Off to the Gary Player Invitational at Zimbali this weekend

The guys from Johnnie Walker gave me a call a few weeks ago to invite me to the very cool Gary Player Invitational Golf Tournament at Zimbali this coming weekend. Johnnie Walker are one of the premier sponsors of the event, and it is looking to be a cracker of a weekend with some great golfers and celebrities lined up. The golfers in the challenge have been handpicked from a whole host of backgrounds, and achievements.

Some of the lineup for the big event include Gary Player, Ian Woosnam, Tony Johnstone, Sally Little, Roger Wessels and European tour winner George Coetzee, while some of the celebrities who will be lining up are sporting legends Pierre Spies, Lucas Radebe, Kapil Dev, Paul Collingwood, Shaun Pollock, rugby referee Craig Joubert and popular 5FM Breakfast Show host, Thomas Msengana. I’m gonna be heading down on Saturday to see some of these guys (and lady) in action. I am also really excited to have been invited to an exclusive putting session with Gary Player on Saturday afternoon, so will def be taking some pics and reporting back on that over the weekend. You can also follow me on Twitter, and I’ll be posting pics during the course of the day.

I had a bit of extra time on my hands last night, so I did some reading up on the Johnnie Walker brand and how it was started. The story itself is really interesting and, actually, pretty inspiring. The story goes that early in 1805 a grocer, John Walker saw a gap in the market for a whisky brand, which starting to gain popularity as a drink at the time, and decided to start blending his own. From there the blend become popular and people started asking for it by name, which was then named Johnnie Walker. The business & brand was passed on through generations, and only in 1908 did the striding man logo, that we all know so well today, come to life. Actually if you read the whole story (Also read the Wikipedia story) you will see how inspirational the story was, and how the brand has become so popular over the years. The association with the Gary Player invitational is pretty cool in the sense, if you look at what Gary Player has achieved, both as a golfer, and as a person, you will see the similarities between the brand and the legend.

I once read a quote by Gary Player – “The harder you practise, the luckier you get“, which is actually so true with anything in life, and actually pretty comparable to the Johnnie Walker motto ‘Keep Walking’ which essentially helps men and woman focus on their own progress and inspires them to move forward in life.