Faldo/Norman E-Book

Andy Farrell

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 440

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Going into the final round of the 1996 Masters, Greg Norman led by six strokes. Having missed chance after chance throughout his career, this finally seemed to be year that the 'Great White Shark' would win the green jacket. But playing alongside him in the final pairing of the final day was the one man who always seemed to get the better of the Australian when it really mattered. What followed was one of the most excruciating collapses in sporting history. Faldo/Norman provides a blow-by-blow account of the riveting final round of the 1996 Masters over 18 chapters, weaving in the story of the entire tournament, the state of golf at the time, and the history of both players' careers and rivalry. For a decade Norman and Faldo, in their different ways, dominated the game, and their epic meeting at Augusta would prove to be the end of a golfing era.

Leseprobe

FALDO/NORMAN

FALDO/NORMAN

The 1996 Masters:

A duel that defined an era

ANDY FARRELL

CONTENTS

Introduction

Hole 1: Tea Olive

Hole 2: Pink Dogwood

Hole 3: Flowering Peach

Hole 4: Flowering Crab Apple

Hole 5: Magnolia

Hole 6: Juniper

Hole 7: Pampas

Hole 8: Yellow Jasmine

Hole 9: Carolina Cherry

Hole 10: Camellia

Hole 11: White Dogwood

Hole 12: Golden Bell

Hole 13: Azalea

Hole 14: Chinese Fir

Hole 15: Firethorn

Hole 16: Redbud

Hole 17: Nandina

Hole 18: Holly

Scores

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Index

INTRODUCTION

Everyone who saw it has their own memories of that fateful day. You only have to mention the 1996 Masters, and Faldo/Norman, and they come tumbling out. Television viewers recall simply how difficult it was to watch, how the prolonged agony became so disquieting. Those who were on the course remember the unnatural hush, people looking at their feet as the final two players passed by, spectators flooding for the gates well before the finish.

The outcome had appeared certain when Norman led by six strokes at the start of the day but the reversal of fortunes was so dramatic that Faldo eventually won by five. ‘It was a wedding that turned into a funeral,’ someone said of the atmosphere. Others’ instinct was immediately to mention the press conference afterwards when Norman fronted up to every last question about how devastating it must be for the green jacket to slip through his hands yet again, repeating as often as was required that he would be fine, thank you.

My own memories are less about the golf and more about technological failure and human ineptitude. A freelance golf writer at the time, the Saturday of that Masters was the first time I had done the main report for a national newspaper from a major championship. The five-hour time difference with the UK creates its own problems – and in 1996 there was no broadband or Wi-Fi to come to your aid, e-mail and mobiles not yet standard parts of the kit – but having to use four different machines to file each of the four editions to the Independent on Sunday only added to the chaos. The initial problem was the failure of the modem on my battered old Apple Mac, while another laptop, kindly but unwisely lent by a colleague, died when I spilt Coca-Cola on it. A borrowed Tandy, that clunky but indestructible pre-laptop word processor, enabled me to file the ‘on the whistle’ close-of-play report.

Sunday was taken up with retyping a myriad of stories destined for Golf Weekly magazine while the brief from The Independent for a sidebar story on Norman’s previous Masters disasters appeared simple enough. Alas, midway through the afternoon it became increasingly apparent that the way I had written the piece would not stand up. As I was frantically rewriting, Martin Johnson, who was sitting next to me in the Augusta press room and had exactly the same brief for the Daily Telegraph, was in relaxed mode. The old pro did not have to change a single word.

It is fair to say that retreating from a post-round huddle with Colin Montgomerie, who had delivered a five-star woe-is-me rant after taking a triple-bogey eight at the 15th for the second day running, on this particular occasion I was less than sympathetic and inclined to observe that Monty did not know the half of it.

It was more than a decade later that the first germ of an idea for this book emerged after seeing the original stage version of Frost/Nixon in London. Peter Morgan’s play set up the series of interviews as a battle of wills, almost as a sporting duel. But rather than boxing or fencing, it suggested to me the long-drawn-out psychological warfare of golf. And the notion that a supposedly dominant participant should ultimately capitulate under the sustained pressure and perseverance of his opponent suggested one tournament above all others: the 1996 Masters. It seemed obvious this was a story worth retelling.

Looking back, the events of Sunday 14 April 1996 not only sealed the verdicts on both men – Norman, the great showman whose go-for-broke golf let him down too often when it mattered most; Faldo, feared and respected rather than loved but at his best when the pressure was at its greatest – but also on an era of the game. After Tom Watson, the latest in a long line of American golfing legends, had dominated in the early 1980s, a new group of international stars had emerged – including Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Nick Price. Faldo and Norman, both having been ranked as the world’s best player for lengthy spells and after numerous head-to-head contests, were the last men standing from that new generation.

A year on from their climactic encounter at Augusta, the game would have a new superstar. Tiger Woods had the power of the Australian and the precision of the Englishman, which proved an all-conquering combination for so many years. No matter whether the Tiger era is over, enough golfing history has been made in the meantime that it is relevant to be reminded of an earlier age.

