by Andy Farrell
Hopefully, we are a long way off the time when a machine can play golf better than a human but perhaps we found out when Tiger Woods was at his peak in 2000–01 that making the game look too easy, or too much of a foregone conclusion, makes it more difficult to hold people’s attention. There is the man in heaven in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, by Julian Barnes, who takes up golf, starts getting better, but eventually gives up the game when he goes round the celestial course in only 18 strokes. It is the earthly, human element of players overcoming adversity that makes golf interesting.
Faldo demonstrated this at Muirfield in 1992, when he almost threw away a third Open crown. He had played sublime golf all week, almost faultless, especially during a second round of 64. ‘It was a unique feel,’ he said. ‘I felt comfortable over everything, whatever club was in my hand. I have been trying to lessen my perfectionist tendencies. I learned this winter not to be hard on myself and realise you could hit bad shots. I am not worried about the clinically perfect round of golf. I enjoyed today because on every shot I set myself a target and nearly always got it.’ The last day however was a different story. Faldo started with a four-stroke lead, but after 14 holes he had not made a birdie, which would have been reminiscent of five years earlier had he not had four bogeys. John Cook, playing ahead of Faldo, birdied the 15th and 16th holes to take the lead by two. Fortunately, it was at times like this that Faldo became inspired. At the 15th, he told himself: ‘I have to forget about the whole week and play the best four holes of my life.’
He then hit a ‘half five-iron’ approach, a low runner that used the various contours of the green to such effect that the ball finished three feet from the hole. ‘It was a shot we were working on all week in the breeze,’ he said. This is the sort of creative shot, yet played under the maximum strain, that the constant ‘fine-tuning with Lead’ was all about. ‘Everyone says Nick is so technical but he is far from a robot,’ Leadbetter said. He is so feel-orientated. He has an uncanny ability to control his irons, which is all natural feel. He is very creative, very sensory, very artistic.’
At the 17th Faldo hit a four-iron to 20 feet and two-putted for another birdie, while Cook had only got a par moments earlier. Then the American bogeyed the last. ‘I was alive, I was dead, I was alive again, then I was pretty much dead,’ was how Cook summed up his day. For Faldo it was the reverse. Once more he needed a par at Muirfield’s fearsome 18th to join only James Braid as a two-time Open champion at the course. This time he hit a three-iron from 196 yards to 25 feet and took the two putts he had in hand. Afterwards he was a wreck, in no fit state to give a winner’s speech – lowlights included thanking the press from the ‘heart of my bottom’ and trying to sing My Way; he regretted the latter but not the former.
‘It’s the enormity of it all,’ he gasped in the interview room. ‘The pressure was so great. Thank God that putt on 18 was only one foot. I might not have been able to manage more. That it turned around was unbelievable. I had this horrible feeling of what it would have meant to have had a four-shot lead and to end up losing. It would have needed a very big plaster to patch it up. It went from almost a disaster to the absolute ultimate.’
Like this third Open victory, Faldo’s third Masters triumph was another story of disaster and the ‘absolute ultimate’. Few people knew how big a plaster Norman would need but Faldo was one of them after his Muirfield experience. Now he was playing the perfect round while Norman was self-destructing. But Faldo had managed to turn it around then, so he had to expect the Shark to attempt to do the same, however much onlookers thought the die was cast.
There were some things that Faldo and Norman had in common, as well as having been ranked the number one player in the world. They both took up the game late, at least by modern standards: Faldo was just short of his 14th birthday, Norman was 16. They were both inspired by Jack Nicklaus. And they both admitted to being perfectionists. It was how they dealt with the last that may point a clue as to why one ended up with six major titles and the other only two – ‘only’, as if it was not a considerable achievement in itself.
In a Sports Illustrated profile that was published on the eve of the 1996 Masters, Rick Reilly wrote of Norman: ‘The biggest problem with a compass that’s always fixed on Perfect is that golf is the most imperfect game. There are too many variables: wind, funny hops, golf gods who might think being handsome, cool and ridiculously talented is enough; majors we’ll dole out to somebody else. The greatest golfers did not think Perfect. Walter Hagen used to count on missing seven shots every round. If he missed only six, he broke out the champagne.’
