by Andy Farrell
Norman said: ‘When I hit the tee shot and it ended up in the water, I never got mad because I hit the shot solid. It would have been a different story if I had hit a bad shot. Then it would have been, “why did you make a stupid mistake like that?” But I put a good swing on it. It obviously got caught up in the wind. So you just take your medicine from there and make your four. When you do that type of stuff, it makes you feel good because you know you never hit a bad shot. You walk off with a bogey but it could have been worse.’
Asked why he selected the yardage he did for his third shot, Norman answered: ‘Because I’ve probably hit 50,000 golf balls from 81 yards and I know how to hit 81-yard shots. That’s the type of shot where you know you want to be certain to put a lot of juice on the ball. That green is very, very firm. That’s the reason I put it at that distance because it was a good three-quarter sand wedge shot.’ Alas, the following day when faced with a similar recovery, it did not work out quite so well.
Norman was asked if he had had a little luck during the round, such as at the 12th hole, to keep his lead intact. ‘I don’t think that is luck,’ he said. ‘I see that as the way the game is played. Luck is when you get a bounce off a tree and come back on the fairway [as he did at the 14th in the first round] or what happened at 12 yesterday [when his ball stayed on the bank]. That was a bit of luck.’
After a ‘half’ in bogeys at the 12th, both men completed Amen Corner with birdies at the par-five 13th. It might well have been a half in eagles as both hit big drives round the corner and then mid-irons close to the flag. Norman missed from ten feet, Faldo from eight feet – another chance lost, he felt. Another went at the 14th. Norman chipped and putted for a par from the back edge but Faldo had a ten-footer for birdie which slipped by. Yet again, at the 15th, it was Faldo who seemed to be in a good position. Norman pulled his drive and had to lay up with a four-iron back to the fairway. Faldo hit a fine drive and then a four-iron onto the green but 60 feet right of the hole. While Norman got up and down with a pitch shot and putt from six feet for a birdie four, Faldo three-putted, missing again from inside ten feet.
The 15th had already seen plenty of drama in this third round as Jack Nicklaus eagled the hole, chipping in from beyond the bunker to the right of the green. Seve Ballesteros had a fright when his chip from behind the green ran down the bank into the pond at the front. He did not like that pond, having deposited a four-iron shot there when he lost to Nicklaus in 1986 and now, as he peered into the water to see if his ball was playable, a fish jumped out of the water and made him jump even higher. Colin Montgomerie, meanwhile, was not enjoying himself at all. One of the pre-tournament favourites, the Scot hit his third shot over the green, left his chip short on the fringe (fearing the fate of Ballesteros’s chip from earlier) and then four-putted for a triple-bogey eight. ‘This is the most frustrating place I’ve ever played,’ he wailed as he fell back to five over after three rounds.
At the short 16th, Faldo pushed a nine-iron into the bunker short-right of the green. He later ranked it as his worst shot of the week. It cost him a bogey as his par putt lipped out. Norman had hit a nine-iron to six feet and made the putt for a birdie so he had gained three shots in two holes. He was now seven ahead of Faldo.
Coming into the week, Faldo had been most confident with his putting and until this series of miscues it had served him well. Even with them, he was only a hair behind Corey Pavin at the top of the putting statistics for the first three rounds. ‘Play wasn’t bad,’ Faldo said as he summed up his round. ‘I could have saved the day by making some of those putts on 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. I missed all of them, the longest being eight to ten feet.’
It was, in fact, at the next two holes that he saved the day as his putting came good. At the 17th, he hit a wedge to six feet and made that for his sixth birdie of the day. It not only reduced his arrears to six strokes but took him back to seven under par and one ahead of Mickelson in third place. Had he remained at six under, he would have shared second place with the left-hander. But because Mickelson had been playing ahead of him in the third round, under the ‘first-in, last-out’ rule, it would have been Mickelson playing with Norman in the final round. And how different might history have been?
Of course, Faldo still had to par the last and to do so he faced yet another ten-footer. It was the sort of overcast day where dusk closes in early but there was still enough light around. At the time, it is likely not many people watching realised the importance of Faldo’s putt. A lead of six shots or seven, surely Norman had enough of a cushion either way?
