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00:23Hi everybody, I'm Brian Kenney, and welcome to ESPN Classics' Top 5 Reasons You Can't
00:27Blame, a series that takes a fresh look at sports personalities who are remembered largely
00:32for their mistakes, controversial moments, or questionable decisions. In this show, we'll
00:37examine the man who's repeated near misses in golf's biggest events, have laid praise,
00:41count down the top, change from a longing to please his father, to the allure of a tiger.
00:49But before we get to our countdown, let's take a look at Norman Under Pressure.
01:10This was a player that lived at the top of the leaderboard, really quite intimidating
01:16to play with, because the standards were so high.
01:21Back, look at this!
01:24He came along when people were looking for a new hero, and here came the great white shark.
01:36I say, that might have been the championship right there.
01:39In the mid-late 80s, he was totally dominant at the golf world. He was a steady money winner,
01:44and he was number one on the world rankings for six years.
01:47He had the ability to hit two irons like they were seven irons. A good putter, tremendous length, tremendous strength.
02:00This is a guy who has the most dominant performances you'd ever want to see from shooting 24 under at
02:08the players in 94 and blowing away the field.
02:11Between 1986 and 1998, Greg Norman spent 331 weeks ranked number one in the world.
02:19His 86 victories included two British Opens, and in 2001, he was voted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
02:27But the flashy and highly talented Australian will be remembered most for all those majors that got away.
02:37I don't think he, oh, he hit the worst shot of the day. He hit it fat, and it's going
02:40to go on the bleachers, for God's sake.
02:42He's had the ability to win quite a few tournaments that he did not win.
02:48Oh, splashed it.
02:49He had a flaw in an Achilles heel, and I think that it was more mental than physical.
02:56Norman's par attempt just off the right edge.
03:01It seemed when he got under pressure, where he'd kind of be very upright, swing underneath it.
03:07As soon as the heat really got on, the ball went right.
03:14Got it going right, going way right, heading toward the bunkers, right?
03:18He led going into the final round of all four majors in 1986.
03:22People called that either the Saturday Slam or the Shark Slam, and of course he only won one of those
03:28tournaments.
03:29The 86th U.S. Open, he's got a lead, and he comes out flat.
03:33He talked about it later. He said he just wasn't prepared to be there.
03:3789 British Open, the playoff. He's tied with Mark Kalkovecki, and he's so jacked, he rips a 320-yard drive
03:43into a bunker.
03:44Who else but Greg Norman would do that? He ends up having to take an X on the hole.
03:51A year later, in 1990, Norman and Nick Faldo started the third round of the British Open tied for the
03:57lead.
03:58Toward the end of a humiliating collapse in which he would finish nine strokes down to Faldo's 67,
04:04the great white shark floundered by making a biting remark.
04:09Walked up the 17th hole, and Greg said to me,
04:12Well, Bruce, I guess it's better to be lucky than good.
04:15And I turned to Greg, and I said, Well, Greg, all I know is that I just want to work
04:20for somebody that's got a heart.
04:23But if any single tournament defined Norman's star-crossed legacy, it was the Masters.
04:28At the Masters in 1986, he birdied 14, 15, 16, and 17 to go into a tie for the lead
04:36of Jack Nicklaus.
04:38He's in the middle of the fairway at 18, has a chance to get into a playoff or maybe win
04:44it outright.
04:45Here comes Norman's second shot. It is ancient Jack Nicklaus.
04:51Nicklaus.
04:52Going off to the right, it is in the gallery, and Greg Norman is in trouble with his second shot.
05:00Norman's bogey pushed him out of contention as Nicklaus, at 46, won his sixth Masters.
05:06A decade later, the great white bared his teeth early at Augusta with a historic first-round performance.
05:13In 1996, Greg Norman opened that Masters with 63.
05:16He tied the course record.
05:18So you felt like from Thursday on that it was Greg Norman's year to finally win the green jacket.
05:25You've started with a six-shot lead. You've won the tournament, haven't you?
05:30It wasn't so much how's he going to win it, but how was he going to lose it?
05:38He just had the feeling from the minute he hit the first tee shot that things were going to start
05:44to go wrong.