So why write this book now? The 20th anniversary in 2016 might have been a more logical moment. But then Adam Scott won the Masters. After so many disappointments, usually involving Norman, Australia had a wearer of the green jacket. And the connections with 2013 did not stop there. Justin Rose won the US Open to become the first Englishman to win a major championship since Faldo 17 years earlier. Phil Mickelson, who pipped Frank Nobilo for third place in the 1996 Masters, won the Open Championship at Muirfield after two decades of trying, while it was at Muirfield that Nobilo became a member of the BBC television commentary team. Now a respected pundit for the Golf Channel in America, Nobilo had had an initial BBC outing back in 1996 when he joined Steve Rider as a guest after his round, offering eloquent observations on Norman’s collapse and presaging his future career. At the US PGA in 2013, Jason Dufner equalled the major championship record of 63, just as Norman had done at the 1996 Masters. And there was even a golfer, Inbee Park, trying to win her fourth major championship of the year at St Andrews, where Masters founder Bobby Jones started his Grand Slam in 1930.

It was time indeed to return to the story of Faldo/Norman and the duel that defined an era of the game when an Englishman and an Australian vied to be the best player in the world.

Tea Olive

Hole 1 Yards 400*; Par 4

GREG NORMAN came to the 1st tee with a six-stroke lead. This was the final round of the 60th Masters and everyone standing around the tee box – no need for grandstands at Augusta National as there are at the Ryder Cup and even the other major championships these days, the players are separated from the public by a simple rope line – believed that he was going to win.

So did virtually everyone else who had come onto the grounds that morning, now lining the 1st fairway or staking out the prime positions around the course. For those just yards away around the 18th green, nothing could be more certain than the identity of the winner who would salute them at the end of the afternoon. Television viewers might have thought something similar, except coverage of the climax of golf’s first major of the year did not start for another hour or so. But make no mistake, this was going to be a parade, at the end of which the Norman Conquest of Augusta would finally be complete.

Perhaps only two people were not thinking along these lines. One was Norman himself. He could not afford to. He still had a tournament to win. He led by six strokes but they had only played 54 holes, there were 18 still to come. A quarter of the marathon still to be raced. Norman told himself to treat the round as if he had no lead at all. If he wins on the day, then he wins the title. Keep it simple.

Another person who did not think it was a foregone conclusion was the other player standing on the 1st tee. Nick Faldo did not think he would win. But he had not ruled out the possibility that he could win. If nothing else, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, he was going to pretend he could win and see what happened.

Most people, however, chose to believe the evidence of the leaderboard, which showed Norman at 13 under par for the first three rounds. He had equalled the course record of 63 in the first round to lead by two strokes, and then followed up with a steady 69 in tricky conditions on Friday to extend his lead to four strokes. On Saturday he again added two strokes to his lead after returning a 71 to the 73 of his nearest opponent, Faldo. Norman appeared to be striking the ball as well as ever and, just as importantly, had the assured look of a player who was in control of his game and his mind. Not even playing alongside his old rival in the third round had disturbed his equilibrium.

But Faldo had not gone away. His putting had gone through a wobbly patch on the back nine on Saturday but had come good just at the right time, producing a birdie at the 17th hole and a par-saver at the last to ensure he again played alongside the leader on the final day. Faldo and Norman had spent 20 years crossing swords on the fairways of the professional game. In the previous decade they had each in turn been the best golfer in the world. Following on from Tom Watson and Seve Ballesteros in the early 1980s, Norman and Faldo had become golf’s premier rivalry.

In 1986 a ranking system was introduced by Mark McCormack’s International Management Group, then agents to Norman and Faldo, among others. It has since evolved into today’s Official World Golf Rankings but in its first decade of existence it showed Norman’s dominance of the game. In all, the Australian spent 331 weeks as number one; Faldo was the next best on 97 weeks.

It was during that year (1986) that Norman won his first major championship, the Open at Turnberry. He won it again at Sandwich in 1993, the greatest performance of his career as he raced clear of all the best golfers of the day, including Faldo.

But in between Norman’s twin triumphs, Faldo won five majors – the Open three times and the Masters twice – putting him alongside Ballesteros as Europe’s most successful player. When it mattered most, Faldo came out on top more often. Wasn’t it Norman’s hero Jack Nicklaus, the game’s greatest major winner with 18 titles, who said that he could play his game longer than others could play theirs? Let the other guy make more mistakes than you.

Faldo also learnt to do just that, by stifling his natural flair, completely revamping his swing and absorbing himself in the task at hand to the exclusion of all else. His reputation for being almost machine-like was sealed by his 18 pars in the final round of the 1987 Open at Muirfield, his first major victory. At other times, when not quite on his game, he wore his perfectionism so fussily that Brough Scott wrote in the Independent on Sunday in 1991: ‘Everyone suffers on a Faldo round, Faldo most of all. Anything less than perfection gets a terrible black mark. Out on the course it will never be easy to love him. For he does not love himself.’

A choice between watching Norman or Faldo was no contest. When Norman arrived in Europe, the ‘Brisbane Bomber’ was right up there with Ballesteros in the thrill-a-minute department: his Scandinavian looks from his Finnish mother, Toini, combined with the surfer boy image straight from central casting by the Australian tourist board (long before Crocodile Dundee, this). ‘Norman is a sight worth seeing on a golf course,’ wrote John Hopkins in the Sunday Times in 1984, ‘and not only for his guardsman’s walk, his parchment-coloured hair and a voice that echoes around the fairways. He hits the ball as if his life depends on it. From the top of his backswing, when his powerful shoulders are fully turned, he brings his club down at high speed, often grunting with the effort, and swinging so hard that his hands are swept through, up and around his head until his body position resembles a reverse C. When his dander is up, he creates such an impression of power that you wince when he makes contact.’