But Faldo recognised how important it was. It wasn’t that he thought if he could play alongside Norman on the final day he would win. But, at least, he could win. Or, at the very least, apply some pressure in a way that would not be possible if he were not in Norman’s eyeline the next day. Other players might have thought the opposite, that getting out ahead of Norman, away from the intensity of the final pairing, and posting a target that the Australian would have to chase would give them their best hope of causing an upset. Not Faldo. He wanted to be alongside Norman for another 18 holes. He made his par.
Norman’s third successive sub-par score, a 71 that felt even better given the conditions, put him at 13 under par on a total of 203. Only two players had ever been lower at the same stage of the Masters, Ray Floyd on 201 in 1976 and Nicklaus on 202 in 1965. More pertinently, the day’s battle with Faldo had been won, the Englishman had not been at his best and returned a 73 to be seven under par. To be fair to Norman, he was the last person to concede his conquest was in the bag. Faldo, hanging on for grim death as only he can, was admitting nothing.
After the round, with daylight fading fast, Faldo had little inclination for a lengthy debrief in the interview room. ‘I’m a long way back,’ he said. ‘But, you know, anything is possible. It’s all to gain and nothing to lose tomorrow. Just go out and play, and if it comes off, well, it will put a lot of pressure on him.’ Asked if he had a target score in mind for the next day, he said: ‘To shoot something good. Who knows? You shoot 66, 65, it could be something around there. It’s got to get me in the right direction.’ There was only one direction he was heading in at that moment – the range before the light totally went. ‘I need to go and practise, guys.’
Norman, who parred the last two holes, also wanted to practise after his round and ended up on the putting green well after darkness had fully descended. But first there was another long session in the interview room. He went through his round and tackled everything thrown at him from grim reminders of his past defeats to predicting the future, or at least the next 24 hours. Overall, he was happy with his 71. ‘That’s the equivalent of shooting in the 60s, I suppose. There wasn’t a lot of give in the golf course. I’m sure there’s not going to be a lot of give tomorrow, either.’
‘Do you feel as in control of the tournament as the leader-board would indicate?’ he was asked. ‘The best way for me to answer that is I feel good within myself forgetting the golf tournament. That’s the only way I can approach it, in a very good philosophical sense in my mind. I’ve got another day to go and there’s 18 tough holes to play.’
‘Greg, is there an urge to be maybe a little more cautious tomorrow?’ ‘I’m just going out there as if nobody’s got a lead. We’re all at the same mark tomorrow, as far as I’m concerned, when we tee off. I’m just going to play the necessary shot I see to play at the time.’
‘Since you have a six-shot lead, why approach it like everybody’s tied?’ ‘That’s the way I approach it every day. Everybody’s even and if you beat the guys in your mind when you’re even with them, then you know you’re going to beat them.’
‘Greg, how excited are you right now?’ ‘I feel pretty good. Yeah, I’ve a lot to do, so there’s no point in getting excited now.’
‘Greg, if you win tomorrow, are you going to look back over the last couple of days as being the difference in the tournament?’ ‘Ask me that tomorrow.’
‘Is it
fair to say you’re anticipating this round of golf more than any others you’ve played knowing the history of the Masters?’ ‘Sure. Irrespective of what happens, I’m going to enjoy every step I take. I’ve got a chance to win the Masters. I’ve been there before. There’s no better feeling than having a chance to win a major championship.’
Carolina Cherry
Hole 9
Yards 435; Par 4
DON’T CALL Greg Norman a ‘choker’. Someone tried it once. Understandably, Norman was less than chuffed. Well, perhaps more than once. It comes with the territory when you have put yourself into contention on the biggest stages so often and ended up not winning so many of them. But golf being such a mannerly game, the word ‘choke’ is not generally bandied around. Professional golfers are naturally sensitive to the accusation, particularly when, as Bobby Jones pointed out, the ‘six inches between the ears’ have such a vital impact on the difference between success and failure.
