Faldo/Norman (14 page)

Norman topped the leaderboard at 12 under par but Faldo matched him with a second round of 65. He did not drop a shot, not even at the fearsome 17th; he had gone out in 32 and added birdies at the 10th, 15th and 16th holes. They shared the same 132 mark of Henry Cotton’s then 36-hole Open record and they were four ahead of the field. That Friday at St Andrews gets overlooked as one of the great days of Open action. ‘Throughout the day the bulging grandstands and the human chain of spectators lining the fairways back to the ancient clubhouse had been humming with the excited buzz of record scores, record low cut mark and the prospect of a duel that even Turnberry 1977 couldn’t live up to,’ wrote Daniel Davies in
Golf Illustrated Weekly
.

But this was no Jack Nicklaus-Tom Watson affair, whose 36-hole head-to-head at Turnberry 13 years earlier had ended with a single stroke between them. The deflation for all, bar Faldo, was overwhelming. ‘There was a whiff of cordite in the air,’ Faldo wrote in
Life Swings
. ‘Our duel had become a gunfight and I have never felt so determined to be the last man standing.’ It showed at the 1st hole on Saturday. Faldo and Norman’s putts were on the same line, Faldo from 18 feet, Norman about three feet inside him. Faldo holed, Norman missed.

‘I lost my rhythm with my putter,’ Norman said. ‘I had a makeable one at the 2nd and hit it too hard through the break. The next one I hit too soft. So now I’m second-guessing myself and it gets worse and worse.’ The Australian three-putted at the 2nd and although he made two birdies in three holes from the 4th, a bogey at the 9th meant a two-shot swing when Faldo picked up his third birdie of the day. Faldo was three ahead and went four clear with a 15-foot birdie at the 11th.

Norman, whose fine play over the first two days had been built on an element of caution, went back to his default setting and started attacking. It did him no good, finding sand off the tee that led to bogeys at the 12th and 13th holes. Faldo had all the answers, even escaping from a gorse bush for a par at the 12th, and he hit his approach at the last to two feet to end with a 67 and a new 54-hole Open record of 199. Norman came home in 40 for a 76, the third worst score of the day.

‘Saturday, July 21, will be remembered as the day Nick Faldo undressed Greg Norman in front of 45,000 fans and millions more on TV and left him with a new nickname: Crocodile Gerbil,’ wrote Dan Jenkins in
Golf Digest
. ‘Simultaneously, it was both an astounding sight and a pitiful sight. One man confident, dominant, executing his shots with a studied perfection; the other trying to figure out which end of the club to take a grip on.’

Norman rallied for a 69 the next day and finished joint sixth. David Miller wrote in
The Times
: ‘Greg Norman is a man tormented by two conflicting five-letter words: money and glory. He has all he could ever want of the former, but still yearns for the latter.’ Faldo hit his approach to three feet at the 1st for an opening birdie, which was the perfect settler. After 12 holes, Payne Stewart got within two shots of him but then drove into one of the Coffins bunkers at the 13th and dropped a shot. Faldo’s bogey at the 4th was the first time he had been in a bunker all week and was the only dropped shot that did not come at the 17th. His only three-putts came at the Road Hole, as well, but originated from off the putting surface as Faldo’s plan was to stay as far away from danger as possible, even if it meant deliberately missing the green. He finished off his victory with a 71 for a then record score of 18 under – improved to 19 under by Tiger Woods ten years later – with Stewart and Mark McNulty five strokes back.

Jenkins compared Faldo’s play that week to that of his hero, Ben Hogan. No praise could be higher. ‘Not since the days of Hogan had a player so mastered a golf course and a field of competitors as Faldo did at St Andrews,’ he wrote. ‘It was time for Faldo to win a major the way he did. His prior British Open (1987) and his two Masters victories the last two years had something unsettling about them; he had sort of picked them up off the floor after others had lost their grip. But this time, he just Hoganed the hell out of everybody, and you had to remind yourself that this is what he’s been doing for the past four years.’

The Sony Rankings still had Norman at the top of their list. But everyone knew Faldo, with his fourth major title, was now the best player around. The Shark might have been bruised but he was not conceding anything. ‘If I admit he was the No 1 guy, it would be admitting that he’s better than me,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that ever. He’s a great player but he can be beaten.’ In recent times, when they had played in the same tournament, each man had won three – but in Faldo’s case they were all majors.

This was Faldo’s first experience of leading from the front in the last round of a major. He had led by five and won by five, but it had not been comfortable. ‘My stomach was churning before the last round started,’ he explained. ‘I had to force my lunch down. With a five-shot lead, everybody expected me to win. If I had lost, it would have been a real blow-out.

‘I settled down when I hit a good tee shot and a good second shot to birdie the 1st hole. I wasn’t trying to be defensive at all – I just wanted to try and hit the right-shaped shot all the way round.’ Not just ‘one shot at a time’ but the ‘right-shaped shot’. Not just any shot between thoughts of lifting the Open trophy but a constant immersion in the detail. Finally, walking up the famous 18th fairway of the Old Course, and for the only time in
his career, he was able to truly enjoy a stroll to major victory. ‘It’s nice to have my baby back,’ he said on receiving the claret jug.

Faldo had also found a worthy accomplice in his pursuit of history. Fanny Sunesson had only started caddieing for the Englishman that season and they had won two of their first three majors together. She had quickly proven herself under the greatest pressure. Diligent in the extreme at scouting the turf underfoot each week and each championship day, her 22-year-old eyes helped Faldo, 33, with the lines on the greens. She also knew how to keep her man focused and relaxed at the right times.