05:45He certainly has had a horrible day and you could just see the covenants ooze out of his body.
05:50All of a sudden you look at the board and you're like, wait a second, Father's kind of catching up.
05:57Strokes it, on the way to the hole, slides by.
06:02By the ninth hole, Greg played his shot and it dribbled off the front of the green.
06:07And we knew then, the turnaround was almost complete.
06:11The wheels have come off. Believe me, the whole carriage has gone on fire.
06:15Number 10, he messes up a chip, takes bogey. Number 11, three putts inside 12 feet.
06:22My fault, right? Couldn't stop it. It was just a downward spiral. It was just a bad day for me
06:27on the golf course and I could feel it. I could sense it and it was just terrible.
06:36It was golf's great funeral. I've never been to any sporting event and left the stadium or an arena with
06:44that sort of dead silence as there was there.
06:49As the shark sank into the gloom with a 78, it was Faldo who surfaced with his third Masters title,
06:56shooting a closing round of 67.
06:59You have to blame Greg Norman for not winning more major championships. He won two British Opens, nice, but he
07:06didn't win the ones that we care about, Masters Opens, PGA.
07:11What we'll remember is that Norman didn't win and unfortunately he leaves behind a legacy of almost.
07:17In the case of Norman, it always seemed like there should have been far more than two and far fewer
07:23than 83 that he did not cash in.
07:31Before we count down the five reasons you can't blame Norman for only winning two majors, here are a few
07:35interesting items that didn't make the short list.
07:37We call them the best of the rest.
07:42Nick Faldo, the six-time major winner's slow pace of play, not only kept Norman from making a charge, it
07:50turned the shark into a jellyfish.
07:52You look at the meltdown in 1990 at St. Andrews against Nick Faldo in the third round.
08:00And Faldo shot about 67 and Norman shot about a 76 and was out of it by the middle of
08:06the front nine.
08:08Norman was typically a very quick player and Faldo was extremely deliberate and that certainly couldn't have helped Norman.
08:14If you're talking about the Masters with Faldo, Greg was trying to probably play his way out of the bad
08:21play at the start, but he can't get on that roll because he feels like he's like this all day.
08:28Gripped the club a few more times and so, you know, it just breaks your rhythm, breaks your flow.
08:35People respected what Faldo did, but nobody enjoyed playing with him.
08:41Our other best of the rest, nobody's perfect. It happens to the best of them.
08:46In the 1966 U.S. Open, Arnold Palmer led Billy Casper by seven with just nine holes left.
08:54Palmer had such a big lead and then it set his sights on the scoring record that he somewhat forgot
09:00he was in a golf tournament.
09:01And all of a sudden, a few errant shots later, he's got a fight on his hands and had to
09:06make a tricky putt on the last hole just to get in the playoff, which he lost the next day.
09:11Even Sam Sneed, whose 82 wins ranks first all time, had problems sealing the deal.
09:17So did Nicholas, who won a record 18 majors, but finished second 19 times.
09:23One that was particularly frustrating for the Golden Bear came in 1971 at the U.S. Open.
09:30Trevino finds himself tied with Nicklaus going to an 18-hole playoff and he hauls the rubber snake out of
09:37the bag on the first tee and throws it at Jack and unnerves Jack.
09:43That is the United States Open champion, Lee Trevino.
09:47The U.S. Open was Sam Sneed's nemesis. He never won it in 1930.
09:51I covered Lee Trevino on my old channel.
09:57In 1939, when he didn't really know where he stood, he thought he needed a birdie, when he really only
10:03needed a par.
10:04Ended up making a triple bogey.
10:06Now, nobody questions that Sam Sneed's one of the greatest golfers of all time.
10:10But the fact of the matter is, he never won the U.S. Open.
10:13The greatest players in golf have all either failed or been beaten. It happens to all of them.
10:19Jack, Tiger, Arnold. They lose far more often than they win.
10:29Reason number five. Sticks and stones. If they didn't break his bones, the name certainly hurt him.
10:38When he came up short, yeah, they got on him. And more than once, you know, he would jaw with
10:44fans.
10:47There was a famous incident in the 86 U.S. Open when a fan got on him.