Now, on Sunday 14 April 1996 both men stood side by side awaiting their opening shots of the final round of the Masters. The date was significant: the last three winners on April 14 had all been non-Americans: Ian Woosnam in 1991, Bernhard Langer in 1985 and Gary Player in 1974. Further confirmation that Norman was on to a good thing arrived with news that the previous five winners of the Masters had played in the final pairing on the last day (as would the next 12). It was the perfect spring day in Georgia, ideal golfing conditions and both men were dressed similarly, in black trousers and white shirts, Faldo with vertical stripes, Norman with dark geometric shapes and, of course, his trademark hat.

It was a black wide-brimmed synthetic straw hat, a golfing version of the Akubra bushman’s hat. In his youth, Norman had had a scruffy old straw hat that he wore down at the beach or while fishing or boating. He continued with the old favourite when he took up golf, even if his mother (the golfer in the family) thought it inappropriate for the golf club. It seems a distant past, compared to the modern ubiquity of golfing caps, when the game’s stars went bareheaded, as Faldo was this day. In fact, Faldo always looked a bit odd when he later adopted a cap, his distinctive features hidden as they are for virtually all today’s leading players, a strange uniformity prevailing.

Norman, by contrast, looked eye-catching whether showing off his yellow mane or sporting the Akubra. Of course, the latest version featured his ‘Great White Shark’ logo, the nickname bestowed long ago on his debut in the Masters having not just stuck but become a brand in itself. The hat, as so much with Norman, suggested that anything other than winning was not an option. But the more inevitable not winning became that day, the more incongruous the hat became. Curiously, Norman won his two majors hatless, his most distinctive feature unhidden, albeit under the softer rays of the British seaside sun.

Was Norman a talented showman or one of the golfing greats? This was the day that should have put an end to such questions but actually only intensified them. David Davies wrote in the 1999 book Beyond the Fairways: ‘So, what is he, this blond-haired, icy-blue-eyed man with broad shoulders, flat belly, slim hips and long legs and who is likely to be wearing a big hat, a garish shirt and tight trousers? Is he a great golfer or a charismatic clothes horse? Is he the most imposing player in modern professional golf or a total poser? The questions follow him around the world.’

Norman’s ability to make money, whether on the golf course or in his increasingly successful business ventures, was not in question. Nor was his liking for speed and expensive toys – the cars, yachts, helicopters, jets – nor his energy and zest for life. Good on him. But golfing greatness required something more, something to add to the two claret jugs and to balance the scale against the times he came so close but ultimately failed, sometimes by his own hand, sometimes due to terrible misfortune. Victory at Augusta, the scene of so many previous Masters disasters, was his due. He had been sized up for a green jacket, the symbol of a Masters champion, so often but now it seemed certain that finally he was going to be able to wear one.

From the opening tee shot that Sunday a different story started to unfold, centred around not one but two players. It was uncomfortable, sickening, traumatic at times, and through it all a pensive grimace was glued to Norman’s face. It had been there ever since his eyes first started turning left, following the ball, from his very first drive of the day.

As it turned out, the ‘most imposing player in modern professional golf’, as Davies put it, was to be not Norman but Tiger Woods. Just a year later Woods burst onto the scene by winning the 1997 Masters by a record 12 strokes and his tenure at the top of the world rankings has lasted twice as long as that of Norman’s. And it would take another 17 years for an Australian, Adam Scott, finally to win the Masters, in 2013.

While Norman and Faldo have moved on to new careers with success, the impact of their epic duel at the 1996 Masters has had a lasting effect. Their influence lives on in the new generation of players who have followed each of them, such as Scott and Justin Rose. Norman heads a number of companies under the umbrella of Great White Shark Enterprises and in the syntax of Twitter has found the perfect expression of his personal mantra: #AttackLife. Sir Nick Faldo, for he was knighted by the Queen in 2009 for services to golf, has created a worldwide junior tournament scheme as well as becoming one of the game’s leading television commentators. Each April the Englishman is ensconced in a tower above the 18th green at Augusta National to analyse and comment for the American broadcaster CBS.

It was below Faldo on the final green that Scott holed a 25-footer and bellowed: ‘C’mon Aussie’. It got the 32-year-old into a playoff with Angel Cabrera which Scott won at the second extra hole when he holed a 15-footer for birdie in the dark and rain on the 10th green. ‘An unbelievable, magical moment – he is now officially the Wizard of Oz. What a couple of putts they were!’ Faldo exclaimed as a nation on the other side of the world celebrated over breakfast. ‘From Down Under to on top of the world,’ added CBS’s Australian commentator Ian Baker-Finch.

Australians had won the other three golfing majors, and winning the Open Championship remains the dream for any young Aussie golfer, as it was for Norman. But not winning the Masters was getting ridiculous. Too many good players had failed in the quest and Norman’s near misses had almost traumatised a nation.