Of the final round, when Stewart was getting close to the lead, Sunesson told Norman Dabell for his book
Winning the Open
: ‘I had to keep myself calm and I remember thinking that I must keep Nick calm as well. He was obviously tense, well aware that he had someone running as hot as he could to try and catch him. I tried to take his mind off the tournament a bit. Nick’s great for chat, he tells some great jokes all the time, but this was the last day. My turn. I felt I had to relax him a bit so I talked about dogs, wallpaper, how many bedrooms he was going to have in his new house, anything I could think of. At the end, it was unbelievable. The crowd was shouting my name and Nick just turned round and said, “Enjoy this moment.” ’

Another classic Faldo-Norman clash took place at the Johnnie Walker World Championship at Tryall in Jamaica in December 1992. It was the week before Christmas and Faldo was looking for his sixth win of the year. Even the world rankings had him as the No 1 by now. ‘It was a strange week,’ wrote Guy Yocom in
Golf World
(US), ‘one in which all the other 27 players in the field seemed afflicted by Jamaicaitis, that drowsy, near-hypnotic state
brought on by exposure to relentless sunshine, tropical flora and fauna, endless cocktail parties, hammering reggae music, sauna-like warmth and overhead fans. Faldo, somehow, never caught the bug. He was… well, he was Faldo, grinding intensely from start to finish.’

In the third round Faldo scored a 65 and led by five but Norman got himself in the final pairing with his old rival. On a course where missing the fairway was inadvisable with the penal rough but highly likely owing to the strong sea breezes, Faldo missed only one green in the final round which cost a bogey at the 14th. Since Norman had collected his sixth birdie of the day at the same hole, the Australian had gone from five behind to one ahead. At the 18th, Norman hit a nine-iron from a fairway bunker to just over three feet, giving himself a putt for a 62 and a winner’s cheque of $550,000 (one of the highest around at the time). Faldo, however, had not given up. He was still grinding. He had a 15-footer for a birdie and, telling himself to ‘let the big muscles do the work’, he holed it for a 68.

Norman still had his putt for the win but with a strong right-to-left grain as well as contours breaking in the same direction. Inevitably, almost, Norman’s putt ran over the left edge of the cup and stayed out. It meant a 63 (a course record) and a playoff, which Faldo won when Norman bogeyed the 18th at the next time of asking. ‘It’s been a great year and I wanted to finish on a great note,’ Faldo said. ‘Everybody wanted a bit of drama and, kind person that I am, I gave it to them. But I aged about ten years in the process.’

Norman thought he had produced quite enough drama. ‘I thought I played effing great,’ he said. ‘I may not have won but I came away with a lot more than that. I feel like I’m 21 again. The dedication I’ve put into my game has paid off.’ For Norman it was confirmation that his slump of the previous year was lifting
and he was working along the right lines with new coach Butch Harmon. The following summer he won his second Open at Sandwich and was well on the way to being the game’s biggest beast again.

Faldo noticed something about Norman’s game in this period: ‘The putting helps a lot. He has always been a strong, confident player but now he is finishing it off by holing the putts. You reward yourself by finishing it off and that is why he is such a tough man to beat.’ And why he was the one being hunted again on the final day of the 1996 Masters.

With live television coverage just now starting as the final pair played the 7th hole, a graphic was flashed on the screen showing the four players to have won the Masters ‘wire-to-wire’ – by leading after every round. Craig Wood was the first to do it in 1941, followed by Arnold Palmer in 1960, Jack Nicklaus in 1972 and Ray Floyd in 1976. Norman was in position to become the fifth player to achieve the feat. But his lead was now only four and a chance to extend it again could not come quick enough. Unlike the leader’s pre-shot routine which, Faldo pointed out in
Life Swings
, was getting slower and slower after Faldo’s birdie at the 6th. ‘Visibly reeling from that latest blow, Greg began taking longer and longer over every shot, his seeming need to constantly regrip increasing.’

Pampas, the 7th hole at Augusta National, has been lengthened considerably in recent years but at 360 yards in 1996 it required only a mid-iron off the tee followed by a wedge approach, but with bunkers surrounding the raised green, it needed to be an accurate approach. Faldo put his to 18 feet but it was downhill and quick so two putts for par was his best outcome. Norman put
his approach to eight feet, right of the hole, a golden opportunity to collect only his second birdie of the day. But the putt never looked like going in.

‘Several pivotal moments punctuated this round, but that missed putt at number 7 was one of the most important,’ reported the
Masters Annual
. ‘Although Norman was still four strokes clear, the missed opportunity seemed to change his tenor. The shots he played on the next two holes seemed to betray an impatience, an anxious need to put the tournament on ice before Faldo could apply any more heat.’

Was Norman losing his putting touch, as he had in the third round of the 1990 Open at St Andrews, just when he needed it most? Apart from a couple of holes early in the third round at Augusta, his putting had been secure, in contrast to Faldo’s iffy spell on the back nine. Norman had been asked about his short putting at his press conference on Saturday night. ‘It doesn’t matter what the tournament is, you’ve got to make those four and five-footers,’ he said. ‘Short putting is very important, especially on a day like today where you hit a lot of good shots that don’t end up the way you think they will. You have to have your full artillery working for you.’

Does it have an effect on your playing partner, he was asked? ‘Oh God, I don’t know. I didn’t go up to Nick and say, “Hey, Nick, how are my four and five-footers?” I don’t think he pays attention to my game and I don’t pay attention to his game. You have to keep your mind focused on your own job.’