Ties with sick youth ‘exploited’

Press, 13 April 1989, Page 34

Ties with sick youth ‘exploited’

NZPA-AP Madison, Wisconsin Golfer Greg Norman says he fears several groups are trying to exploit his relationship with a Wisconsin youth who is suffering from leukemia. The Australian won the Heritage Classic at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, last year after flying 17-year-old Jamie Hutton, of Monona, Wisconsin, to the tournament

to accompany him on the course. Since that victory, Norman said he has been hounded by groups who have asked him to do the same for other sick children. Norman and Hutton will be together again this week at the Heritage Classic, but Norman said he fears what once was called a fairy tale will soon become a disturbing media circus.

"I’ve had different hotel people and other companies writing to me and saying, ‘Take Jamie here and take Jamie there',” Norman said in a recent interview with “The Capital Time” of Madison. “All they’re doing is manipulating, jumping on the bandwagon. I think that’s a very, very callous way of going about it.” Norman, one of the

P.G.A.’s top money winners, said he understood some groups were trying to be helpful, “but on the other hand they can say ‘This hotel put Jamie up and that airline flew Jamie’.” Norman said his friendship with Jamie is very personal and “not something that should be bandied about in the public, in the media, as much as it has been.”