‘Between the Bangles and the Boomtown Rats, it’s pretty much set in underwater-cured concrete that Mondays have a bit to answer for. They certainly have for Australian golf fans, especially during the mesmerising but frequently demoralising heyday of Greg Norman,’ wrote Patrick Mangan in So Close – The Bravest, Craziest, Unluckiest Defeats in Aussie Sport (Norman could have multiple entries in all those categories).

Scott had watched the 1996 Masters as a 15-year-old golf-mad Shark fan and was crying by the end. After his victory he said: ‘Part of this belongs to Greg. He inspired a nation of golfers. He was the best player in the world and was an icon in Australia. He has devoted so much time to myself and other Australian players who have come after him. He has given me so much inspiration and belief.’ Norman had long since gone from being Scott’s hero to his mentor and the champion said he was looking forward to celebrating over a beer with him. Norman, who was watching at his home in Florida, was delighted. ‘There was more pressure on Adam because no Australian has ever won the Masters. It was a monumental feat and I’m so happy for him.’

This is what Scott’s victory meant: within 24 hours the members of the Australian Golf Writers Association had unanimously agreed, halfway through April, that Scott would be their player of the year – nothing could top this. Scott was also honoured with Australia’s top sporting award, The Don, named after cricket legend Don Bradman. When he returned home in November he received the keys to the City of Gold Coast and there was a ‘Wear Green for Adam Scott Day’ at the Australian PGA Championship. ‘The whole of Australia was buzzing with excitement following Adam’s momentous victory at Augusta,’ said Brian Thorburn, CEO of the PGA of Australia. ‘We wanted to provide a welcome home befitting his achievement whilst also giving fans the chance to celebrate.’

When Scott received a congratulatory text from his friend Rose, Scott replied that the Englishman was next. ‘This is our time,’ he wrote. ‘He’s a wise man,’ Rose said after winning the US Open at Merion, hitting a four-iron at the final hole from beside the plaque commemorating Ben Hogan’s one-iron in 1950. Both Scott and Rose could go on to win more majors. Perhaps they will be the new Norman and Faldo, although the old duo themselves might be in competition again once Fox take over televising the US Open in 2015. When the announcement was made that the US Golf Association was dropping NBC and Johnny Miller, Norman admitted he had been approached to become the lead analyst for Fox’s first venture into golf.

Rose was the first Englishman to win the US Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970 – Faldo never managed it – and the first Englishman to win any major since Faldo at the 1996 Masters. ‘It was always a matter of time before one of us broke through,’ Rose said. ‘But I’m glad it was me.’ Rose had had lunch with Faldo two weeks before. ‘He’s a classy guy,’ said Faldo. ‘No matter how many times he got knocked down, he still had self-belief.’

Scott won on his 12th appearance and at 32 was exactly the average age for a Masters winner. Norman was two months past his 41st birthday in April 1996 and was making his 16th appearance at Augusta. No one would have been older or taken as long to win their first Masters had the Shark won that year (although at 41 years and three months, Mark O’Meara would have taken the age record anyway in 1998).

Only three players, Horton Smith, Gene Sarazen and Fuzzy Zoeller, have won on their Masters debut, and the first two of those were in the first two years of the tournament. Charl Schwartzel became only the third player to win on his second appearance in 2012.

It took Woods three goes, Arnold Palmer and Ballesteros four each, Nicklaus and Gary Player five and Faldo six, which turns out to be the average number of appearances before a first Masters win. In all, Norman appeared 23 times in the Masters, with eight top-five finishes. Gene Littler and Tom Kite, who had nine top-fives, hold the record for the most appearances without winning (26). Without the winner’s lifetime exemption, all the other qualifications for receiving an invitation eventually run out. Faldo chooses not to play any longer; Norman does not have that choice.

For Norman, the Masters was his favourite tournament of the year and Augusta National one of his favourite courses. Winning this event became something of an obsession, particularly after having had a chance to get into a playoff with Nicklaus in 1986, but flailing his approach deep into the crowd, and in 1987 when he was in a playoff down at the 11th when Larry Mize did the unthinkable and holed an outrageous chip from well off the green. ‘From the last day of the 1986 tournament, from the very moment I missed the putt for the par, for the next year, 24 hours a day, I thought about the Masters,’ he said. ‘Every day it was on my mind. More than anything else in my life, I wanted to win that one.’ Trying to get the Mize chip out of his head was even worse.

But the 1996 Masters was all about Norman. Even the introduction to the final round on the BBC coverage hardly mentioned Faldo. Over pictures of Norman’s highlights from the third round, Steve Rider said: ‘The icy nerve of Greg Norman, six shots clear after 54 holes of the US Masters, form that rarely wavered, a putter that rarely failed. He’s led throughout. He’s always looked in control. Even the treacherous 16th held no fears and yesterday produced a vital birdie. They say yesterday was the day he won the US Masters. Today is surely not the day he’s going to lose it. It’s happened before, though. In 1986, needing a four to tie at the last he took five and Nicklaus won the title.’

Cue the video of Norman’s four-iron diving right of the green and Peter Alliss’s commentary: ‘That really was a dreadful shot. Put to the test and found wanting, I’m afraid.’

