Faldo/Norman (8 page)

I
N
THE WAY OF THE SHARK
, Greg Norman wrote of his start to the final round of the 1996 Masters: ‘Unfortunately I sensed early in the round that things weren’t quite right. My hands didn’t feel comfortable. My distance was a bit off. And my accuracy on the first few holes left a lot to be desired. “Boy, it’s going to be a tough day,” I said to my caddie, Tony Navarro. I just could not feel what I had felt over the previous three days. And the more I tried to get that feeling back, the more it went away.’

This was becoming increasingly apparent at the 4th hole, a tricky par-three that played as the most difficult hole over the course of the 1996 tournament. These days the players exit the 3rd green and turn right, up the hill into the trees as it plays a whopping 240 yards. Back then, the 4th tee was just behind the 3rd green so in a matter of moments Nick Faldo was preparing to take his tee shot. The hole plays over a valley to a two-tiered green perched on a ridge.

One bunker guards the left side of the green, another cuts into the front right of the green. The cup for the fourth round was cut on the right side of the top tier. Faldo hit a four-iron and finished on the back left of the green, 30 feet from the hole.
Norman, true to his go-for-it nature, aimed straight at the flag but his ball came up short. The shot was struck solidly but perhaps there was a touch of breeze against him, high up among the pines. Another couple of feet and he would have made the green. Instead, the ball pitched into the bank of the bunker and rolled back into the sand. It was a sickening blow. ‘No one was more shocked than Norman,’ reported the 1996
Masters Annual
. ‘He recoiled as if he had been shot in the chest, then bent forward, his hands on his knees. It was a moment so poignant, it would become the cover of
Sports Illustrated
.’

His bunker shot was poor. It only just came out of the bunker and left him with an 18-foot putt for a par, which came up a couple of inches shy of the hole. A bogey four. Faldo putted down to two and a half feet and stroked that in for a par; the lead was now down to four strokes for the first time since the 14th hole on Saturday.

This was Norman’s 60th round in the Masters. His third consecutive bogey at the 4th hole meant that over his career at Augusta on the 3rd and 4th holes combined, he was 30 over par. In this year’s tournament, he had only managed to make a par at the 4th in the opening round, on a day when the hole yielded not a single birdie. He had hit a four-iron into the bunker on the left of the green, recovered to eight feet and holed an important par putt. It was a shot saved and had helped the Shark make a steady start to what would turn into an opening 63.

In his press conference after equalling Nick Price’s course record on the first day, Norman opened by saying: ‘It must have been the barbecue chicken I had last night, that is all I can say, the wonderful Golf Writers barbecue. That is what set it all up.’ Norman had
received the 1995 male player of the year award from the Golf Writers Association of America. It was the second time he had won the award, the first being in 1986. In another lengthy question and answer session with the press, Norman did not mention any back issues, only stating in passing that his trainer had arrived that morning: ‘One of those little things that help you relax and get you going.’

In
The Way of the Shark
, Norman wrote: ‘On Wednesday morning, the day before the tournament began, I woke up with terrible back pain. On the driving range, I could hardly take the club back, so I cancelled my practice round. I was very frustrated. “Why now?” I asked myself. “Why now of all times?”

‘Later that morning there was a knock at my door. Fred Couples, whom I’d seen on the practice range, had sent over his back therapist to help me. And help me he did, because the next morning I felt great. As a matter of fact, I made nine birdies on my way to a course-record 63 later that day.’

It was quite a transformation from the player who missed the cut in his last two events, rated his game at seven out of ten in his Tuesday press conference and had been forced to miss his last practice round on Wednesday due to back pain. ‘I felt comfortable when I woke up this morning,’ he said. ‘I felt good. I felt like I was very relaxed and in control, and feeling like if I took that to the golf course that I’d have a good day.

‘I didn’t expect to go out there and shoot a 63, of course, but the way I played the first five holes basically set up the rest of my day. When I got through the 6th hole, I just said keep swinging the way you’re swinging and keep the momentum going that you’ve built up and take advantage with the good shots that you can hit, and things happened for me on the back nine.’

Price had set the record of 63 in the third round in 1986,
beating the previous record of 64, first scored by Lloyd Mangrum in the opening round in 1940. Price started out with a bogey, then made ten birdies in the next 15 holes, including four in a row from the 10th to the 13th. He hit 16 greens in regulation and had 25 putts. This was only his second appearance in the Masters, after missing the cut on his debut two years earlier, and came after an opening 79.

It helped the Zimbabwean to his best Masters finish of fifth but he never really found the Augusta magic again. ‘I knew Nick Price had the course record,’ Norman said. ‘Of course, when your best friend’s got something, he’s always going to tell you he’s got it, right? But, no, I wasn’t thinking about the course record at all out there.’

Norman also hit 16 greens in regulation, getting up and down from bunkers on the two occasions he did not, and had 27 putts. He had parred each of the first six holes and birdied the next three, then made six birdies in the last nine holes, coming home in 30, one outside Mark Calcavecchia’s record for the back nine from 1992. He rated his performance as nine out of ten and ranked the round alongside his closing 64 to win the Open at Sandwich in 1993 and the 63 he scored at Turnberry on the way to winning the 1986 Open. This was the 18th time a 63 had been scored in a major championship but Norman was the first to achieve the feat twice, something only Vijay Singh has subsequently matched.

