two shots past the hole, yet somehow defines them as successful. I loved his positivity despite the clearly misjudged chip shots.

Player, long before Tiger Woods was born, espoused the notion that fitness and golf would go hand in hand. Since his 5-foot 7-inch frame gave him a bit of a handicap against his taller opponents, Player reasoned that sit-ups, push-ups and what would later become a full work-out routine would do much to aid him in his quest toward championships.

Throughout the fitness section, Player discusses the Popeye model: thin neck, flat chest and upper arms, huge forearms and thin waist. Oblivious to the inattainability of this model (the equivalent of the Barbie physique for women), Player repeats the importance of certain exercises over others, or over nothing at all.

The Black Knight is also the King of Hyperbole. He references “hundreds” and “thousands” of repetitions a day, a week, of abdominal and weight-bearing exercises, but never defines a program of how many, how often, how much weight. This section of the set could also benefit from a bit of editorial tightening.

A brief synopsis

Gary Player reveres teaching professionals. He comments throughout the DVD series on how he learned his craft in the pro shop, on how amateurs should go to their local professional for a lesson, on course management or green reading, but definitely not merely on swing mechanics.

Ironically, I suspect that his own ability to teach might have been limited to the creative, feel players. When Player discusses elements of the game that demand personal touch, he is so supportive of individuality that the type of player that responds to an open canvas, will feel comfortable with him. When he strays into areas of angles of descent, degrees of rotation and the like, the type of fodder that mechanically-oriented students of the game eat up, Player is not only uncomfortable, but at times, inaccurate.

Does that make the DVD series “A Game For Life” not worth a purchase? Absolutely not.

During the putting segment, Player indicates that these lessons will be around 100 years from now, when the game is vastly different. Gary Player is one of the great champions of the game and what he says and does are invaluable to students of the game. Don’t take everything literally, use your own personal touch to absorb what will best help you, and your time spent watching and working with Gary Player will be as worthwhile as the super juice he drinks every morning.