On that snowy day in 1981, Bernhard Langer stood at the door of his parents’ house in Anhausen, Bavaria, in what was then West Germany, a warm and wide smile on his face. He looked much the same then as he does now, a man of 5 feet 9½ inches, slim with curly blond hair. He had the deep chest of his father, a bricklayer, and the icy blue eyes of his mother, a slim, vibrant woman.
Langer welcomed his visitors inside what was clearly a religious house (a maxim written over the kitchen door read: “Friede den kommenden, freude den bleibenden, segen den scheidenden” (Peace to those who come, joy to those who remain, blessings for those departing) and beckoned them to sit at a table laden with krapfen (doughnut-like cakes) and apfelkuchen and schlagsahne (apple slices and whipped cream).
Langer was 23 then and had just completed his third full season on the European Tour, playing in 19 tournaments (and claiming money in 17 of them). He had won the Dunlop Masters, averaged 72.14 strokes on the season and earned £32,300 (about $41,200 at today’s uninflated exchange rate). He finished ninth in the season-long Order of Merit. On the European Tour at that time his nickname was “Big, hard Banger” because of the distance he hit the ball.
“Bernhard had a flattish swing and a strong left-hand grip,” Heinz Fehring, the head professional at the Munich golf club where Langer had been an assistant professional, said in 1981. “He had the sort of swing that every good player should have. It was very sympathetic with his body. Whether he achieves his considerable potential depends on how he meets the crises that will occur. How will he cope with success? How will he cope when he gets married and starts a family?”
John Jacobs, the pre-eminent British golf instructor, said of Langer: “If he got his hands a little higher without changing his body position, I think he’d hit the ball even better. He has got the stomach for it. He is not easily scared.”
“My makeup is sort of that I want to do the best I can every week. That’s just the competitive nature in me. ”
Bernhard Langer
The headline on the article in which these two coaches were quoted read: “The charge of the Wunderkind.”
Roll on from that snowy day in January 1981 to this December day in 2024 and it can be seen that the German is indeed a wunderkind: the Masters champion in 1985 and 1993; a member of 10 European Ryder Cup teams, including five victorious (1985, 1987, 1995, 1997 and 2002) and the tied match in 1989; and was the captain of his continent’s winning team at Oakland Hills in 2004. Langer, who will turn 68 next summer, is at his home in Boca Raton, Florida, with Vikki, his wife, after another remarkable season, his 18th on the PGA Tour Champions.
Even rupturing an Achilles tendon last February while playing pickleball, which meant being sidelined for months during rehabilitation and postponing his planned farewell at the Masters, could not stop him from continuing his remarkable record of winning at least one event in each of those 18 years. By achieving this, Langer has beaten the record of 17 years of consecutive victories on the PGA Tour by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. He has a total of 47 victories on the Champions tour, more than any other player.
His consistency and reliability are as renowned as that of the famous cars made by his countrymen such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen. Just as he was in the money in 17 of his 19 tournaments in 1980, so he had eight top-10s in 16 events in 2024.
His longevity is just as well-known. Having turned pro 52 years ago, Langer and his successes in the ensuing years prompt the question: has anyone ever played such good golf for so long? Sam Snead anyone?
Langer’s latest victory on the Champions Tour came last month when he won the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, concluding matters with a 66, the 23rd time he had equalled or bettered his age in competition (and the third straight time in the tournament). Victory was assured when he sent a 30-foot birdie putt racing across the 72nd green. When it disappeared into the hole, Langer, not an emotional man, ripped his visor from his head and threw it to the ground.
Take that! he seemed to be saying, a fierce response to the putting woes that used to blot his career so badly that on more than one occasion he hit the ball twice while putting, and more than once he four-putted from 3 feet.
“My makeup is sort of that I want to do the best I can every week,” Langer told the Palm Beach Post last month. “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.”
A third mark of Langer’s personality has been his thoroughness. Langer was an early advocate of a measuring wheel to calculate distances in yards and then the first to use one that measured in metres. “In a practice round at a Ryder Cup, we were discussing a yardage,” Sandy Lyle once explained. “I said it’s 140 to the front of the green from this sprinkler, and Bernhard replied: ‘Is that the tee side of the sprinkler or the green side?’ Dave [Musgrove, Lyle’s caddie] and I looked at one another and rolled our eyes. As if 8 inches makes a huge difference.”
Langer is part of Europe’s golden generation of five golfers who were born within 11 months of one another, between April 1957 and March 1958: Seve Ballesteros (9 April 1957), Nick Faldo (18 July 1957), Langer (27 August 1957), Lyle (9 February 1958) and Ian Woosnam (2 March 1958). This formidable quintet formed the core of Europe’s Ryder Cup teams in the 1980s and early ’90s. All would win major championships, and four became world No. 1. Only Lyle did not top the world rankings.
“I often wonder what is his 15th club,” Lyle said. “He is not the ultimate A1 swinger of a club. He has some technical issues, and his balance doesn’t look great. What flicked the switch for him was when he got to America. The church has helped him keep an inner calmness, and that is where he gets a lot of his strength from.
“I saw that calmness in Jack Nicklaus when I played the last round of the 1986 Masters with him,” Lyle continued. “His calmness and discipline were there over the last four holes when he knew he couldn’t make a single error. Bernhard is very similar. He can produce the shots at the right time.”
At this, Lyle, who is six months younger than Langer, paused, clearly searching for precisely the right words to assess his friend and rival’s playing record.
Finally, he came up with them. “He lives and breathes golf; that’s the thing,” Lyle said. “How do you put his golf achievements into perspective? It’s like winning 20 gold medals at the Olympics. It’s unheard of, and yet he has done it.”
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Top: With his victory at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in November, Bernhard Langer posts a record-setting 18th consecutive season with at least one title on PGA Tour Champions.
Christian Petersen, Getty Images