Rider again: ‘In 1987 victory looked assured. He was in control of a playoff only for Larry Mize to produce his miracle and Norman was second at the Masters once again.’ Cue video with Alliss’s succinct: ‘And they say the meek shall inherit the earth…’

Rider, over a caption with the leaderboard: ‘Greg Norman, the world number one, seems poised to put all that agonising history behind him. In yesterday’s third round he opened up a six-shot lead over his nearest rival Nick Faldo. Greg Norman arrived at Augusta National a few hours ago ahead of what most people are expecting to be a triumphant march to his first major title in the United States. Once again playing alongside Nick Faldo, admitting he was in need of a miracle but in the last round of the Masters, the miraculous can happen.’

That morning’s newspapers had trodden a similar line between proclaiming Norman as the winner and not wishing more of the unthinkable on him. ‘Shark smells blood’ was the headline in the Augusta Chronicle, with the subheading: ‘Pursuers can only hope for complete collapse by Norman, who holds six-shot lead going into the final round’.

Those who did not see the result as a foregone conclusion were certainly in the minority, although some time after the 1996 Masters, the sports columnist Ian Wooldridge admitted of Faldo’s victory: ‘Shamefully, I confess that on the previous evening, emboldened by several martinis, I’d backed Nick to do it and thereby won the biggest bet of my life.’ (Details unknown but Ladbrokes had Faldo at 7-1 before the final round, Norman at 1-8.)

Ron Green, in the Charlotte Observer, wrote: ‘Greg Norman won the Masters on Saturday. Now, if he can only keep from losing it. Don’t worry, he won’t lose this time. Surely, not this time. He has a six-shot lead over Nick Faldo, who doesn’t score a lot of 65s and 66s, the kind of scores he’ll need to even have a chance of catching Norman. Phil Mickelson is another shot back, but he drives his ball into the camellias too much and has to play trick shots to make his pars. Nobody else is in the game. It will be Greg Norman against himself out there Sunday on those rolling fairways where so many of his demons have been born. It is a formidable opponent.’

Meanwhile, Australian journalists were up late on Saturday night concocting tributes for their Monday morning newspapers, which would arrive on readers’ doormats as the final round was taking place. The Sydney Morning Herald may have indicated that Norman was Australia’s greatest sportsman since Bradman. They changed their tune after the following day.

On Saturday evening, after his third round, Norman was asked if he had ‘thought about the ceremony and the jacket, and will you think about that tonight?’ Norman was not falling for the cart-before-the-horse trick. He replied: ‘No, I haven’t. I never have in the past. When you’ve got the lead in a tournament, you don’t think about the end result. You just think about what you’re doing at the time and relax and chill out. If you get ahead of yourself, it is not going to work. So, I’ll wake up tomorrow and do what I’ve been doing and get ready for the 1st tee.’

Temptation was everywhere, however. After a late practice session, Norman went back to the locker room, where a friend said: ‘Your last night in here.’ Masters champions use a different changing room upstairs in the clubhouse. Another longtime friend of Norman’s, Peter Dobereiner, the great golf writer for The Observer and The Guardian, was attending the Masters for the last time. He died in August that year, with Norman paying a handsome tribute: ‘To think of golf without Peter Dobereiner is like a bunker without sand, a fairway without grass, a flag without a green. His dry humour, wonderful understanding of the game, coupled with his deep love for the sport, is going to be sadly missed.’ But now, standing at the urinals in the (downstairs) locker room at Augusta, Norman could do little more than force a smile when Dobereiner remarked: ‘Well, Greg, not even you can fuck this one up.’

What Norman and Faldo did during the final round of the 1996 Masters is a matter of record. But what happened before their 2.49 p.m. tee time remains open to speculation. Not least for Norman himself. Asked on the Sunday evening if his routine had been anything different the night before or that morning, Norman replied: ‘No, nothing different. Everything was pretty much the same. I did the same process.’ Asked if he had slept well, he answered: ‘Yeah, I slept great. By the time you get back and eat, you don’t get to sleep until 12, 12.30 a.m. But I wake up every morning at nine. I had a lot of good night’s sleep. That wasn’t my problem.’

During the week, Norman’s back had played up and he had to curtail his practice on Wednesday. But after treatment from both Fred Couples’s back specialist and then his own trainer, he was fine once the tournament got under way. He did not mention it in his Sunday night press conference, but when interviewed for the ABC TV documentary programme Australian Story, which aired in Australia in September 2013, Norman said: ‘Again, there’s more to it than people realise. Because I did have bad back issues that morning and I tried to walk it off but I couldn’t. I told my coach, “Today’s not going to be easy.” ’

This made news around the world along the lines of Norman suddenly changing his story. That is not true and is unfair in the sense that he would not have wanted to discuss the full extent of his back issues during the tournament. In 2009, on the eve of his return to the Masters after a six-year absence, Norman told Jeff Rude of GolfWeek: ‘My timing was off. I knew on the driving range before I teed off. My back was bad on Saturday, and I woke up Sunday morning very stiff. I went for a one and a half mile walk to try and loosen it up. But on the range, my turn wasn’t good. You look at all the shots from the 1st hole on – they were just three or four yards out. The more I pushed it, the harder it was. So you feel like water going through your fingers. It’s just disappearing.’

Augusta National, with its hills – proper ski-slope inclines – is no place for someone with a bad back to walk all week. In Breaking the Slump, also published in 2009, Jimmy Roberts wrote that Norman woke up with a stiff back. Norman told him: ‘No matter what I tried to do in a short amount of time on the range, I couldn’t get the club squared up.’

