As Bernhard Langer has aged, he hasn’t had any trouble stacking up tournament victories.
At 68, Langer is the all-time leader in PGA Tour Champions event wins with 47. The German-born pro was the featured guest of honor at Tuesday morning’s Hoag Classic Hall of Fame Community Breakfast at the Balboa Bay Club.
Langer held court in a discussion with Hank Adler, chairman emeritus of the Hoag Classic.
He said he was shocked by remarks made by Rory McIlroy, currently No. 2 in the world, who has previously said he has no plans of playing on the PGA Tour Champions.
“It doesn’t matter how old you are and who you compete against, because you’re always competing against yourself,” Langer said. “That’s the bottom line. It’s you and the golf course and the ball, and the ball doesn’t know how old you are.”
When the annual Hoag Classic tournament tees off Friday morning at Newport Beach Country Club, Langer will be going for his second title. The two-time Masters winner previously won in Orange County in 2008, when the tournament was known as the Toshiba Classic.
He’s made the cut in each of his 13 previous times playing the tournament, with six top-10 finishes.
Not bad for a former caddie who, when growing up, would ride his bicycle five miles through the woods to get to the golf course and caddie in Anhausen, Germany.
They called him “Adlerauge,” German for eagle eye, for his propensity to find golf balls in thick rough.
Meanwhile, there were several pictures of Jack Nicklaus’ swing sequence on the wall of the caddie shack, which served as inspiration.
“The only tournament I played was the caddie tournament every year, and that was against five other caddies,” Langer said at theTuesday’s event, presented by Hoag Orthopedic Institute. “I really had no clue. I never putted on fast greens … I just had this dream of trying to play on the European tour for a while and make a living.”
He started that journey at 18, five decades ago, after a poor childhood growing up in a village of 800.
Adler reminded Langer of the time when he, then 23, climbed up into a tree at the 1981 Benson & Hedges International Open to avoid taking a one-stroke penalty.
“People later asked me, ‘What club did you use?’” Langer said. “And I said, ‘a tree-iron.’”
Langer now lives in Florida, and he and his wife, Vikki Carol, have raised four children.
“Golf in general has come a long way,” he said. “Many of you know that there was hardly any prize money in golf. If you look at the career of Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus, their career prize money is incredibly low for someone who is a Hall of Famer and the best in the game.”
He closed out the discussion detailing how he became a Christian shortly after winning the 1985 Masters. Recalling during a post-tournament interview how he’d, at one point, been four shots behind competitor Curtis Strange, Langer uttered the words “Jesus Christ.”
“I swore on national television,” Langer said. “I wasn’t a Christian then. I heard ‘Jesus Christ’ left and right on the golf course all the time, and didn’t really know what it means.”
That on-camera utterance, however, had made an impression on others. Two days later, he was invited to a Bible study by colleague Bobby Clampett that would lead him on his own spiritual journey, he recalled.
Also at Tuesday’s community breakfast , longtime Hoag Classic volunteer chairman Dick Yuhnke was inducted into the Hoag Classic Hall of Fame.
Tee times for Friday’s first round range from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Langer will tee off from No. 1 at Newport Beach Country Club at 10:50 a.m., in a group with Darren Clarke and 2018 tournament winner Vijay Singh.