Game Is Chipping Away at Norman

Remind me never to stand near Greg Norman in a thunderstorm. Never get in a lifeboat with him. In fact, if you find yourself sitting next to him in an airplane, it might be advisable to get off.

This guy could get snakebit in Ireland. I wouldn’t back his play if he had four aces and everybody else at the table was drunk. This guy is major league unlucky.

Check his house out and see if you can hear this eerie laughter coming out of the attic on Sunday nights. Fan the Caribbean and see if some voodoo priest is sticking pins in this doll with peroxide hair and a jutting jaw and super-white teeth.

Find out if Norman broke a mirror in the last seven years. See if he’s in the habit of throwing his hat on the bed. Look around and see if there’s this black cat following him. If Greg is coming to town, hide under the bed till he leaves.

The only place you want to be near him is on a golf course. If you’re a champion golfer tied for the lead or even trailing by a shot, you’ll want Greg Norman to be the guy you have to catch. It’s money in the bank. There must be something about him that ticks the fates off.

You know the golfer’s lament--”Me again, huh, God?” That should be Norman’s motto. Tommy Bolt used to shake his fists at the sky and roar, “Why don’t you come down here and fight like a man--let’s see if you can par this sucker!”

But Norman is not blasphemous, just victimized. His fortunes would have to improve for him to be considered merely unlucky. He’s beyond unlucky. He’s golf’s Job.

Listen, do you ever talk back to the TV set? Well, I do it all the time. And on Sunday afternoon, I was watching the closing moments of the USF&G; golf tournament in New Orleans and we had the following scenario: Norman birdied No. 18 for a 65 to tie David Frost for the lead. In fact, his approach shot came within inches of going in for an eagle and the outright lead.

But Frost, playing just behind Norman, was having his troubles. The 18th was a 471-yard par four, over water, and his tee shot landed in the worst place, a fairway trap.

The broadcaster, Johnny Miller, who has been in this position himself, gravely told the audience that Frost had only one option: Hit the ball safely out onto the fairway and go for a par and a playoff.

He almost couldn’t look as Frost lined up an over-the-water three-iron. But it came down in a greenside bunker. Miller brightened.

“From there, he can probably get it within five feet and make the putt,” he conceded.

I was galvanized into action.

“Five feet!” I shrieked at the screen. “That’s Norman standing there, waiting for the tie or the win. Frost will sink it!”

Of course, he did.

Cut to Greg Norman. He is standing there, frozen-faced. It is getting to be the most familiar picture in golf--Norman trying to look gracious as he gets dealt another blow to the pit of the stomach by the fickle fates of the game of golf.

People just don’t chip in on the 72nd hole of a golf tournament to win by a shot. Vegas would make you a big line against it. It probably happens once a decade.

You want to know how many times this has happened to Norman in the last 3 1/2 years? Four times.

Bob Tway did it in the 1986 PGA. Norman was standing on the green with a birdie putt in two. Tway was in the bunker. Tway holed it out. Norman, rattled, missed his putt.

In the 1987 Masters on the second hole of a playoff, Norman was on the 11th green in regulation. His opponent, Larry Mize was right of the green, 140 feet from the pin. A five looked possible, even probable. He chipped in.

Five weeks ago, on the 72nd hole of the Bay Hill tournament, Norman was waiting on the green for a potential playoff or the outright victory when rookie Robert Gamez knocked a 175-yard shot right in the hole.

When I talked back to the TV screen, it was partly because I know Norman but it was also because I know golf. Golf, like life itself, is just not fair. It’s the most unfair of big-time sports. It’s malicious, is what it is.

Can I tell you something? This was not the first time I, so to speak, called the shot.

In the 1982 Open at Pebble Beach, I was sitting in the press tent behind Lyle Spencer, a colleague then from San Antonio, now New York. Tom Watson had just hit his ball into hip-high rough by the 17th hole.

The announcers began to babble about what would happen if he made a bogey, a double bogey or one of golf’s dreadful “others” on the hole. Jack Nicklaus, standing on 18, waiting, stood to inherit the title, his fifth in the Open.

I tapped Lyle. “What if he makes a two?” I queried.

As I said it, Watson did it.

My only surprise was that it was Watson, that it wasn’t some nonwinner or nonentity overtaking the great Nicklaus. It’s interesting to note that Larry Mize hasn’t won a tournament since chipping in over Norman’s head, so to speak, at Augusta. And that Bob Tway has won only one tournament since he moon-shot Norman at the PGA in ’86.

Golf is no respecter of reputations. But where Arnold Palmer throws away a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play in an Open, or where Ben Hogan loses an Open to an unknown when he fires a tee shot into waist-high hay, you have to note they did it to themselves. Norman has it done to him.

It’s too bad you can’t bottle it and dump it on your worst enemies. Maybe they could send Greg to stand next to some international rogue like Noriega. On the other hand, if form prevailed, Noriega would go free and Norman would get five to 10.

Thank God he only plays golf. If he ever got to captain a ship, it would hit an iceberg. Just don’t get in any elevators with him.