In his GolfWeek piece, Rude quoted Norman’s then coach, Butch Harmon, who had masterminded his rise back to being world number one after a couple of poor years at the start of the 1990s, as saying he had noticed his man ‘didn’t have it’ on the range on Sunday. Harmon said: ‘He was definitely a different person physically and emotionally. He fought his back all week but played within himself. Sunday, it was like he tried to push everything. There was a tremendous amount of anxiety in his body that day.’ However, in a Golf World interview published in September 1996, Harmon, while saying Norman’s whole nervous system was out of synch, also said: ‘I never anticipated it would happen that way. I didn’t see anything before the round on Sunday – whether it be swing mechanics, personality or nerves that gave me any indication that would happen. I was in a state of shock.’

Lauren St John, in her 1998 book Greg Norman – The Biography, wrote: ‘Out on the range, Norman felt nervous but, as he later told his wife, Laura, “It was the right kind of nerves.” He didn’t feel the curious deadness that had come over him at St Andrews in 1990, and he didn’t feel as jittery and nauseous as he had at Turnberry in 1986. He felt hopeful and relaxed. Watching him, Butch Harmon thought his ball-striking was almost perfect. A constant stream of people came up to wish Norman the best.’ Ken Brown, the former Ryder Cup player, was covering the Masters for BBC Radio and remembered watching Norman on the range. ‘He was flushing everything,’ he recalled. Norman’s last shot before leaving the driving range and short game area to go through to the other side of the clubhouse, and the putting green and the 1st tee, was to hole a bunker shot.

Norman himself wrote in his autobiography, The Way of the Shark (2006), about his back problems on the eve of the tournament. But in light of future comments, this is strange about the Sunday: ‘I recall walking up feeling hopeful and relaxed. My back was still in good shape, so I knew I had an opportunity to fulfil one of my career dreams.’

Painting the scene before the final round, the 1996 Masters Annual reported: ‘On the practice tee, Norman was the picture of relaxation. He chatted with fellow competitor Frank Nobilo and the two made a date for a practice round at the next Tour stop. Norman seemed in no hurry to get down to business, trying on three brand-new shark-emblazoned golf gloves before finding the one that felt just right. Then he worked methodically through a half dozen irons and woods, pausing now and then to joke with his caddie Tony Navarro and coach Butch Harmon. At one point, Norman playfully poked a finger into Harmon’s forehead and all three men laughed heartily. If Norman was less than comfortable with his swing or his situation, he didn’t show it.

‘Throughout the previous three days, the tournament had buzzed with talk of the “new Norman”, the wiser, more serene warrior whose competence had at last matched his confidence. The fellow striping skyscraper two-irons to the back of the range was that Greg Norman.

‘A few steps away, Nick Faldo toiled in a more studious mode. He, too, was flanked by his caddie and his coach but there was no byplay with Fanny Sunesson and his few exchanges with David Leadbetter focused on swing mechanics, Leadbetter stepping in at one point to check club position as Faldo froze at the top of the swing. Team Faldo, it seemed, had serious work to do.’

In fact, Faldo had spent his morning on the phone with his parents, which was atypical on the Sunday of a major, and got so caught up with the NASCAR motor racing on the television that there was no time for his usual hour-and-a-half warm-up session. Sunesson told him he had 57 minutes till their tee time when he walked onto the range at last. ‘In reality, this break in my usual routine was probably a good thing for me as it meant that I just had to get on with my practice,’ Faldo wrote in Life Swings, his autobiography, ‘whereas Greg had been down there early, talking to everyone.’

Even Faldo. As the pair waited on the 1st tee, they chatted. ‘Oh, we were talking about photographers,’ Norman reported. ‘The way they do it here at the Augusta National is the best. Like everything else they do here, it’s the best championship we play. We get to play the game without having to ask photographers to move. Sometimes they don’t know they’re in the line of sight of where you want to play. But here they’ve got them situated in fixed positions. Nick said it would be great if we can get this at the British Open and would speak to Michael Bonallack.’ The Masters remains unique in excluding press and photographers from inside the ropes, something the then secretary of the Royal and Ancient was probably used to players complaining about at the Open.

Then there would be no more talking until the 18th green. Phil Harison, the starter for 60 years until his death in 2008, announced: ‘Fore, please, Greg Norman now driving.’ It was a pull into the trees on the left between the 1st and 9th fairways. He had a direct route to the green but his recovery was a fraction short for the tight line that he attempted to play. The ball toppled back into the bunker on the left and from there he came out seven feet past the hole. Faldo had driven safely and then hit a nine-iron to the heart of the green. His 25-foot putt, slightly uphill, came up a touch short but it was a sure four. Norman missed his putt, the sort he had been holing all week, but this one did not come close to touching the hole.

It was a different day, a different Norman: that much was obvious already. Quite when he realised he was in trouble, well before the round or on this 1st hole, will remain shrouded in doubt. The scoreboard reflected only a minor change, and his lead was still commanding at five strokes. Was it to be a momentary blip or was it game on?

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* Hole yardages stated in chapter headings refer to the course as played in 1996.

