Golfing great Gary Player is probably the best-known athlete from South Africa. His heyday as a world-class golfer was in the 1960s and 1970s, when he won three Masters, three British Opens, two PGA Championships, and one U.S. Open.
All that happened during the racist apartheid regime, but he recognized that the essential immorality of apartheid could not and should not last.
Player's post-mortem tribute to Mandela tells some of that story:
Nelson Mandela is one of the great heroes in my life and I believe he did more for our country than any other person in our history.
As a proud South African, I am certain Mandela's legacy will endure in our nation and across the world as a figure of courage, value, spirit, and above all else, love.
I commend him for all that he did over his 95 years. He was a courageous leader who fought for all that is right, and he possessed an aura that inspired people, and our nation, to change for the better.
When I was a young man, I stated that Madiba should be released from prison, where he spent twenty-seven years. I was labelled a traitor, yet paid no mind.
Time would prove that decision right. Moreover, time would prove how truly special he was after emerging from prison with no hatred or revenge. He was never broken, just empowered.
His other tribute to Mandela happened two decades ago.
More, below.
Player was invited to meet Mandela soon after he was released from 27 years in apartheid prison.
Mandela was barefoot, according to what I heard on sports radio tonight that inspired this diary and sent me to the Google.
He didn't expect to do what he did, Player said.
"I knelt down and I kissed his feet and I said, 'I have never kissed anybody's feet in my life,' and I said, 'I have so much admiration for you.' I said to him, 'It is remarkable, how can you not have revenge?'"
Mandela's reply, according to Player, was: "You have got to start a new life and forgive and go ahead."
Player, speaking at the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City, said Mandela's ability to inspire with compassion left him amazed then — and still does.
"It was very tearful for me, because when you think of a man that has gone to jail for all those years for doing the right thing, not the wrong thing, it is hard to comprehend that a man can come out and be like that," Player said. "He was an exceptional man."
A champion of the quintessentially white country-club sport kneeling to kiss the feet of a black man -- I'll bet my house that only happened this one time anywhere.