Reilly quoted Bruce Edwards, who caddied for Norman as well as Tom Watson, as saying: ‘Greg has that tremendous ability to have six or seven straight birdies but then he’ll get pissed off with a bad bounce or a bad result. I expected Greg to react like true champions react. If Watson hits a bad shot, he’ll watch and take it and say, “That’s my punishment.” ’
‘Hell, that’s not fair,’ was Norman’s response to the Sports Illustrated piece. But in 2011 he told Golf Digest: ‘It’s funny about pressure, because people often assume I didn’t welcome it. In those situations, I usually felt… I liked it for some stupid reason. But obviously the recipe wasn’t quite right. I’ve analysed it, big time, and I see more now. Because I’ve opened myself up to the realisation that I wasn’t perfect, even though for so long I tried to be perfect and was sort of blinded by fear of failure to admit flaws. I still became the number one player in the world for other reasons, but I did some things wrong.’
This was a realisation that Faldo made during his career, not after it. ‘He’s done a wonderful job of changing his game over the years, not just his physical game but his mental game,’ Norman said when the pair met in a Shell Wonderful World of Golf contest on the Old Course at Sunningdale in 1994. ‘As one of his peers, who has the utmost respect for him, he’s got that ability to lock in and be very tenacious.’
Norman won the exhibition with a 66 to a 67 but it was only close because the Australian dropped a couple of shots at the last two holes. Most days of the week, you would prefer to cross many fairways to catch a glimpse of Norman or Ballesteros, Lyle or Woosnam, Fred Couples or even John Daly. But on Sunday afternoons, with a big prize on the line, Faldo was riveting in his own way. ‘One look at him in competition,’ wrote Jaime Diaz in Golf World (US) in 1993, ‘peering down another perfectly shaped iron shot, his eyes narrowed and his mouth grimaced, it is evident he is playing for more than money, more even than being the best of his time. Faldo is playing for the little cups, as he calls them. For History.
‘It is a higher narrower path, and a sense of mission is palpable in Faldo. For all the criticism of the monotony in his game, this passion has made him a dramatic golfer, one whose intense sense of the moment lifts him to the occasion. How else has Faldo been able to win twice at Augusta National GC? On a course that rewards risk-takers, long hitters and supernal putters, Faldo has transcended himself.’
Faldo won six times at the two majors that are all about flair (the Masters, and the Open on the links of the British seaside) and never at the two majors that, in theory, reward monotony. It was not for want of trying. At the US Open he lost a playoff to Curtis Strange at Oak Hill in 1988 and just missed out on a playoff at Medinah in 1990 before finishing fourth at Pebble Beach two years later. His best result at the US PGA was joint second behind Nick Price at Bellerive in 1992, while he just missed the Azinger-Norman playoff a year later and was twice fourth.
Perhaps he was unlucky not to have picked up one of those championships but many thought Faldo lucky to have won as many majors as he did, when so often other people’s mistakes proved crucial to the outcome. Azinger bogeyed the last two holes at Muirfield the first time and Cook bogeyed the last the second time; Scott Hoch missed a tiny putt in the playoff at Augusta in 1989 and Ray Floyd dumped his approach in the water at the 11th a year later. Faldo invokes the Nicklaus line that other players ‘knew th
at I could finish but didn’t know if they could or not. Of course, they didn’t know I wasn’t sure but as long as they think it, you have an edge.’
Faldo’s version: ‘It amuses me when fellow professionals say, “Faldo was lucky because he was given a couple of majors.” I mean, how many do you think Jack won because he was in the right place at the right time, when someone else can’t handle it? That’s not being given it. Everyone has their own pressure threshold. Some people can’t handle it on the 1st tee; others crack after 71 holes. That’s all part of the test.’
‘As a golfer, you put your head down and you go shoot a score,’ Faldo said after the second round of the 1996 Masters. ‘I’m in charge of my score and I can’t influence anybody or anyone else, so the rest of it is history.’
