Faldo/Norman (6 page)

Two years later, at the 1995 US Open, Norman shared the 54-hole lead with Tom Lehman but his first major title on US soil remained elusive. Lehman scored a 74 and Norman a 73, but Pavin hit a wonderful four-wood onto the 18th green for a 68 and a two-stroke win. It was Norman’s seventh runner-up finish in a major.

On Saturday evening at Augusta in 1996, leading again after 54 holes in a major but this time by six strokes, Norman was asked if he ‘felt more confident than ever that you may finally see it through to the end?’ He replied: ‘Well, I don’t live in the past. I feel comfortable. Those were good tournaments I played in the past. People played some great shots to win some of them. So I’m looking forward to getting out there tomorrow and playing some great shots and finish the tournament like I know I can.’

A
T THE START
of Masters week, Greg Norman was one of the favourites for the title but hardly an overwhelming one. He might have been the world number one but he had missed the cut in his past two tournaments and was only one of a host of players expected to contend. ‘It’s anyone’s green jacket’ was the headline on the front page of the
Augusta Chronicle’s
special Masters section. Even a 20-year-old college student and a 56-year-old former champion were sharing the billing with Norman, as the subhead on the preview of the South’s oldest newspaper made clear: ‘Wide-open 1996 Masters features a young Tiger, an aging Golden Bear and a Shark’.

Tiger Woods had yet to turn professional but he was already the centre of much attention. This was his second appearance in the Masters after finishing as the leading amateur in 1995, playing all four rounds and finishing tied for 41st. He returned in 1996 expecting to play a practice round with Arnold Palmer on Monday. But Palmer postponed until Wednesday so Woods played with Norman, with whom he shared a coach in Butch Harmon. At the 9th tee, Norman encouraged Woods to hit a drive over the trees on the left and down the 1st fairway. With
the fairways mown towards the tee, the grass is usually growing against the ball when it lands. By going down the 1st fairway in the reverse direction, they could get the ball to run for ever down the hill and leave a shorter shot to the 9th green. ‘He’s exceptionally long,’ Norman said. ‘I think he’s longer than John Daly. He flights the ball so well.’

On Tuesday, Woods again played a practice round with Norman, along with two former champions, Ray Floyd and Fred Couples. ‘These guys know the course like the back of their hands,’ Woods said. ‘I was listening to Raymond give some pointers out there. Ray’s been out here for a few years and has done pretty well here, and he was giving Greg some of his idiosyncrasies Greg didn’t even know about. These guys have a lot of knowledge and are willing to share their knowledge. That’s very nice on their part.’

The reason Palmer had passed on a practice round with Woods on Monday was that he had lined up someone else to join them on Wednesday. Jack Nicklaus got his first close-up view of the game’s next superstar as they played nine holes on the main course and then moved over to the nine-hole, par-three course for the traditional pre-Masters appetiser. Nicklaus was impressed. ‘Very, very impressed, to say the least. So was Arnold,’ Nicklaus said. ‘This kid is the most fundamentally sound golfer that I’ve ever seen at any age. Hits the ball nine million miles without a swing that looks like he’s trying to do that. And he’s a nice kid. He’s got great composure. He handles himself very well.’

If that was not enough to get his audience excited, then Nicklaus added: ‘Arnold and I both agree that you could take his Masters and my Masters and add them together, and this kid should win more than that.’ Palmer won the Masters four times and Nicklaus is the only person to surpass that with six titles. Together, that’s ten green jackets. Nicklaus was suggesting
that Woods might win at least 11, an extravagant claim that has become even more so with time. Woods has been stuck alongside Palmer on four since 2005, but the magnitude of the declaration merely added to all the Tigermania.

Could he win this week, Nicklaus was asked? ‘I don’t know whether he is ready to win yet or not, but he will be your favourite for the next 20 years. If he isn’t, there’s something wrong.’ About that, Nicklaus was spot on.

Woods had faced the media a day earlier, one of only nine players to be invited to the interview room for a formal preview interview. It was quite an honour for an amateur, though that is not a word he would probably use after being constantly rolled out as a professional. The room was as packed as it would be for a champion on Sunday night. ‘I’m pleased to say I haven’t got lost in the clubhouse like last year,’ he said. There was more laughter and a flash of his gleaming smile when he added: ‘One thing I forgot about the Masters is all the cameras people can bring to the practice rounds – and they fire them, too.’

The big question on everyone’s lips was when he would turn professional. It was a question he was already fed up of answering. ‘It does tend to get to you after a while if it keeps coming up repeatedly. But the answer’s still the same.’ Stanford University, where he was in his second year, was ‘awesome’ and, in any case, ‘I have no place to play yet. I’m not exempt. I have no security.’

When the time was finally right, at the end of the summer, Woods would have no problem finding security or a place to play. In the meantime, Nicklaus was not only being asked about the young amateur’s chances of winning, but his own. Ten years on from his dramatic sixth victory at Augusta when he swept past Norman and Seve Ballesteros with a stunning back-nine charge, he arrived having won his eighth major title as a senior at the previous week’s Tradition tournament. He played down his chances
of winning, though. ‘My game felt awfully puny today,’ he said after playing with Woods. Others thought he might have a chance. ‘I’ll bet Jack does,’ said Nick Faldo.

