‘Great White Shark’ eats up golfing millions

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 48

‘Great White Shark’ eats up golfing millions

JOHN SMALLWOOD, of DUO, in London, takes a look at Greg Norman, the man known as the “Great White Shark” in golfing circles.

When Greg Norman first set foot on a golf course he was aged 15, caddying for his golfing mother and with no intention of swinging along to world-wide fame. He would have been happy to become a fighter pilot in the Australian Air Force. But he got hooked on the game, and was soon carrying his own clubs with a determination which signalled a warning that here was a champion in the making. He fast became one of the game’s big hitters, with drives of more than 300 yards; in his first three years as a pro he won ten major titles; in 1986 be became the first golfer to wtn more than a million U.S. dollars tn a season; and his earnings off the course, through commercial contracts, were estimated to bring in four times as much as his winnings. But, surprisingly, in spite of all this, when it came to winning the really big-time championships like the U.S. Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the P.G.A. Championship, which make up the Grand Slam, Norman has been one of the least successful of the golfing stars who started out around the same time in the midseventies.

While fellow pros like Severiano Ballesteros notched up two British Opens and two United States Masters, Bernhard Langer grabbed the U.S. Masters, and Sandy Lyle won the British Open, it wasn’t until last year that

Norman carried off his first big prize — the British Open at Turnberry in Scotland. Norman was bom in the Australian mining community of Mount Isa, Queensland, and grew up in Townsville, beside the Great Barrier Reef. His father was a mining engineer, and his housewifemother was a keen golfer with a handicap of three. Swimming, diving and, surfing came as natural to him as walking, and with his sun-bleached hair he

got the name of “Great White Shark’’ both in and out of the water. He played cricket and rugby football before being introduced to golf. That happened when the family moved south to Brisbane and mum took Greg to her golfing sessions as a somewhat reluctant caddy. Then, as the game’s magnetism pulled in another convert, and with no more coaching than the local pro’s junior classes, Greg became a scratch player just sixteen months after starting the game with a handicap of 24. There were great things ahead for the young man with the footballer’s sturdy legs and shoulders like a stevedore. Within a year he was on his first visit to Europe and snatched the £3OOO first prize in the Martini International tournament at Blairgowrie in Scotland# He shot a final round of 66 for a new course record, and a winning total of 277. He had been a

tournament player for only nine months. By 1980 he had the look of a world-class player. He turned the French Open Championship into something of a rout with a final round of 67 and victory by ten strokes from Britain's lan Mosey. Scoring in the 60s in each of the four rounds, with nothing higher than a 68, Greg finished on 268, 20 under par, to gain his first victory on the European continent. Only a couple of months later, at Helsingborg in Sweden, he started the final round of the Scandinavian Open six strokes behind, and stormed through to win with a course record of 64, chalking up his second European title of the year. And three months after that golfs new golden boy put a gilt edge to his career by winning the prestige-laden Suntory World Match-Play Championship at Wentworth near London.

When he won the Kemper Open in Maryland he became the leading money-maker with $447,000 on the P.G.A. tour. His win followed a sudden-death play-off with Larry Mize — which in fact wasn’t so sudden: they paired the first five holes; Greg won at the sixth after Mize hit the water twice. In spite of the ■up-turns, it almost got to the stage where the sheer weight of statistics in his favour were counter-productive. His critics said: “Oh yes, he makes the money, but can he win when it mat-

ters?” At that time the answer was “No.”

But in that year’s British Open, after a seven-under-par second round of 63 at Turnberry, which equalled the Open record, he pushed resolutely on to victory. He became the first Australian to win the trophy since the legendary Peter Thomson’s triumph 21 years previously.

He surrendered his British Open title this year (1987) with a depressing seven-bver-par total, of 291. He said the tournament had been “four days of sheer frustration.” Norman slowly came to terms with his fame. As a child he was painfully shy, and when he first arrived in Britain he would hide away between tournaments at a friend’s home in the country. Not that he’s had much time to spare — he travels about 150,000 km a year. And it was a PanAm stewardess he fell for, and married, in 1981. As well as acting as her

husband’s personal secretary, Laura is both mother and housekeeper, bringing up a daughter, MorganLeigh, now five, and Gregory junior, who is two. She deliberately chose not to take the game up herself. “We find it works better for us that way,” she said.

Laura confessed that even Greg’s splendid tournament victories leave her emotionally drained. She said: “I can lose pounds in weight just watching him play. After his Augusta defeat I was so sick I could hardly bear to speak to anyone for hours. But Greg is one of the few golfers I know who can take defeat so well — that’s why he’s so popular.”

He has had more than his fair share of those defeats. He explained: “I’ve been too hard on myself. I pushed too much early on this year, trying to make it better than 1986, and it didn’t happen.”

Norman tries to spend as much time with his family as possible.

Home was a five-bed-room, $1.5 million house at Orlando, Florida, which backed on to a lake and had its own swimming pool, until they moved down the road to a grander setting in West Palm Beach, close to Norman’s schoolboy hero, golfer Jack Nicklaus. Norman's passion is cars, more especially the fast ones. He owns, among others, a Rolls Royce, a bright red Ferrari, a Jeep, and an Aston Martin. He also enjoys a beer or two.