Greg Norman is the stuff of which legends are made. Sadly though, he
may not be destined ever to wear the legendary status himself. Legends are
by tradition assessed and revered by the collection and weight of their trophy cabinet contents. Winning a modest two British Opens, some seventyfour tournaments worldwide, and securing a place in golf’s Hall of Fame,
notable as it might sound, might not be quite enough.
Wasn’t it Johnny Miller who tagged Norman “Godzilla” in awe at first
sight of his thunderous driving? And wasn’t it David Graham who said positively that Norman would be the next great player in the world after Nicklaus? And again, Jack Nicklaus himself, who predicted the Aussie champion
would “win a green jacket or two before he was through”?
Oh yes, Augusta has left its scars with hopes and ambitions unfulfilled,
more than two decades of fruitless and frustrating visits, and a locker-room
door barred to all but the green-jacket wearers. His Masters appearances
are seemingly dogged by injustices (witness Larry Mize’s freakish extra-hole
chip-in) and then other self-inflicted injustices while primed for glory
against Nicklaus and Nick Faldo.
For a record length of time, Norman headed the world rankings. Yet he
confessed throughout his reign at the top that he never aspired to be the world number one. He just wanted to be the best player he could be. And
as he reflects, he reassures himself that Greg Norman is successful in the
eyes of Greg Norman. Yes, he always has been ego driven, protective, and
sensitive about his image. Winning has been the supreme incentive. “To
me, every victory is special, regardless of prize money or bonuses. I love to
win; winning is the whole idea,” he says.
Now in his late forties, Norman has drastically curtailed his tournament
campaigns yet still probes hopefully to rekindle some old magic on the fairways. But the odds are stacked heavily against him and for a good reason.
He has built a multimillion-dollar business empire from his Florida
headquarters, and time becomes his most precious commodity. When asked
to estimate his respective commitments, he reckons it’s about 60 percent
golf and 40 percent business. So he parries, “The jury is out on my golf
game, and it’s too soon to assess my success in the business world.”
But surely the giveaway line reveals itself when asked after his election
to the World Golf Hall of Fame what artifacts he would donate to commemorate his career. “I figure I’d put in a plane, a yacht, a helicopter,” he
quipped.
Estimates of his wealth vary, but he says he is “no tycoon.” But $280
million?
Perhaps, and his company did register a record $100 million in revenue
to start the new millennium. His business empire is widespread and seemingly ever-expansive with tentacles embracing golf course design and construction in numerous countries, a highly regarded grass supply division,
and a hefty wine export business from Australian vineyards to the American market. During a recent visit to his homeland Norman took a trip to
the port city of Fremantle, on the country’s western seaboard, to inspect a
massive 230-foot cruising yacht he was having built. It’s complete with
swimming pool and cinema, and he’s called it Aussie Rules in honor of Australian football.
If Australia has built a reputation as a land of opportunity, Greg Norman is the supreme example of grasping his with both steely hands. He is
a product of the state of Queensland, which stretches to the north of the
mainland, famous for its rain forests, exotic barrier reef, matchless game
fishing, and rugged citizens devoted to sports. Queensland is the nation’s
winter playground, drawing locals and visitors alike to its glorious beaches
when winter comes to the southern half of Australia.
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Those sun-drenched beaches proved a surefire lure for a freewheeling
teenager, Greg John Norman, who had made a grateful exit from classroom
confines. He surfed the beaches as a self-confessed “beach bum,” chasing the
white-tipped breakers, lean-framed, superbly athletic, and a conspicuous
and charismatic figure with his sun-bleached platinum hair. He barely
escaped with his life on one occasion when he tackled a monster wave and
was tumbled about on the ocean floor as if trapped in a crazed washing
machine.
His father had nicknamed him “Buster,” graphically descriptive of a
bony-kneed youngster who scampered like Deerfoot along the beachfront
with his black Labrador dogs at his heels, rode horses bareback, hanging
on to the bridle, speared fish, sniped duck, and camped out under the stars.
He went fishing with his father and mates, got stung by the spine of a John
Dory, and was carted off to the hospital in terrible pain. On another occasion he was thrown into the killing pit when the fishing boat lurched and
had his front teeth snapped. He was utterly fearless.
A professional golfing career, it seemed, was never a thought, let alone
a destiny that would propel him onto the world golfing stage with Jack
Nicklaus and other luminaries. Yet, as he quipped, he was getting around
golf courses before he was even born. True, his mother, Toini, of Finnish
extraction, was an enthusiastic golfer in their hometown of Mount Isa,
spectacular for its blood-red sunsets, a massive mining center in the harsh,
arid Queensland outback. Toini was seven months pregnant when her doctor said “enough.” So she walked the course, then narrowly avoided a miscarriage to deliver an eight-pound, eleven-ounce son.
Norman was to join a Who’s Who list of Australian golf champions and
perhaps exceed them all. Norman von Nida, a tiny flame of a man, had
carried the early banner for Australian golfers after World War II, competing on the British tournament scene with great distinction before his
protégé, Peter Thomson, took over and annexed five British Open Championships. Then Crampton, Devlin, Graham, Marsh, Nagle, Grady ...a
momentum.
The golfing bug he had caught while caddying for his mother took full
control through driving ambition and tireless practice. He celebrated his
twenty-first birthday with his first tournament victory, the West Lakes Classic in Adelaide, which brought him to Sydney for the country’s Open
Championship in a blaze of glory and publicity.
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Opportunist promoters promptly paired him with Nicklaus on opening day, only to see the new prodigy duff his drive from the first tee just
thirty yards. He was acutely embarrassed, but Nicklaus was full of encouragement. Years later it was Nicklaus again who walked across the restaurant at the Turnberry Hotel and quietly offered a few motivating words
that inspired the Shark to win his first major, the British Open.