This was Nicklaus’s 38th appearance at Augusta but he could not accept becoming a ceremonial golfer, as Palmer had. The King, ten years older than the Bear, had been honoured by the city of Augusta with a statue unveiled in the Riverwalk area on the banks of the Savannah River. The inscription on the plaque, entitled ‘Arnie’s Charge’, noted that when in contention ‘he wore his determination and concentration just as surely as he wore his smile a few holes back. Once you saw it, you could never forget it. Now, it has been captured forever, for those who remember and for those not fortunate enough to have seen it for themselves.’

Nicklaus did at least contend in the par-three contest, the traditional Masters curtain-raiser on the club’s gorgeous nine-hole course that started in 1960, recording his best finish of joint third with Ian Woosnam on 23, four under par. In his prime, Nicklaus used to skip the event to conclude his media duties and rest up for the tournament proper. Nothing to do with the supposed jinx on the winner of the par-three, who has never gone on to don the green jacket in the same week, a curse that persists.

Jay Haas was the victor on this occasion, beating Larry Mize at the second extra hole after they had tied on 22. Haas, with an ace at the 2nd, was one of four players to have a hole-in-one, along with debutant Mark Roe, Ian Baker-Finch (both at the 7th) and Sandy Lyle, at the 9th. He joined Sam Snead and Isao Aoki as the only two-time winners, having won the event as an amateur 20 years earlier. However, by finishing 36th on Sunday, he merely proved again that Wednesday’s winner could be ruled out of contention for the green jacket.

He was about the only one. Almost everyone else was in with a chance. ‘It’s not likely you can pick anybody,’ said Davis Love. ‘It’s whoever gets that magic. You always need to look toward guys who are really playing well.’

Since 1987, when Augusta native Mize shocked Norman, the winners had all come from the top of the game. The only exception to this trend had been Ben Crenshaw in 1995. Crenshaw had won the Masters in 1984 but 11 years later had little form in the run-up to Augusta and even less during the practice rounds. On the Sunday before the tournament, his great mentor Harvey Penick died and on the Wednesday of Masters week Crenshaw and Tom Kite, another of Harvey’s ‘special boys’, returned to Austin, Texas, to act as pallbearers at the funeral.

Love, another player associated with Penick, had actually won the New Orleans tournament on the Sunday he died. This afforded him a last-minute invitation to the Masters and he continued his fine form to finish second – to Crenshaw, who dissolved into tears on the 18th green after completing a one-stroke victory. ‘Fate dictated this championship, as it does so many times,’ Crenshaw said. ‘Someone put their hand on my shoulder this week and guided me through. I had a 15th club in the bag today, and it was Harvey.’

Norman finished three behind Crenshaw in third place but this was not a title he lost, as one report said, ‘it was kept from him’. He said at the time: ‘Maybe Harvey was up there looking down saying: “Hey, Ben, this one, I’m going to help you do that.” Augusta National has a way of sifting out whoever it wants to sift out. Somehow, you have to do something special, as Ben did.’

Would the Australian finally do something special at Augusta? Would he ever win the Masters? That was the theme running through his lengthy pre-tournament press conference but the Shark was as gabby as ever. First up was a question about how
he felt about the Masters: great player, great tournament, ‘seems like a great mating’. ‘Well, I don’t know – it hasn’t happened yet but you’re right, it is the greatest championship around,’ Norman began. ‘Like I said, there’s no other golf tournament anywhere in the world that generates the type of feeling like here at Augusta National. Any golfer, no matter what his stats or position in the world, whether a budding amateur or a professional, we all want to win it. And the guys who have experienced it have known that great feeling winning this tournament gives them and they want to get it back. So everyone has their reason for wanting to win it.’

Could he still win? ‘Sure. I don’t play golf if I don’t think I can win.’ Does he believe in karma? ‘There’s not a situation that I’ve been under where I haven’t been able to experience or pull something out of it. Whether you call that karma or whether you call that self-analysis of a situation, I don’t know. But I do believe certain things are meant to happen for you. Sometimes you don’t feel like you have a chance to win and, boom, something happens. You get your good breaks and your bad breaks. But I like to feel that things are meant for a reason.’

Now aged 41, was his best golf still ahead of him, Norman was asked? ‘I believe my best golf is in my 40s. But I used to believe my best golf was in my 30s. I believe if you just keep yourself halfway fit, you learn so much as time goes by in this game. As I get older, I think my life gets better. I think that gives you greater peace of mind and comfort. I honestly think my best golf will be in my 40s. I really do. It just depends on how far you want to push yourself.’

Is it possible to want something too much? ‘I don’t think so. I’d rather have that pressure being put on yourself than no pressure at all. That, to me, is a great stimulus. It’s just how you approach it within yourself.’

With a bit more luck, a little less bad fortune, how many times did he think he could have won here? ‘I don’t think like that. I’ve had many good fortunes in my golfing life. So whether it’s sound advice or smart work on my behalf, I don’t think like that. My golfing skills have given me a lot to be thankful for on and off the course. My kids are happy and healthy. I’ve seen a lot of families who aren’t happy and healthy, so those type of things I feel blessed for and with. So what happens on the golf course – when you let one get away from you, it’s not going to make a bit of difference in your life at all. I’ve been very lucky in many aspects of my life and I just hope it keeps going that way.’

One more try from the media: ‘Surely, it gets to a point when you say, “I’ve got to win this thing”?’ ‘No, it doesn’t. You guys are missing the point. Yes, there’s a lot of things you’d like to do in life that you probably will never, ever get a chance of doing. But you appreciate what you’ve done. And my career’s not over yet.