History suggests that Faldo could influence the outcome even when he was trailing – as he was by five, three and six going into the final rounds of his three Masters wins, by three with nine to play at Muirfield in 1987 and by two with four to play five years later. ‘I guess I didn’t do too badly with my hair on fire,’ he said. ‘Trailing isn’t really such a bad thing – as long as you have some holes left. You can see what’s going on, you have maybe a little less pressure on you. Leading the Masters, gosh, it’s almost too much because of all that it means. Behind, you can pace yourself a bit more and breathe.’
But now Faldo was leading the Masters and had driven to the right edge of the fairway. Norman, not exactly able to breathe freely, was still hoping to put some pressure on with two par-fives coming over the next three holes. But he pushed his drive through the first copse of pines on the right almost to the spectator rope line. His ball was lying on the pine straw, making ideal contact less than certain. Norman being Norman, his plan was still to smash the ball on the green and make something happen.
His caddie, Tony Navarro, did not like the play from such a scabby lie. The pin was tucked on the right side of the green, near where the tributary of Rae’s Creek which runs across the front of the green turns up the right-hand side. Norman had 213 yards to the front of the green and was thinking about hitting a two-iron but it was fraught with disaster. As if he had not suffered enough already. ‘We can make four the other way,’ Navarro said, meaning his boss should consider laying up, pitching on and giving himself a putt for the birdie.
‘I wanted to go for the green,’ Norman explained that evening. ‘I wanted to knock a two-iron onto the green and put some pressure on him. I thought that would be a really gutsy play from where I was but Tony talked me out of it.’ Even when he was holding a short-iron club with which to lay up, Norman was still wrestling with himself. Navarro told him: ‘Make sure you want to do it.’ Norman shot back: ‘I want to do the other one.’ But after about three minutes, he finally did hit the lay-up shot down the fairway.
Leadbetter, Faldo’s coach, later observed: ‘His caddie had to drag the two-iron out of Greg’s hands before he played the lay-up shot. He wanted to go for it. If Faldo is six shots ahead – and his own game is normally 60 per cent conservative and 40 per cent aggressive – Nick would raise that ratio to 80-20. So he’s maybe a little more flexible.’
Faldo now had a decision to make as well. And he took even longer about it than Norman. He had 228 yards to the hole and initially thought of the five-wood he had put in the bag that week for just such a situation. But as he put the clubhead behind the ball, something was wrong. Although the fairway slopes from right to left, so his feet were below the ball, the ball was actually sitting on a slight depression that made it a downhill lie. ‘It wasn’t looking right,’ he said. He backed off and then stood over the ball before backing off again, this time to a number of catcalls from the gallery. ‘Too much angle,’ he muttered. Having got himself into the lead, the last thing Faldo wanted to do was give his beleaguered opponent any encouragement by making a mistake.
‘Now it’s all mine to lose,’ he said. ‘Now I’d be very upset if I lost the tournament. It’s as simple as that. I just wanted to play sensibly and not make a mistake and I managed to do that. I hit all the shots where I intended to hit them.’
Although the shot did not suit a five-wood, Faldo’s ball was still lying well enough to take a two-iron to it. ‘I thought about whether I should lay up but it was such a good lie. So I said if I want to go for it, it’s a two-iron shot. It was 206 to the front, so that’s fine. And I knew if I mis-hit the two-iron, I’d hit it left, where I could get up and down.’ Finally, Faldo was ready and stroked the ball onto the green, the shot of the day and the week. ‘I just buttoned it,’ he said. ‘I hit a great shot and it went right where I wanted it to go. That crispy iron shot was the best shot I hit all week.’
His ball was safely in the heart of the green, around 30 feet from the hole. In a strange reversal of the expected pattern, Faldo had ripped a long-iron shot onto the green and Norman had laid up. Faldo, being ‘defensively aggressive’, had delivered the blow that Norman could not. ‘With the pendulum having swung in my direction, I knew one fantastic shot would send out even more forcibly the “I’m alright” message,’ Faldo wrote in Life Swings. ‘The visualisation complete, I executed one of the very best shots of my life, the ball soaring as if laser-guided into the heart of the green.’