10:51He challenged a fan that, you know, said, you're choking again, Norman.
10:55My nature is to deal with something directly.
11:00So, to me, the situation warranted for me to unload my frustrations, I had to deal with it straight away.
11:06That was kind of the very first time we saw that kind of fan coming to golf courses.
11:13And I think guys were a little stunned and taken aback.
11:19To be told year after year after year after year, you're a choker, that's got to affect you.
11:26You've got to surround yourself with a certain bubble that's impenetrable.
11:31If you try to, nobody really is.
11:33Nobody's immune to any criticism.
11:35You know, someone's yelling out, you're a choker.
11:37You hear it. And there's so much you can take.
11:39Do I blame Greg Norman for letting that bother him?
11:42No, not really.
11:43Because he's human.
11:47That brings us to reason number four.
11:50Butch Harmon.
11:51After Norman's coach left him to team with Tiger Woods,
11:54the Great Whites' best days were behind him.
11:57Butch Harmon meant everything to Greg Norman's game.
12:01When Butch Harmon went to Tiger Woods, those kinds of things bothered him.
12:07With Harmon as his coach in 1993 and 1994,
12:11Norman won seven tournaments, including a British Open.
12:15Greg's swing changed quite a bit when he was working with Butch,
12:18and it became a lot more technically correct in that respect.
12:21There was a difference, you know, there was a difference in results.
12:25His focus was that much better, that much more confident.
12:29Butch had this wonderful ability to make you laugh.
12:34And I connected with Butch.
12:35He definitely felt the loss of not having Butch around to achieve that.
12:42I respected Butch, and I knew his involvement with that young kid from California
12:49probably do him more the world of good than me being there as well.
12:55Under Harmon, Woods captured eight majors, while Norman left out in the cold, never won another.
13:02Harmon made a big difference, and there was obviously a lot of victories that disappeared after Harmon left.
13:15Greg's father, an electrical engineer, didn't support his son's career choice, even when he was the best in the world.
13:22Greg came out of that sort of surfing culture.
13:25So, there should be more motivation to him for him to win.
13:32He loved to be free, he loved to sail, and from very, very early on, his father just couldn't deal
13:38with those sort of things at all.
13:40Greg sensed that I wasn't all that keen to be able to do it, because there isn't any real future
13:47in life for them, in playing golf.
13:49Everything comes from his father, because he was trying so hard to get his father to say, Greg, I'm so
13:56proud of you.
13:57You could see the tension, and I knew he was trying to show or prove to his father that he
14:04was worthy of being a success.
14:10With a father who showed little interest in the game,
14:13Norman lacked the paternal touch that many golfers credit for lifting them from gifted to great.
14:19It would have been a wonderful deal to have my father standing on the 18th green winning my first tournament,
14:24absolutely.
14:25It was a huge motivational factor.
14:28I wanted to prove to my father, I will achieve my goals.
14:32When you look at a Nicholas and a Woods and what their dads meant to them, Tiger's father was the
14:38guy that led Tiger down from the first tee to the 18th green metaphorically.
14:42Jack Nicholas was the same type of thing. His father was his North Star that he followed in golf.
14:49Tiger drew from his father inspiration, drew courage, drew commitment.
14:54If you draw correlations between the two, you can say that it would probably have given Greg more of an
15:00edge.
15:00If his father had supported him all the way through, there's no telling how many majors he could have won.
15:12Number two, Jack Nicklaus.
15:14Norman desperately tried too hard to duplicate his idol, setting himself up for failure.
15:21Everybody's got to have a role model.
15:22So Jack was that way for me.
15:24Norman had a huge flame inside of him, trying to be as good or trying to be better than Jack
15:30Nicklaus.
15:31I feel like Greg is in some ways almost a protege of mine in some ways.
15:37He grew up learning my lessons and my book. He's followed my career.
15:41I've heard stories that he tried to pull the club the same, he tried to do everything the same way.
15:45Nicholas was the first modern professional golfer to define his career by how he performed in the majors.
15:50There's no question that Norman really modeled his career on Nicholas.
15:56He would focus more. He'd go to play Augusta and play the open sites and the British open sites in
16:02advance.
