It was a Masterful Round for Golf’s History Books

There was a silent rhythm to the way Nick Faldo and Greg Norman moved around the practice green on Sunday at the Masters in Augusta, Ga., never speaking, a deliberate way in which they remained as far apart as possible.

The wordless ritual was used as much to gain a sense of calm as it was to gain a putting touch. The minutes until the last tee time of the last round of the 1996 Masters ticked away with agonizing slowness.

Even though Norman was six strokes ahead of Faldo, tension clung to the rolling hills of Augusta National Golf Club and hung as thick in the air as the sweet fragrance of the brilliant dogwoods and azaleas lining the course.

Faldo and Norman--the two dominant golfers of their generation--were the most compelling matchup possible. They were capable of anything.

There was a sense of inevitability that despite the big lead--no lead that large had ever been squandered in the final round of a major championship--this Masters would, as always, be decided over the final nine holes.

But no one expected to witness one of the most memorable rounds in the history of golf--a 67 by Faldo and a 78 by Norman. A six-stroke Norman lead that became a five-stroke Faldo victory.

For Faldo, it was one of the most masterfully executed rounds ever under final-round pressure at a major championship and secured his place among the greatest to play the game.

For Norman, it was one of the most heartbreaking unravelings in the history of all sport, a disintegration so painful even his closest friend couldn’t bare to watch, a defeat over which he ultimately triumphed because of the classy way he faced up to his failing.

A year later, Faldo speaks with a modest ease about the signs of nerves he saw in Norman and discusses the key shots he hit to keep Norman trapped in a suffocating shell of pressure.

A year later, Norman still seems unable to put his finger on exactly what went wrong, but still faces squarely the responsibility for letting slip away a tournament he seemed to have surely won.

“There was no game plan other than to hit just the shot I have,” Faldo said in a recent conversation.

“You can know what you want to do, what you have to do,” he said. “But you’ve still got to pull it back. When you are standing there with a championship on the line, there is nobody--just you. Purely me.”

Faldo’s round that day was pure Faldo--and pure golf. Except for a bunker hit on No. 5 and a weak wedge into No. 8, every ball he hit went exactly where he wanted it to go.

Only once did he leave the ball above the hole for one of Augusta’s dangerous downhill putts, and that was on No. 9--the only hole where the player should be above the hole.

“What I pieced together was in a way a perfect round,” Faldo said. Considering “the emotion and everything, that’s as good as it gets, I guess.”

Watching Norman that day was like watching an actor who had forgotten his lines or a dancer suddenly out of step.

“I couldn’t watch,” Nick Price said about his neighbor from Hobe Sound, Fla. “Greg was on about 12 or 13 when I finished. I just packed up my kit and left.”

Even now Norman speaks about that day with a vagueness, as if he were outside his body watching through a haze of pain.

“It was more physical than it was mental,” Norman said last month. “There was a minor flaw in my game and it showed through and the more I tried to push it . . . The more I forced it, the worse it got away from me.”

Whatever the flaw, it was not evident when Norman shot a first-round 63 and played the first 54 holes 13 under par. But Augusta is one of the most exacting golf courses in the world. It finds flaws.

“Every golfer says the same thing about Augusta. You can’t force the issue.”

That, in a nutshell, was the difference between Faldo and Norman in that final round. Faldo played with calm control, as if he were six strokes ahead. Norman played with a sense of desperation, as if he knew what a disaster it would be to lose a lead so large.

“You have to have strong mental powers and just strong powers to carry on playing how you want to play, rather than being caught into it, roped into doing something you don’t want to,” Faldo said. “You don’t want to be a different person than you are.”

On the first hole, Faldo played a power-fade tee shot around the bunker that pushes from the right edge into the center of the fairway, leaving the perfect line to the green.

Norman hooked his drive into the left rough.

Faldo held off shooting for the flag tucked behind the back left bunker and played a 9-iron safely to the center of the green, 20 feet from the hole.

Norman went right at the pin and left the ball about 2 yards short--in the bunker. He blasted out to 4 feet from the hole.

Faldo lagged his birdie putt to about 30 inches and instead of marking his ball putted out to make a par.

“It’s kind of useful to get in the hole when you’ve got a lot of hustling and bustling around the green,” Faldo said about his decision to putt. “If Greg had holed or whatever, people might have started moving.”

Putting out first also put more pressure on Norman. He now needed his 4-footer just to keep from losing a stroke on the very first hole. He missed.

It was that kind of thought, that kind of attention to detail, that carried Faldo through that final round. An added boost came from the subtle signs from Norman that he did not have full control of his game.

“I think the most obvious we saw,” Faldo said, “was he started regripping the club a few extra times, so he was over the ball a lot longer than normal.”

Faldo, on the other hand, concentrated entirely on not changing anything about his routine.