Pink Dogwood

Hole 2 Yards 555; Par 5

ABOGEY WAS NOT the best start but it was nothing to panic about, either. After an opening hole that is designed to wake up any golfer not immediately on top of their game, the 2nd offers a chance to even up the scorecard. It is a big, sweeping hole that swings from right to left, downhill, so it does not play as long as the yardage suggests.

It usually plays as the second or third easiest hole on the course but that does not mean it is without danger. A ravine on the left is referred to as the ‘Delta ticket counter’ as a trip in there on the first couple of days can lead to a rescheduling of flights for Friday evening and a weekend at home. It was the last of the par-fives at Augusta to concede an albatross, Louis Oosthuizen holing out for a two from 253 yards with a four-iron – before losing to another spectacular shot in the playoff by Bubba Watson in 2012.

Norman had already given a hint of encouragement to Faldo, who was happy to receive any tiny crumb of comfort, so this was the time to recapture the initiative. Yet Faldo, having gained the honour and already driven off at the 2nd hole, certainly noticed a change in the leader. So much for the mantra of only ‘playing your own game’. Inside the ropes at a major championship is as intimate as a boxing ring.

Perhaps Norman was still fretting about the frailty of his back or the lack of coordination he felt in his swing on the very first shot of the day. ‘As we stood on the second tee,’ Faldo wrote in Life Swings, ‘I could feel the nervousness emanating from Greg. He gripped and regripped his club time and again, as though he could not steel himself to hit the ball. “Obviously, something is going on in Greg’s mind,” I thought to myself. Courageously – and the White Shark has never been less than courageous on a golf course – he matched my birdie four on the second where he showed sublime touch from off the back of the green, which suggested that he had pulled himself together.’

Norman certainly had no problem with his tee shot, outdriving Faldo by 50 yards. His second shot, however, trickled through the back of the green into the first row of spectators. Once the folding chairs and the people had been pushed back, and with two stewards raising the gallery rope above his head, Norman putted down stone dead and then tapped in for his four.

Faldo had hit a five-wood for his second shot into the front-right bunker – the hole was cut on the right wing of the green as it usually is on Masters Sunday – and played a fine recovery shot to two feet. Norman was back to even par for the day but Faldo had kept his deficit at five. Given the power and the touch shown by Norman here, it was one of the day’s many contradictions that Faldo should be the one to birdie all four of the par-fives. It is also sobering to think that Norman played the par-fives in three under and still managed to score a 78.

‘Greg Norman has always been the guy who is going to win the Masters one year. It’s been that way since his first appearance at Augusta National, sporting a gold neck chain and unbelievably white blond hair,’ wrote Robert Green in Golf International. ‘Norman, Augusta and Sunday have come to represent one of golf’s more unsettling ménages a trois – not so much the Great Triumvirate, more the Folies-Bergère.’

Norman made his debut at Augusta in 1981 and led after an opening round of 69. So far he had played mainly in Australia and Europe and this was only his second major in America. After the round he talked about his outdoors, seaside life growing up in Queensland and it was a headline writer for the Augusta Chronicle who christened him the ‘Great White Shark’. It was better than his initial nickname of the ‘Brisbane Bomber’, but Norman was at first uncomfortable with it. Soon, however, he embraced being one of golf’s leading predators, in a line of succession from the Golden Bear to Tiger Woods, and it was a unique brand to let loose on the corporate world when he started to tee it up as a businessman.

That first year, Norman was lying third after three rounds but owing to a quaint Masters custom of the time, that meant he was paired with the leader on the final day. Before pairing players by score on the weekend became de rigueur, tournaments such as the Masters would more likely spread the leaders out, at one point entrusting the third-round leader to elder statesman Byron Nelson for the final round. For Norman, it meant he had the best seat in the house as Tom Watson held off Jack Nicklaus and Johnny Miller, while his own fourth place was an encouraging start. Was it also an omen? It was the first of ten times in major championships that he played in the final pairing in the final round and he only won once.

That victory came at the Open Championship in 1986, the year Norman did what became known as his ‘Saturday Slam’, leading after 54 holes at all four majors. At Augusta, Norman led by one from a large group of players that included Seve Ballesteros, Nick Price and Bernhard Langer. When Norman had a double bogey at the 10th, it looked as if Ballesteros, after an eagle at the 13th, would win a third green jacket. But just ahead of the Spaniard, something extraordinary was going on. Jack Nicklaus, at the age of 46, was making one last charge at Augusta and the galleries were roaring their heads off.

Ballesteros could hear it all, especially the cheers for Nicklaus’s eagle at the 15th and then the birdie at the 16th, just before Seve faced his second to the 15th. He hit a miserable four-iron that never had a chance of clearing the pond in front of the green, a moment accompanied by a strangulated cheer. Ballesteros was done and Nicklaus added another rousing birdie at the 17th. The ‘Olden’ Bear had come home in 30 for a closing 65 and his sixth green jacket.

Except Norman had not given up, despite his gallery having shrunk considerably. He birdied the 14th hole, the 15th, then the 16th and the 17th for four in a row and a tie with Nicklaus at nine under. A birdie to win, a par for a playoff. Despite having hit his driver at the 18th all week, and the fact that he had become the best driver in the game – long and straight – he hit a three-wood off the tee and then had 175 yards to the green. He and his caddie Pete Bender agreed on a four-iron but Norman sailed it well right of the green into the gallery and over towards the 10th hole. He chipped back down but could not make the 16-footer to tie.

