Faldo/Norman (15 page)

Oh, they notice. They just don’t want to talk about the other guy too much. Certainly not Faldo on Saturday evening when he was asked: ‘Greg’s damage control on 12, where it could have really been a disaster, would you look back on that as Norman winning this tournament there?’ Faldo: ‘I don’t really know because I don’t know what he’s been up to for the first 36 holes.
That’s really a question for him to answer. Who knows what’s in store tomorrow?’ Later, Faldo was asked how it was playing with Norman: ‘Good. Did you make a note of that? I need to go and practise.’

In contrast to the final round, when they did not converse between the 1st tee and the 18th green, there were a few pleasantries exchanged during their round on Saturday and even the odd joke. Compared to his reluctance to mention Faldo by name the night before, having got through one round with his nemesis on Saturday allowed Norman to open up a tad more. ‘Anytime you play with Faldo, it’s great,’ he said. ‘I think the top players enjoy playing with top players. We enjoy each other’s company and each other’s ability to play the game. I think we’ve had a good rivalry since ’76, ’77, I would say. We hope there’s plenty more to come.’

W
HEN PEOPLE
think of Greg Norman and the final round of the 1996 Masters, they think of his downfall setting in at the 9th hole. Look at the scorecard and that is where his destructive run of over-par figures begins. But in terms of destructive shot-making, it actually began a hole earlier. He arrived at the 8th hole having missed that birdie chance on the previous green and perhaps ruing the lost opportunity to get his round back on track. How often does a missed chance lead to a mistake? That is what happened to the Australian on the long, uphill par-five.

Norman had outdriven Faldo, naturally, and seen his opponent lay up with a two-iron second shot that got to the top of the hill, around 50 yards short of the green. He was in the middle of the fairway and had a three-wood in his hands. ‘Don’t overcook it,’ Dave Marr murmured on the BBC television commentary. Norman overcooked it. He took a slash and a half and hooked the ball into the trees on the left. Moments before, in the pairing ahead, Phil Mickelson had taken four to get down from a similar spot. Instead of taking advantage of his power, Norman had put himself in trouble.

At first, it looked as if Faldo would not capitalise on the
error. He had 55 yards for his third shot and hit a little pitch with a wedge. The hole was cut on the front of the green but Faldo’s shot only just crept onto the putting surface and he turned away after his follow-through in a momentary show of frustration.

Norman, however, was blocked from taking a direct route to the flag by two pines 30 yards in front of him. He was forced to play to the right of them, keeping his pitch low under a branch, and the ball stopped just short of the green. From there, his chip was exquisite and he tapped in for a five. It was not a dropped shot, nor was it a birdie. While Faldo was over his putt, some spectators moving away towards the 9th tee caught the attention of Fanny Sunesson. ‘Stand still, please,’ came the piercing instruction. Faldo backed off his putt briefly but stepped back to the ball completely unperturbed. The putt was 20 feet long and broke slightly from the left. It went in.

Faldo’s was the 16th, and last, birdie made that day at the 8th hole, which ranked as the 16th hardest both for the round and the tournament as a whole. Today, the tee at the 8th has been pushed back to 570 yards, making it a three-shot hole for most. Although it has always been shorter than the 2nd hole, it runs up the hill that the 2nd descends so it plays as the longest par-five on the course. Even so, Faldo, who was never the longest of hitters, birdied the hole three of the four days (making a par on Friday).

Norman had birdied the hole on each of the first three days. His failure to do so in the final round compounded the lost chance from the previous hole. Back-to-back birdies at such a crucial part of the round would have demoralised his opponent and meant a still-commanding lead of five strokes. Instead, Faldo was gaining in both ground and confidence. Norman’s lead was down to three strokes for the first time since the 9th hole of
the third round. Exactly half of his overnight advantage had disappeared.

On Saturday, Norman had gone six strokes clear after extending his lead by two shots for the second day running. It had been the most difficult day of the week. The wind got up, gusting up to 25 mph at times, and there was the threat of a thunderstorm. The skies got dark as the leaders got towards the turn – Norman and Faldo had teed off at 2.09 p.m. – but the electrical activity stayed away and there were only a few sprinkles of rain, nothing to take the fire out of the greens. There were only nine scores under par and only two of those were under 70. The 69s of Duffy Waldorf and rookie David Duval propelled them up the leaderboard. Having recovered from a bout of flu earlier in the week, Duval had got himself up to ninth, alongside Frank Nobilo and others. Scott Hoch and John Huston were on three under in seventh place, while Waldorf had jumped into a tie for fourth with David Frost and Scott McCarron. The trio were two behind Phil Mickelson, who on six under trailed Faldo by one and Norman by seven.