Although Norman had scored a 64 at Augusta in the final round in 1988, only once had he broken 70 on an opening day – a 69 on his debut in 1981. ‘I come in every year consciously wanting to get off to a good start,’ Norman said when asked about his slow starts in the Masters. ‘It’s just one of those things where I just let it flow.’ Earlier in the week during the 1996 tournament, he had hit a stack of four-irons on the practice range under the
eye of Butch Harmon. ‘All we worked on was synchronising my lower body turn,’ he said. He had been mentally practising that while fishing on his boat the previous week.

After the back scare on Wednesday, he had a good workout with his trainer the next morning, a fruitful session with Harmon on the range and was ready to go for his 2 p.m. tee time alongside the 1979 champion Fuzzy Zoeller. ‘I was relaxed and everything clicked into place,’ Norman said. ‘I got my speed back in my body and was hitting it longer than on Tuesday, when I played with Tiger and I felt like you [referring to the hacks he was talking to and golfing hackers in general] would be out there with me. Tiger was getting it by me about 50 or 60 yards. But this morning, everything was back in sync. Literally overnight it came back. I crushed one and knew I was ready to play.’

At that time, the Masters paired players in twoballs for all four rounds, re-pairing in score order for the second round, as well as for the third and fourth rounds as is usual today. Norman and Zoeller were one of the featured pairings that would get most of the late-afternoon television coverage. It was a warm and sunny day, very pleasant, with just enough breeze to make players think, while the greens were already firming up. Norman, wearing a grey sleeveless cardigan and his black wide-brimmed hat, missed birdie chances from nine feet at the 3rd and ten feet at the 5th but the sand save at the 4th helped him post six consecutive pars, which is easier said than done. The danger of those holes was generally unappreciated by the wider viewing audience since they were rarely shown on television back then.

‘I think the front nine is toughest to score well on,’ Norman said. ‘The hardest second shot we have is into the 5th green. The hardest par-three is the 4th hole. The hardest nine-iron shot we had for the whole day was into 3. People don’t get to see those kinds of things but we’re churning our guts out on those holes
because if you don’t get a good start, you’re going to have a hard time getting into the tournament.’

Norman suddenly sparked into life by holing a ten-footer on the 7th green, then made another for his four at the 8th and a 14-footer at the 9th to turn in 33. ‘When you get onto the type of roll I got onto today, it feels very comfortable. Let the reins of the horses go and let them run as fast as they want to run. That is what I did today. I wanted to get as much under par as I could. I didn’t care if I got into the lead or not.’

At the 10th, Norman saved par from a bunker for the second time in the round. At the 11th, he had an 18-footer for birdie that lipped out. ‘I hit a putt both Fuzzy and I couldn’t believe,’ Norman said. ‘The ball just defied gravity when it went over the edge of the hole.’ He got back on a roll at the next when he hit an eight-iron to six feet at the treacherous par-three for the first of four birdies in a row.

At the par-five 13th he found the green in two with a drive and a three-iron and two-putted from 40 feet. At the 14th, his three-wood from the tee was pulled and hit a pine tree. The ball rebounded into the fairway but left him a blind approach shot of 220 yards. He hit a four-iron which pitched 15 yards short of the green, one of the most highly contoured on the course. The ball scooted forward off a downslope, ran up the front of the green and then started taking the left-to-right break in such a manner that it finished no more than three feet from the hole. All Norman could do was listen. ‘It was the gallery that told me I’d hit it close,’ he said. Long before he crested the rise in the fairway and could see the green, all the spectators were standing up and applauding.

Norman was now six under for the day but he was not finished. His fourth birdie on the trot might have been an eagle at the 15th. He only needed a seven-iron for his second at the par-five
and he had an 18-footer for a three. He was ready to chase after the putt but when it swerved off-line at the last minute, he ended up on his knees. ‘I hit it right on the pitch mark I wanted to hit and four feet out I thought I’d made it. That is why I straightened up. I was ready to go for a walk. Then all of a sudden, it just kind of veered a little to the right.’

He two-putted at the 16th, where the pin was in a tricky spot that caught out plenty of others, and then he finished in style by making a 10-footer at the 17th and a 24-footer at the last. On the 18th green, the hole was close to where it was when Price made his 63. From a similar line, back right of the green, but from around 30 feet, Price saw his birdie putt for a 62 hit the hole and spin out back towards him. Norman’s only problem with his putt came as he looked at the line and noticed a hot air balloon rising in the distance. No matter, he refocused and in the putt went.

Afterwards, he was asked: ‘What does an opening round like this do for your mind-set for the rest of the week? Do you think I still have to keep attacking or…’ Norman cut in with his reply: ‘Well, I didn’t attack today. I played the way I wanted to play. You just wake up tomorrow and keep the momentum going. You obviously know you are not going to shoot four 63s. It would be nice but it would be a very tall order to do. You don’t let it get away from you and get too excited about it. I’m happy and excited but there’s a long way to go.’

After Norman had talked about visualising his swing while out fishing, there was an obvious follow-up and it turned out to be the last question of the press conference. ‘Greg, you’ve visualised the swing. How many times have you visualised putting on the green jacket?’ Answer: ‘I don’t know. Probably a few.’