“When the pressure is really there, you focus on what you have always been doing,” Faldo said. “I concentrate on starting my downswing slowly. Rotate, set, downswing slow. Oh my God, it gets rid of everything and I can just stay with what I’ve been doing, what has really worked for me.”

Faldo pulled to within four strokes when Norman bogeyed No. 4, again boldly attacking the flag and again hitting a bunker. Norman got that shot back when Faldo made a bogey on No. 5, but lost it again when Faldo made a great birdie on No. 6, where the pin was tucked on the tiny shelf on the back right of the 180-yard par-3.

“I think for me it might have started at the sixth,” Faldo said. “To make a birdie down six--that is a tough one.”

Faldo walked to the eighth tee four strokes back.

“I was thinking if I could get it to two or three down going to the back nine, then we would have something,” Faldo said.

What happened over the next five holes was a turnaround of mind-numbing proportions. Faldo went from four down to two up in those five holes, while making only one birdie.

“The next key would have been on the eighth hole,” Faldo said. “It was such an easy pitch and I messed it up and got away with it.”

He left his 40-yard pitch 25 feet short of the hole, but made the putt for a birdie to pull within three strokes of Norman.

Norman made some questionable shots in the first eight holes and had a couple of shots that missed by mere inches of being perfect. But beginning on No. 9, he made a series of poor shots over four holes that all but sealed his fate.

“The shot into 9 was where I knew my swing wasn’t right because there was nothing wrong with the shot,” Norman said. “I thought I put the swing on it the right way, but it came up about 30 inches short, 3 feet short of where I was hitting.”

The shot just missed being perfect, but by landing a yard short it spun back, caught the slick downslope of the green and rolled back 20 yards short of the putting surface. Bogey. Lead down to two strokes.

“From there on, I just tried to push it a little bit,” Norman said, “tried to figure out what was going wrong with me.”

Norman made another bogey on No. 10 when he missed the green to the left--the wrong side to miss it--and yet another when he three-putted No. 11, missing the par putt from 30 inches after nearly making the birdie try.

Faldo walked to the 12th tee tied for the lead.

“I knew that was key,” he said. “It was match play now.”

And Faldo is as good at match play as there is.

“I knew how important that shot was,” he said of his tee ball on No. 12. “I aimed 10 feet left of the hole with a 7 iron and I actually hit it there. That was as a big a shot as you can hit.”

No. 12 at Augusta is a devilish little hole, a mere 155 yards. But it’s a confounding shot to a shallow green complicated by swirling wind that is not felt on a tee protected by towering pines. A mis-club or a mis-hit ends up in Rae’s Creek in front of the green.

“I stepped back and I said, wow, he can see me up there,” Faldo said, recalling his reaction after putting his ball safely on the green. “It is such a tough shot to play. You have to play defensively smart. With all that had been going on, it was such a hard shot to hit after I put my ball up there.”

Norman hit the creek and made a double bogey. Almost unbelievably, Faldo was two strokes ahead.

“Well, I said now I’m leading, now the pressure is all on me, now it’s mine to lose,” Faldo said. “That was an incredible rush of pressure.”

Faldo responded by playing the last six holes 3 under par, rising to challenge in the same way he won his other two Masters--by being at his best on the final nine holes.

“Augusta is tailor-made for Nick Faldo,” Arnold Palmer said recently. “He knows what’s going to be there every time he goes. The round of golf he played on Sunday came from a tactical thinker. That’s why he won the tournament . . . with a little help from Greg.”

Told that he almost seemed to enjoy the pressure, Faldo paused only briefly, then said: “Yeah, in a perverse sort of way.

“I would stop and look around and say, ‘This is what it’s all about.’ That’s what you practice hard for, to put yourself in that position. It takes a long time to learn how to enjoy it, but that’s what you can say I’m doing it for. You want to put yourself in that position just to see what you can do.”

Although Norman’s hopes remained alive on No. 15, when he nearly chipped in for eagle, and didn’t fade completely until he hit into the water again on No. 16, Faldo essentially closed out the match on No. 13.

Facing a 228-yard second shot on the par-5 with water short and to the right of the green, Faldo deliberated, considering all the options.

“I was toying with what shot to hit,” he said. “The 5-wood would have been perfect. That was the club I was carrying all week just for that one shot.

“I knew I could take the water out of play. All of a sudden I am going creek, bogey, creek, bogey. Then I realized I was happy. I was quite comfortable.

“I knew that from that position that I was in there, I just wanted to match him--match him and keep pushing all the time. I wanted to put the ball on the green and keep the pressure on.”

He striped the 2-iron safely home, got down in two to match Norman’s birdie and watched the two-stroke lead grow to five by the time he made a birdie on No. 18.

Faldo wrapped his arms around Norman on the 18th green, truly moved by Norman’s struggle. “I just wanted to give you a hug,” Faldo whispered.