Durability. If there is one specific trait that defines ultimate greatness, it is the wherewithal to maintain a high level of skill through the years.
Golf provides more elasticity in terms of time than other sports, but age ultimately inserts itself into the domain, and the fall from peak form inevitably becomes a certain reality.
There’s also the unpredictable intersection when various injuries pile up, causing promising careers to be cut short.
However, within professional golf, there’s one glaring exception—Bernhard Langer.
The 67-year-old brought the curtain down to the 2024 golf season in winning the PNC Championship last week. The event in Orlando pairs a professional golfer from the PGA, LPGA, and Champions Tours who has won a major championship with a related family member.
The age-less wonder won for the 4th time with son Jason. Overall, Langer has won the event a record six times—the other two wins coming with his other son Stefan.
The Langer win was highlighted by two compelling dimensions.
The first came when Langer commanded the stage, sinking an 18-foot birdie putt in a playoff to seal the triumph. When the putt fell into the cup, he raised both arms in celebration.
The second came in defeating 15-time major winner Tiger Woods and son Charlie. What’s incredulous, Langer turned professional three years before Tiger was born.
Woods himself saluted the Langers for the winning effort they showed. “Hats off to [the] Langers. They played amazing.”
The two groups were paired for the final round of the 36-hole contest and the Woods duo was aided by a first-time hole-in-one from Charlie.
Even with all the frenzy, given Tiger’s return to competition for the first time since his sixth surgery on his lower back in September, the Langer duo battled all the way.
The remarkable staying power of the German-born player is truly an amazing feat of spectacular longevity. In November he secured his record-increasing 47th Champions Tour event in claiming the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
Amazingly, that win kept alive his now record 18 consecutive years of at least one win on the Champions circuit.
Langer’s impressive resilience in remaining in the conversation is astonishing, given he tore his Achilles tendon playing pickleball at the start of 2024. Amazingly, in just four months, he recovered and resumed playing.
In 2023, he extended his record total of 12 senior majors when capturing the U.S. Senior Open—13 years after winning his first.
To better appreciate Langer’s staying power, one has to realize his genesis in golf came via a country with little history or involvement in the sport. That road to climb the mountaintop was a steep one.
It was that resolute will that motivated him to become the second European continent player to win the first of two green jackets at the Masters in 1985 and then eight years later in 1993.
When the inaugural world golf rankings started in 1986, Langer was the first to sit atop the elite grouping. Now, fast track to 2024, and he still continues to win 38 years later.
Langer was a member of Europe’s Fab Five: Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Ian Woosnam, and Jose Maria Olazabal. It was that group that formed the core star power in winning numerous Ryder Cup victories, including the first on U.S. soil in 1987. Langer also served as the winning captain in the 2004 matches.
His resilience was put to the ultimate test during the 1991 matches at Kiawah when the final outcome hinged on Bernhard facing a six-foot putt to decide the contest. The putt missed. For many such a tragic outcome could have permanently derailed future accomplishments. That did not happen. The very next week Langer would win the German Masters.
Now, the upcoming 2025 Masters will mark his final appearance at Augusta. At the age of 57, he claimed a T8 result in 2014—the second-best finish by a golfer 50 plus years of age to the T6 by Jack Nicklaus in 1998.
At the 2020 Masters, Langer was paired with Bryson DeChambeau in the final round, and, even though at various moments was outdriven by the long-hitting U.S. Open champion by 100 yards, Langer prevailed, scoring 71 to Bryson’s 73.
How does that happen?
“In their late 40s they don’t kind of quit and say I’m kind of done. They’re actually maybe working harder at it knowing they’re going to have five or 10 years, maybe more, on the Champions Tour.”
Langer has had to deal with repeated bouts of yips—the uncontrollable shaking of the arms and hands when putting. Through the years he has improvised a variety of grips and placement of the putter in order to keep himself positioned as a competitive force.
Langer now realizes he is closer to his final days competing, but his resolute nature for preparation has always been his calling card for the stature he has in the sport.
It is that inner burning passion to compete that underscores a man who often took a back seat to several of his contemporaries but now has outlasted them all.
Langer has a deep abiding religious faith but does not proselytize to others. He has diligently balanced the needs of being a devoted husband and father to four children while still keeping his golf game razor-sharp. No small feat.
The unyielding work ethic is part of his human DNA. Yes, there will come a time when Langer will pull the plug on his Energizer Bunny effort.
Those thinking it would have ended years ago have been consistently stumped when seeing another trophy presentation where Langer has the final say in such matters.
German engineering is routinely lauded for its brilliance—witness the success of auto giant Mercedes-Benz. In golf, Langer’s tour de force performances have defied Father Time.
Where his continued successes end, no one can say with total certainty.
Suffice it to say how prophetic the phrase—
Still going.
