Bernhard Langer isn’t immortal after all. It just feels that way

At an age — 65! — by which many execs have traded their golf golf equipment for pickle paddles and their Tour playing cards for ones issued by the AARP, Bernhard Langer continues to be flattening flags on the PGA Tour Champions.

In 20 begins this season, he has 10 top-10 finishes, together with a win — his Forty third-career Champions title — on the Chubb Classic in February. His 69.31 scoring common is sixth-best on tour and he’s seventh within the season-long Charles Schwab Cup factors race, the senior circuit’s equal of the FedEx Cup.

Langer, now in his sixteenth season on the Champions, has been so good for therefore lengthy that — like Tom Brady or Albert Pujols or Andre Iguodala — it’s laborious to think about his sport with out him. And but inevitably that day will come, should come … proper? Yes? Maybe?

Ehh, who is aware of.

On Thursday, on the TimberTech Championship, in Boca Raton, Fla., Langer was requested a query that pressured him to face his personal mortality: How lengthy can he sustain the aggressive golf factor full time?

“That’s a good question,” Langer started. “I’m getting closer to that where I’m thinking about it. So far I really haven’t thought about it much.”

That doesn’t sound like a person who’s prepared for a retirement celebration at Chili’s, however that Langer is getting to some extent the place he’s going to a minimum of ponder life after a golf is one thing new for him.

“I always said if I feel good, if I’m healthy, I enjoy what I’m doing and I’m somewhat successful, I’ll continue,” he went on. “All these three things are still in place, so there’s no reason to stop at this point in time. Hopefully I know when to quit and I don’t go way beyond.”

Waiting isn’t the toughest half. Quitting is. Especially once you’ve had a senior profession like Langer’s: second-most wins ever; 11 main titles; 11 seasons main the cash checklist; senior profession Grand Slam; and on and on.

On the common Tour, gamers used to face infinite questions on Tiger Woods. On the Champions tour, that function is occupied by Langer. How, his friends are always requested, has he accomplished it so properly for therefore a few years?

“He’s somebody I would have probably admired the most as a pro,” Padraig Harrington, a mere whippersnapper at 51, mentioned Thursday. “He’s the most professional out there, he’s a pro’s pro, he’s got the most out of his game. It doesn’t surprise me what he’s doing. He’s fit and strong, which is great motivation for the rest of us that we can see, you know what, keep yourself in shape, work hard, you can keep playing competitively as long as you have that drive. Bernhard really has kept the drive.”

Drive can stick with you eternally, however talent can not. Regardless of what number of hours you log within the gymnasium or what number of kale smoothies you pound, the passage of time finally catches as much as each golfer within the type of misplaced energy or diminished contact.

Often, placing is the primary to go. “It could be two percent here, two percent there,” Langer mentioned this week, realizing full properly that a mere share level within the higher ranks of professional golf might be the distinction between a T5 and a T50.

Langer was additionally requested what he finds most difficult as he’s aged.

“It’s a little bit of everything,” he mentioned. “The physique begins to ache right here and there, and totally different components of the physique — it’s not at all times the identical. Then just being away from household and buddies is hard. I’ve been doing this 50 years now, as a result of I turned professional once I was 15, so 50 years touring and being away and far and wide, it takes its toll.

“I’ve learned to manage, I think, my time where I just play a little bit less and spend more time with family, with kids and now grandkids. I’m actually heading home to take pictures with all four grandkids in town right now. Things like that have become a priority over the years and it’s important. There’s got to be more to life than just golf. I’ve always tried to find that balance between family and private life away from the golf course and time to practice and compete.”

In the primary spherical in Boca on Friday, Langer closed with three consecutive birdies to shoot a two-under 70. Just three off the tempo, he’s the place he nearly at all times is: within the hunt.

Alan Bastable

Golf.com Editor

As GOLF.com’s govt editor, Bastable is liable for the editorial course and voice of one of many recreation’s most revered and extremely trafficked information and repair websites. He wears many hats — enhancing, writing, ideating, creating, daydreaming of sooner or later breaking 80 — and feels privileged to work with such an insanely gifted and hardworking group of writers, editors and producers. Before grabbing the reins at GOLF.com, he was the options editor at GOLF Magazine. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Columbia School of Journalism, he lives in New Jersey along with his spouse and foursome of children.