Greg Norman earns his curtain call at Royal Birkdale
Filed Under Country Curtain | Posted on July 25, 2008
He was already the 54-hole leader of the British Open at the age of 53 and now, on the 18th hole, after a round of golf as amazing as a 63 he shot at a British Open one time, the wind was Greg Norman’s friend at last at Royal Birkdale. There was this little shot from the right of the green, plenty of green to work with, wind against, a chance for Norman to be aggressive now, to forget one more time at Birkdale what year it is. And the longer the ball kept rolling across the green and across your television screen, the more you could see it had a chance to go in. Didn’t. Ended up as a kick-in par instead. They went a little bit crazy at Birkdale anyway.
He wasn’t just a nice first-day story, or a better second-day story at the British Open when he was at even-par and one shot off the lead. Norman was the whole ballgame now, trying to be one of the greatest stories in the history of his sport if he can get it around Birkdale one more time Sunday, if this isn’t one last heartbreak day for him at a major championship.
When it was over Saturday, I called down to the pro shop at his golf club in Hobe Sound, Fla., called Medalist, a place where I played a fair amount of golf once and got to know Norman a little bit.
When Aaron, one of the pros there, picked up the phone in the golf shop, I asked him what it was like around Medalist Saturday, the pros and the members watching Norman from his home course the way we all watched him play the way he did at Birkdale.
Then the young guy at Medalist said something that the guys have always said, even in the years when Greg Norman stopped being Greg Norman and almost stopped playing tournaments altogether, in the years since Norman didn’t finally win the Masters he was supposed to win against Nick Faldo in 1996.
There was a day a long time ago when I was at Medalist with my friend Steve Reid, a former touring pro once enough of a player to win a playoff at the Azalea Open from Gary Player. Norman just had the one major then, the ‘86 British Open, but had already had a lot of near misses, and somehow that rather sensitive subject came up in the halfway house between the first tee and the 10th at Medalist.
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