Mickelson, only 25 but contending in the Masters for the second year running, had an uncharacteristic round of 72. He did not birdie any of the par-fives, had only two birdies, both from a foot with a six-iron at the 10th and a wedge at the 17th, and two bogeys. There were some adventures along the way. At the 2nd he was in the trees on the right and was forced to play right-handed, turning round his left-handed four-iron to hit with the back of it, and hooked the ball out only to find the trees on the left. From there he punched down in front of the green, chipped on and made his par. Then at the 9th, he was behind a tree on the left of the fairway and took a driver, hit down on the ball with an open
face to produce a huge slice and knocked it to 12 feet. You cannot take your eyes off him for a second.

In his interview afterwards, someone got right to the point. ‘Phil, is Greg catchable?’ Mickelson volleyed back: ‘Well, I don’t know. What do you think?’ Keeping the rally going, the questioner replied: ‘Well, with his history, and you guys aren’t going to lay down tomorrow…’

‘You know, I think that anything’s possible, so I don’t want to rule out the improbable,’ Mickelson said. ‘But as well as he is playing… and when he does make a mistake, he’s recovered. Look at 12. He knocks it in the water, gets up and down for a bogey, birdies the next hole, where that could have been disastrous. It just seems like he’s not going to make any mistakes. For any of us to catch him, it’s going to take 63 or 64. I don’t know if that’s possible on this golf course right now.’

Just being at the Masters was a blessing for Waldorf after he underwent an operation for torn cartilage in his left knee on 14 February, returning to the tour just a month later. Waldorf favoured colourful outfits and shirts that looked like they had been drawn in by hand. They hadn’t but his hat featured many signatures of friends from back home and even fellow players, while his golf balls all had patterns drawn on them by his wife, Vicky. The tradition started four years earlier when one of his children got hold of some of his tournament ammunition and doodled away. The sun and smiles often feature but this week Vicky had added some green jackets and other Augusta-related markings. ‘To remind me I’m at Augusta, in case I forget,’ Waldorf laughed. So used to it had he become that the only thing he found distracting was a completely white ball.

Clearly enjoying himself, Waldorf had a different take to almost everyone else on the day’s scoring potential. ‘To me it seemed a little easier,’ he said. ‘I think without the sun, it seemed
some of the greens were not quite as fast or as hard, with it not being so hot. But there were some very hard pins and the wind was tough. I didn’t give myself a lot of putts above the hole. When I did have an uphill putt, I made a good putt at it. I played with Davis [Love] and he played very well but he had more downhill putts than I did.’

All eyes, however, were on the Faldo-Norman pairing, the last of the day. In recent times, it has become common for the world’s leading players to be paired on a regular basis. Woods and Rory McIlroy got to know each other exceedingly well on the course in 2012 and 2013. But two decades ago it was comparatively rare. You had to wait for two of the big fish to catch the same tee time at the weekend. If it was on the big stage, say at Augusta National in the first major of the year, so much the better.

Bill Fields wrote in his third-round report for
Golf World
(US): ‘It was the kind of pairing that spectators want to see and reporters want to write about. And lurking someplace in their inner selves – perhaps behind a pre-shot routine – even today’s golfers themselves savour the prospect, so seldom do the game’s top-of-the-line performers compare their skills so intimately. It is the closest thing pro golf has to a prize fight, and in the third round of the 1996 Masters Tournament, Greg Norman and Nick Faldo were thrust into the ring. The only problem for Norman, who reigns as the game’s best player, and Faldo, who was the best a couple of blinks ago, was that the Augusta National course took off its gloves and entered the fray, punching with vigour.’

‘It’s a four-letter word called wind,’ Norman said when asked about the conditions. ‘It was a lot tougher, blowing 23-24 miles an hour out there. There were situations where you had to hit when
there was a lull so it was difficult to judge. There were long shots, and the wind’s holding you down or pushing you up, where you are hitting to a very small spot, it chews you up.’ Faldo agreed that the pin positions were especially difficult. ‘They sure were,’ he said. ‘There were some beauts – three paces on 3; three paces on 4; on the top of the hill on 5; three paces on 6. I mean, it’s not exactly a lot of room, is it?’

Faldo added: ‘The blustery wind is the tough bit. You can hit a perfect shot, get a little gust, and it doesn’t come off quite right.’ Norman found that out on the short 12th but otherwise it was a very solid round from the Shark. Forgotten were the two missed cuts in his last two tournaments. He was playing like the world number one who had already won three times that year. Faldo, on the other hand, had an off day. His game had been generally good but perhaps he lacked the confidence that comes with winning – his last victory having been 13 months earlier. In recent weeks there had always been one round that tripped him up: an opening 77 at the Honda Classic, a closing 73 at Bay Hill and the second-round 75 at the Players Championship. In the third round at Augusta, he hit only nine greens in regulation and made only six pars.

Faldo began brightly enough by hitting the green at the 2nd with a four-iron and two-putting for a four. With Norman only making a par, after missing from five feet for his birdie, the lead was down to three. But at the fiendish 3rd hole, Faldo suffered a double bogey. With the hole located at the front left of the green, he caught his wedge approach shot heavy and came up short. ‘That was a bad swing on that one,’ Faldo admitted. His chip up the bank in front of the green rolled back to his feet and another chip and two putts were required to complete the six.