Faldo/Norman Read Free Page B

agonising history behind him. In yesterday’s third round he opened up a six-shot lead over his nearest rival Nick Faldo. Greg Norman arrived at Augusta National a few hours ago ahead of what most people are expecting to be a triumphant march to his first major title in the United States. Once again playing alongside Nick Faldo, admitting he was in need of a miracle but in the last round of the Masters, the miraculous can happen.’
    That morning’s newspapers had trodden a similar line between proclaiming Norman as the winner and not wishing more of the unthinkable on him. ‘Shark smells blood’ was theheadline in the
Augusta Chronicle
, with the subheading: ‘Pursuers can only hope for complete collapse by Norman, who holds six-shot lead going into the final round’.
    Those who did not see the result as a foregone conclusion were certainly in the minority, although some time after the 1996 Masters, the sports columnist Ian Wooldridge admitted of Faldo’s victory: ‘Shamefully, I confess that on the previous evening, emboldened by several martinis, I’d backed Nick to do it and thereby won the biggest bet of my life.’ (Details unknown but Ladbrokes had Faldo at 7-1 before the final round, Norman at 1-8.)
    Ron Green, in the
Charlotte Observer
, wrote: ‘Greg Norman won the Masters on Saturday. Now, if he can only keep from losing it. Don’t worry, he won’t lose this time. Surely, not this time. He has a six-shot lead over Nick Faldo, who doesn’t score a lot of 65s and 66s, the kind of scores he’ll need to even have a chance of catching Norman. Phil Mickelson is another shot back, but he drives his ball into the camellias too much and has to play trick shots to make his pars. Nobody else is in the game. It will be Greg Norman against himself out there Sunday on those rolling fairways where so many of his demons have been born. It is a formidable opponent.’
    Meanwhile, Australian journalists were up late on Saturday night concocting tributes for their Monday morning newspapers, which would arrive on readers’ doormats as the final round was taking place. The
Sydney Morning Herald
may have indicated that Norman was Australia’s greatest sportsman since Bradman. They changed their tune after the following day.
    On Saturday evening, after his third round, Norman was asked if he had ‘thought about the ceremony and the jacket, and will you think about that tonight?’ Norman was not falling for the cart-before-the-horse trick. He replied: ‘No, I haven’t. I never have in the past. When you’ve got the lead in a tournament, youdon’t think about the end result. You just think about what you’re doing at the time and relax and chill out. If you get ahead of yourself, it is not going to work. So, I’ll wake up tomorrow and do what I’ve been doing and get ready for the 1st tee.’
    Temptation was everywhere, however. After a late practice session, Norman went back to the locker room, where a friend said: ‘Your last night in here.’ Masters champions use a different changing room upstairs in the clubhouse. Another longtime friend of Norman’s, Peter Dobereiner, the great golf writer for
The Observer
and
The Guardian
, was attending the Masters for the last time. He died in August that year, with Norman paying a handsome tribute: ‘To think of golf without Peter Dobereiner is like a bunker without sand, a fairway without grass, a flag without a green. His dry humour, wonderful understanding of the game, coupled with his deep love for the sport, is going to be sadly missed.’ But now, standing at the urinals in the (downstairs) locker room at Augusta, Norman could do little more than force a smile when Dobereiner remarked: ‘Well, Greg, not even you can fuck this one up.’

    What Norman and Faldo did during the final round of the 1996 Masters is a matter of record. But what happened before their 2.49 p.m. tee time remains open to speculation. Not least for Norman himself. Asked on the Sunday evening