Norman wedged his third shot to 12 feet and, after Faldo had lagged his extravagantly curving eagle putt down to the hole, he holed the putt to resounding cheers from the nearby grandstand. He had made four but perhaps not in the emphatic manner he had initially intended. Still, there are no descriptions on the scorecard, only figures, and he had avoided putting down a sixth successive five. It was only his second birdie of the day and his fourth in a row at the par-five. Moments later Faldo tapped in for his fourth successive four at the hole and he was now ten under par, still two ahead of Norman. A possible counterthrust had been parried.
Up in the television tower at the 13th hole was Ken Venturi. The main analyst for CBS, he would call the leaders through the par-five finale to Amen Corner and then hightail it back up the hill to the tower at the 18th for the conclusion of the tournament. No one knew what Norman was going through better than Venturi. In 1956, the 24-year-old amateur, an army veteran from San Francisco, led the Masters for each of the first three rounds and through 16 holes of the final round. He started out with a four-stroke advantage over Cary Middlecoff but collapsed to an 80.
At the time, the tradition at the Masters was to pair the third-round leader with Byron Nelson, the two-time champion, on the last day. Bobby Jones, the club’s founder, wanted nothing more than an amateur to win his tournament – no amateur had won a major since Johnny Goodman at the 1933 US Open and no amateur has ever won the Masters. But Venturi was Nelson’s protégé, the pair playing exhibitions all round the country, and there was concern that there should be no implication of impropriety. Instead, Venturi was allowed to pick his playing partner and chose Sam Snead, the one member of the great American triumvirate (the others being Nelson and Ben Hogan) that he had never played with. Snead could only look on helplessly as nerves consumed the youngster.
Just before the final round, someone asked Venturi: ‘How does it feel to be the first amateur to win the Masters? You know you’ll make millions.’ Venturi wrote in his book Getting Up & Down: ‘I brushed the guy off but the damage was done. He was right. I was going to win the Masters, which was being shown, for the first time, on national television. The victory would change my life. I would become the most celebrated amateur since Jones. I started to get tears in my eyes. With the business offers that were sure to come my way, I would be able to buy my parents new cars or a new house. I suddenly started to think about all the possibilities, when thinking about anything except my game was the last thing I should be doing on the final day of a major championship.’
Venturi three-putted the 1st hole for a bogey but then settled down and another bogey at the 9th still meant he had a five-stroke lead as Middlecoff also struggled on a windy day. But then Venturi bogeyed the 10th, the 11
th and the 12th, a run eerily similar to Norman’s. ‘My lead, as well as my sanity, was slipping away even further. It is difficult even today, almost 50 years later, to describe what it felt like, and what little there was I could do about it. All I can say is that it is the most horrible feeling in the world. I’m sure Greg Norman knows what I mean.’
Venturi parred the 13th but dropped further shots at the 14th and 15th holes, though he still led until he bogeyed the 17th. Jackie Burke had started the final round eight strokes behind and his closing 71 was good enough to claim the green jacket – only Burke and Snead broke par on the day. It remains the greatest comeback in Masters history. Venturi reflected in his autobiography: ‘I know it sounds absurd, but I didn’t really play that poorly. I reached 15 greens in regulation. What killed me were six three-putts, while Burke didn’t register one the whole tournament. I kept hitting the ball on the wrong side of the hole. Did I choke? Well, I suppose if you go by my score, you can make that argument. I chose to look at it differently. The day was tough for everyone.
‘The flight back to San Francisco was the longest of my life. I replayed much of the final round in my head, and it wouldn’t be for the last time. Over the following weeks, months and years, that round would come back to me in the middle of the night, and the result was always the same. I don’t wish that kind of nightmare on anyone.’
Instead of making it big in business and staying as an amateur – he was later informed that had he won, a vice-presidency of the Ford Motor Company would have been his – Venturi turned professional and finished fourth at Augusta in 1958 and second in 1960. He was another player destined never to wear the green jacket, but on a broiling hot day at Congressional in 1964, playing the final two rounds on the same day, Venturi overcame heat exhaustion and dehydration to win the US Open. Injuries ended his career but he overcame a stammer to spend 35 years broadcasting on golf. He died at the age of 80 in 2013, just months after he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.