As Colin Montgomerie knows all too well, being a foreigner who is purported to be one of the best players in the game (and therefore a threat), but who manages not to win the biggest titles in America, is considered fair game for those who are inclined to verbal antagonism. The trick is never to let it show. At the 1991 Masters, Tom Watson told Ian Woosnam, as the Welshman was on his way to victory, that the old pros’ method of dealing with hecklers was to turn round, touch the peak of your cap politely and say simply: ‘Fuck you very much.’ Monty was unable to master the art of never letting it show and, in the mind’s eye, is still to this day standing on the 71st green at Congressional waiting for the gallery at the 1997 US Open to quieten down.
New York galleries are hardly shy and retiring and Norman suffered plenty of abuse as he tied with, and then lost a playoff to, Fuzzy Zoeller at the 1984 US Open at Winged Foot. Two years later at Shinnecock Hills, just months after losing the 1986 Masters to Jack Nicklaus, Norman was again in contention at the US Open. Leading by three at the turn in the third round, he dropped a shot at the 10th and then had a double bogey at the 13th. Now Lee Trevino, his playing partner, was level with the Australian. On the 14th fairway, Norman and Trevino were waiting for the group ahead to leave the green, when a spectator shouted: ‘Are you choking, Norman? Are you choking just like at the Masters?’
Norman, who was not far from the right-hand edge of the fairway, standing with his arms crossed staring at the green, slowly turned his head to the right and looked into the crowd. Tight-lipped but seemingly more amused than irritated, Norman soon turned back and, as the green cleared, got on with playing his shot. Instead of marching after his ball, however, Norman walked into the crowd, wagging his finger in the face of one particular man and remonstrating: ‘Look, if you want to say something to me, say it in the car park afterwards when I can do something about it.’
It was an extraordinary outburst which Norman immediately regretted, but having got the anger out of his system he soon settled down and held a one-stroke lead overnight. The following day he fell down the leaderboard and said he felt ‘flat’.
A few years later, Norman and Steve Elkington, along with their pro-am partners from a charity event hosted by Peter Jacobsen in Portland, Oregon, were having a drink in a bar when four men in their twenties entered, recognised one of the group and started up with taunts such as: ‘You’re a choker, Norman.’ The group were swift to leave but the hecklers followed them out and threw beer bottles at their car before getting in their own car and blocking the exit from the car park.
The police had been called and were swiftly on the scene. Establishing the story, the police asked Norman and his party if they wanted to press charges but mindful of not wanting to create any negative publicity for Jacobsen’s tournament, they offered the idiots the choice between apologising or a night in jail. They apologised.
There were countless references in print to Norman choking throughout his career, not least in the days following the 1996 Masters. His collapse was labelled by the Sydney Morning Herald as ‘one of the greatest chokes in sporting history’ and when Emirates Team New Zealand lost the 2013 America’s Cup to Oracle Team USA after leading 8-1 with eight races left, it was another excuse to put Norman into a list of sporting chokes. Later in 1996 Norman told Golf World: ‘A lot of nonsense is talked about “choking”. To me it means not being able to pull the club back, it means struggling to breathe. Of course, there are nerves when you are just a few holes away from a major title. Then it is very difficult. It’s like when you are a kid and you don’t want to walk into a dark room because you are not sure what is in there or if you can handle it.’
When it came to knowing if one can handle winning a major, Faldo was pretty certain about it but for Norman there were always doubts. Faldo seemed to be marching towards the light, Norman back into the dark that he feared as a child. Only in his chosen sporting arena could a frailty be so publicly exposed. It is not a great epitaph when you feature in the tail-end summation of a Malcolm Gladwell essay in the New Yorker, published in August 2000, entitled ‘The Art of Failure – Why some people choke and others panic’.
Describing the circumstances on the 9th hole of the final round of the 1996 Masters, Gladwell wrote: ‘Norman was next. He stood over the ball. “The one thing you guard against here is short,” the announcer said, stating the obvious. Norman swung and then froze, his club in mid-air, following the ball in flight. It was short. Norman watched, stone-faced, as the ball rolled thirty yards back down the hill, and with that error something inside of him broke.’