16:03So he could gear himself up.
16:05I think the expectation was very high for Greg to live up to.
16:12When Norman fell short time and again in the majors, he tried everything.
16:16From seeking spiritual enlightenment to a TV motivator in an effort to be like Jack.
16:24He did a lot of reading and did some of that, you know, Eastern way of thinking and that kind
16:30of stuff.
16:30I do remember them at Augusta talking about how we visited with Tony Robbins and had helped him visualize winning
16:38and think about being positive on the golf course.
16:42I never had a sports psychologist growing up.
16:45The conversation I had with Tony Robbins was because I was intrigued. I listened to some of his tapes.
16:50You can never blame somebody for trying too hard. I think you compliment them.
16:53You can't blame Greg Norman for trying to live up to his idol, for trying to beat Jack Nicklaus, trying
16:59to be better than Jack Nicklaus.
17:00Who are we to say that the guy was a failure based on the fact that he didn't turn out
17:05to be Jack?
17:06How is trying to beat Jack Nicklaus a bad thing?
17:16Golf happens and it happened to Norman more than anyone.
17:21There was this kryptonite to his Superman and he just seemed to find it more than anybody else.
17:26Norman got beaten on two miracle shots in two mages, in two consecutive mages.
17:33The first came at the 1986 PGA Championship.
17:37Tied with Norman on the final hole, Bob Tway dumped his approach into a greenside bunker.
17:43I didn't think he had a hope in hell of getting it up and down too.
17:46And I was just sitting back and just saw it.
17:49And when it landed on the green, I said to myself, well, this has got a little bit too much
17:53speed.
17:54That is the shot of Bob Tway out of the bunker.
17:56It's another hole! It's another hole!
18:00You want me to actually say what I thought when I saw the ball going in the hole?
18:03I said, oh, and it starts with an S and finishes with a T.
18:10The one that was more devastating to him was the 87 Masters.
18:22Norman hit the perfect putt to win that tournament on 18 at Augusta.
18:27How that ball didn't go in, I'm sure he still wonders.
18:31He's in the playoff with Mize.
18:33Of course, Mize misses the green, you know, a mile to the right on 11.
18:37Greg's right in front. Again, you're thinking it's over.
18:40I'm not even watching him, Chip.
18:43But he starts walking when the ball hits the green and starts rolling.
18:47And I thought, oh, that's carrying too much speed, you know.
18:58And I've never seen blood leave a face like it did of Greg Norman.
19:03He was just spent.
19:05He's our tragic hero out on the PGA Tour.
19:09You talk about an energy sapping, energy draining shot of adrenaline.
19:14I'm squatting down on my haunches, getting all the reverberations coming through my body.
19:19And I went, I've never felt anything like that before in my life.
19:24That was a tough one to take.
19:28I think it'd be one thing to lose to Jack Nicklaus.
19:30It's quite another thing to lose to Larry Mize and Bob Tway.
19:36When a guy holds a bunker shot or a chip to win a tournament, it hurts.
19:41Major championship level, it's going to stay with you forever.
19:45Winning breeds winning.
19:46If things would have gone more his way, you know, I don't think he ever would have lost the Masters
19:51to Faldo.
19:52If he was to win those two majors, he was flying.
19:55And four might have turned into ten, might have turned into twelve.
19:57And if those two shots don't go in, then you go Jones and Hogan and Nicklaus and Norman and Tiger.
20:05I think that's what it does for him.
20:07Because not only does it give him two more majors, he's also three legs to the Grand Slam.
20:15You've got to be kidding me!
20:17How many times can Greg Norman take him?
20:20You've got a whole list of players, you know, who basically, you know, put him away in a situation where
20:28there was nothing he could do about it.
20:29But you can't really blame Greg, because you can't play defense in golf.
20:34You go, man, the guy snaked it, you know? It was, I think it's just golf.
20:40Golf happens, but more than anybody else that I can recall, it happened to Norman.
20:52Had Tway and Mize not made their great shots, history might have looked kinder at Norman.
20:56But it was not to be.
20:57We hope we've given you some new insight into golf's version of Sisyphus.
21:01I'm Brian Kenney, thanks for watching.
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