‘I let my ego get the better of me,’ he said afterwards. ‘I was going for the flag. I was trying to hit it too hard and too high and spun out of it.’ In The Way of the Shark, Norman said the idea had been to hit an ‘easy four-iron’ rather than a hard five. After all, it was none other than Nicklaus, after they had played together in the Australian Open years earlier, who had advised Norman to learn to ‘hit more delicately with longer clubs to gain additional control’, rather than to hit hard every time. But instinct had taken over. It was either the wrong shot or the wrong club, but it was certainly muddled thinking. The result was not pretty.

A year later Norman again suffered disappointment on the 72nd hole at Augusta. On that occasion, he did hit a driver off the tee and put his second on the green. His birdie putt from 22 feet looked as if it would fall but just stayed out. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ Norman said. ‘I could feel the ball going into the hole.’ A par meant a playoff with Ballesteros and Larry Mize. Seve departed after the first extra hole, trudging up the hill from the 10th green in floods of tears having again been denied his third Masters title.

Norman and Mize went on to the 11th and the American, who grew up in Augusta and had worked on the scoreboards at the tournament during his youth, shovelled his approach well wide of the green. Norman had an eight-iron and simply made sure he found the green. He was convinced there was no way Mize could get up and down. Imagine how shocked he was then when Mize holed his chip from what was measured as 140 feet.

Norman was not even looking, as he concentrated on how to nudge his putt down to tap-in range. But he soon found out when he was hit by a wall of sound and looked up to see Mize running around in excitement and the crowd going nuts in the background. After all that, there was no way Norman would hole his putt to stay alive. ‘This is probably the toughest loss I’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes.’ It happened just eight months after Bob Tway had holed a bunker shot at the 72nd hole to deny Norman at the previous major, the 1986 US PGA. No one had ever suffered such a brutal double-whammy. ‘All I can say is that at least I was there for both of them.’

Norman was not quite there in the 1988 Masters, finishing fifth only after a closing 64 from too far back. But the next year he again came to the last hole needing a birdie to win and a par to get in a playoff. He hit a one-iron off the tee and then went with the five-iron for his approach, this time coming up short on the upslope in front of the green. ‘It just didn’t fly, it hung up in the breeze,’ he said. He did not get up and down and missed out on the playoff, in which Nick Faldo beat Scott Hoch for his first Masters title.

A good weekend in 1992 got Norman up to a tie for sixth and he said: ‘If I can figure out a way to play the first two rounds better, I might be able to win this S.O.B. one of these days.’ Two years later he was a shot out of the lead at the halfway stage but slumped to 18th place. Two years after that, he had certainly figured out how to play the first two rounds – indeed, the first three rounds – but to no avail once again.

Norman’s ability to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory was not confined to Augusta National. ‘There’s no place I play where I haven’t screwed up at some point,’ he once told the Sunday Telegraph. At Sunningdale during the 1982 European Open, an earthworm emerged from the ground behind his ball just as he was about to hit and in trying to adjust his shot, Norman ended up in the gorse and that was that. His first runner-up finish in a major came at the 1984 US Open at Winged Foot when he birdied the 17th to tie for the lead but then at the last, as was to be repeated at Augusta two years later, pushed his second with a six-iron into the grandstand on the right. This time he holed a remarkable 45-footer for his par and Fuzzy Zoeller, who thought it had been for birdie, waved a white towel from back down the fairway in a salute of surrender. In fact, Zoeller tied with Norman and the next day they played an 18-hole playoff. Norman was never at the races, losing with a 75 to a 67 and waving his own white flag as the pair marched down the 18th fairway.

Two years later at the US Open at Shinnecock Hills, Norman was leading after 54 holes for the second major running. But he was not feeling well, was diagnosed with pneumonia and had no answer to the fast greens and strong winds of the final day. Five bogeys in eight holes from the 8th meant a 75 as he dropped to a tie for 12th place, six strokes behind the 43-year-old Ray Floyd, who had charged through the field with a 66. For the second major running, Norman had lost to a player who had become the oldest ever to win that championship.

At Turnberry a few weeks later, Norman did hang on to win his first major title and that was the year he went on to complete the ‘Saturday Slam’ by leading after 54 holes at Inverness in the US PGA. The closest anyone had got to such a feat was Ben Hogan in 1953, when he had led after three rounds of the three majors he contested that year. Of course, Hogan won all three of them. At Inverness, with rain delaying much of the final round until Monday, Norman’s four-stroke lead started disappearing early on the back nine. He ended up coming to the 18th tied with Tway and both men missed the green. Norman was in the better spot, with a relatively straightforward up-and-down, while Tway was in a deep bunker front-right of the green. When Tway holed his shot, Norman had to match him with his chip from just off the fringe and ended up taking a bogey.

Lee Trevino once said: ‘God never gives a golfer everything, he always holds something back. Jack Nicklaus didn’t get a sand wedge and Greg Norman didn’t get any luck.’ It is undeniable that Norman was hugely unlucky on occasions and not for the reason that you might surmise from Gary Player’s assertion that ‘the harder I work, the luckier I get’. Norman was not just one of the most talented golfers in the world, he was one of the hardest-working.