For the first three days, the ‘most striking aspect of Norman’s performance was his composure’, wrote Lauren St John in her 1998 biography of Norman. ‘He was as tranquil as a Zen student trimming a bonsai tree.’ But watching the final round on television, Australian golfer Wayne Grady noticed a difference in Norman, still leading by three but with his lead cut in half, saying: ‘You could see in his face then that he was in trouble.’
Faldo had regained the honour and drove off first. The 9th hole scoots downhill and turns from right to left as the terrain in the landing area slopes from left to right. At the bottom of the valley is a spectator crosswalk and then the hole juts severely uphill to a green seemingly perched up in the heavens. Faldo’s drive finished on the right side of the fairway still just on the downslope. Norman, as usual, knocked his drive past Faldo’s and found a more level lie, just short of the crosswalk. Faldo only had a wedge shot to the green from 112 yards but, with his lie, found it difficult to impart enough backspin on the ball. His approach scooted through to the back of the green.
The 9th green has upper and lower plateaus, providing all the necessary pin positions for the week, but also a third section at the front which is merely the start of the precipice that then becomes the steep decline back down the fairway. The hole on this Masters Sunday was cut on the left of the middle tier but only just over the ‘false front’ to the green. Norman always got extreme backspin with his short irons and now, from his level lie 98 yards from the green, he needed to hit his wedge shot to the back of the middle tier so that it recoiled towards the hole but without going past it.
Instead, he pitched the ball hole high. There was a momentary pause as the backspin kicked in and the ball gained purchase on one of the most slippery Augusta greens. Then it was rolling back down the green and the fairway, on and on for what must have felt like eternity to the Australian. Both players, their caddies, all the spectators and all those watching on television knew this was a cardinal error. ‘I just mis-hit it,’ Norman admitted.
Norman now faced a chip from 30 yards short of the green that had a high tariff. He played it well, and the ball almost hit the flagstick, but it rolled on eight feet past. Faldo, meanwhile, had a putt of around 35 feet which had to go down from one tier to another. It would have been easy to rush it past the hole and then face the same fate as Norman, except having taken a stroke more, but he judged it perfectly; the ball even touched the right lip before gently stopping a foot away.
He raised his hand to the tip of an imaginary cap and tapped in for a safe par. Norman’s par putt swung violently from right to left, too early to hold the right line, and finished well left of the hole. He tapped in for his third bogey of the day and an outward 38, two over par. Faldo was out in 34, two under par, and the lead had now gone from six to just two strokes.
Bruce Edwards, who caddied for Tom Watson for many years but also had a spell with Norman, told St John: ‘The reason Nick Faldo is such a wonderful player is because he doesn’t really care about being in there three feet from the hole. He’s going to put it in there where he’s not going to make bogey. He won the British Open with 18 pars which, God bless him, is how you play the game. The 9th hole at the Masters was a typical example. He didn’t care that he was 35 feet by. He’ll take his four. “Go ahead and make your mistake. Oh, you just did.” ’
Choke, such an ugly word but perhaps appropriately so for a such a painful act – it is often harrowing to watch, let alone experience. In golf, the classic chokes come when a player is on the verge of victory but misses a tiny putt, such as Scott Hoch at the 1989 Masters or I.K. Kim at the 2012 Kraft Nabisco Championship, the first women’s major of the season. These are momentary aberrations – along with shots heading into water or the crowd on many a finishing hole. Norman was guilty of those mishaps in his time but the 1996 Masters was more of a full-length meltdown. It just was not his day.
According to Gladwell in ‘The Art of Failure’, panic and choking are opposites. ‘Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct.’ Novice pilots and scuba divers can get into trouble when a lack of experience means they have too few instincts to fall back on. Experienced performers get into trouble when they stop acting on instinct and start second-guessing themselves. Choking occurs under pressure, when trying to live up to expectations, when the big prize is on the line. ‘Choking is a central part of the drama of athletic competition,’ Gladwell wrote, ‘because the spectators have to be there – and the ability to overcome the pressure of the spectators is part of what it means to be a champion.’