Yes, he was the Great White Shark to an admiring golfing world. The
media had seized on the tag after hearing his exploits of shooting sharks
that had the audacity to steal fish snared by his speargun. The Shark took
his first sighting of the United States, later to become his golfing home and
headquarters, in the World Cup, partnering with Bob Shearer. He was to
become a familiar and much admired figure on the PGA Tour scene, certainly the most easily recognizable player on the course with his distinctive
Nordic features and boxerlike physique. The impact from his bold debut
in the Masters at Augusta produced some rousing praise and predictions
for his future, with his power hitting the key talking point.
The London Sunday Times writer John Hopkins enthused: “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 the 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 as he makes contact, and you half expect the ball to burst under
the onslaught.”
The late Jim Murray, a legendary sports columnist with the Los Angeles
Times, asserted that the public enjoys watching go-for-broke golfers who
look like they’re having a ball out there and not expecting a stock market
crash. Why was Gregory John Norman the pet of golf galleries all the way
from the temples of Malaysia to the braes of Scotland, Murray asked.
Because Norman looked like a man doing exactly what he’d like to be
doing—having the time of his life.
“They don’t make a golf hole that can scare Greg Norman,” penned Murray, “or a lie that fazes him. He hits a bad shot, he laughs at it. Win or lose,
he doesn’t come into the press interview as if he’s the chief suspect in a child
kidnapping case . . . but as if he’s the star. He’s as unself-conscious as a puppy
with a ball of yarn. He’s flashy. He’s got a shock of platinum hair that makes
him look like Jean Harlow from a distance. When he smiles, which is a lot,
144 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
his teeth light up like a keyboard. He could give Liberace lessons in glitz.
Best of all, he looks like what you think a world-class athlete should look
like. The way you’d like to look if you made your living in sports.”
Murray continued, “If you wanted to be a golfer, this is the one you’d
want to be. Like a lot of great athletes, energy just seems to radiate out of
him just sitting still. He doesn’t take this nice, slow feathery loop at the ball
like a mechanical player. He lashes at it as if it were something he caught
coming through his bedroom window at two in the morning.”
The French have a saying that the style betrays the man. Norman’s gofor-broke swings are certainly mirrored off the course where a wide variety
of business interests have occupied every moment of his time. We are
reminded of fast cars with his fleet of Ferraris and Jaguars. Reminded, too,
that he has flown in a “Top Gun” F-16 fighter and harbors a burning ambition to land a jet on an aircraft carrier. “That would be a hell of a buzz,”
he is quoted as saying. He boasts he once raced in his car against a helicopter from the golf course back to his hotel—and won!
Wife Laura says danger is Norman’s constant companion and he will
never change. “I’ve learned to live with it,” she says.
If you assess the game’s leading players through their success in majors
and their mountains of prize money, then Norman does not exactly leap
out. Two British Open titles are the sum total of more than two decades of
passionate hope and endeavor. His many defeats have been well documented with the underlying theme that good fortune has rarely touched
him on the shoulder.
Beaten in majors by a freakish chip-in and a bull’s-eye sand explosion
highlight the scars that have wounded his golfing soul. But he is a person
who never looks back, and he is acknowledged far and wide as a good sport
and a desperately unlucky loser.
His outlook and psyche emerge from quotes from myriad visits to the
media interview rooms over the years, for he is a fearless speaker, never
backward in volunteering a strong opinion or supporting a cause.
• On philosophy: “I don’t live in the past. My year starts today. I live in
the present, and I think about the future.”
• On pressure: “I don’t feel it. Pressure’s only what you put on yourself,
and if you keep enjoying the game and can keep the whole thing in
perspective, then it won’t worry you.”
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• On winning: “To me every victory is special regardless of prize money
or bonuses. I love to win; winning is the whole idea.”
• On motivation: “I can motivate myself, but golf is a difficult game.
Sometimes the harder you try, the worse you score. And when you try
to relax, sometimes you don’t play well either. So where’s the middle?”
• On celebration: “I find victory gives very little reason to whoop it up,
because I go into every tournament with the object of winning. If I
am successful, then I have achieved what I set out to do. The players
who indulge in elaborate winning celebrations are really the players
who don’t expect to win but find that somehow they have.”
• On improving: “We’re all victims of our own stupidity. When you
putt great, why change it? When you swing great, why change it? But
we do. Every single one of us in the history of the game has tinkered
around with our golf swing and fiddled around with our putting
stroke. It’s human nature—to want to improve, even if it is only that
1 percent.”
While Greg Norman plans to stay on the tournament scene until he is
fifty, the inroads of his business interests continue to dominate his time.
The free-spirited youngster who ran the beachfronts Down Under with the
tail of his shirt hanging out is very much comfortable in a business suit
these days.
A rare anecdote goes back to the summer of 1975 when he traveled by
coach with a party of amateur colleagues from the Virginia Club in Brisbane down the coast to the town of Grafton across the border. He boasted
to the amusement of his companions that by the age of thirty he would be
a millionaire. He easily achieved his mark and upon return to his native
Queensland telephoned each of the coach passengers to remind them of
his prediction.
From his headquarters in Florida he is very much a hands-on boss of his
Medalist Holdings company and with his course designing and construction spanning a dozen countries. His vineyard promotion is the latest in a
long list of roller-coaster investments that establish him as top international
business executive and developer. But there will always be room for tournament appearances along the way. Let’s hope so, because the Great White
Shark has played a dazzling role in taking golf to today’s unbelievable
heights
