Faldo/Norman (32 page)

B
Y STRANGE
coincidence, three months after overcoming a six-stroke deficit to Greg Norman at the Masters, Nick Faldo found himself starting the final round of the Open at Royal Lytham six shots behind Tom Lehman. Lightning did not strike twice. In fact, it would be a long wait for an Englishman to win a major championship again, although the European golfing success story continued with José María Olazábal winning the Masters in 1999 and Paul Lawrie winning the Open at Carnoustie the same year.

Tiger Woods took home many of the major titles as the new millennium got under way and it was not until Carnoustie in 2007 that Padraig Harrington got the ball rolling again in winning the Open. The Dubliner prevailed again the following year and added the US PGA a couple of weeks later. Now it was Northern Ireland to the fore with Graeme McDowell taking the US Open in 2010 – in the same year Germany’s Martin Kaymer won the US PGA – and then Rory McIlroy winning the 2011 US Open and the 2012 US PGA, both by eight strokes, while Darren Clarke nipped in for the 2012 Open at Sandwich.

There was a time, after Faldo faded from the upper echelons,
that England could barely muster a male golfer in the top 100 in the world. When Paul Casey became England’s leading golfer according to the world rankings, he said: ‘That’s nice, but the problem is that England’s best golfer is only 27th in the world.’ In time a batch of players, all of whom got into golf when Faldo was the main man, rose to the very top. Lee Westwood and Luke Donald have both been world number one, while Justin Rose and Ian Poulter also hit the world’s top ten. The major title, though, was lacking. Westwood, in particular, got close but his near miss at Muirfield in 2013 was his eighth top-three finish without ever being first.

By then, the drought had ended with Rose taking the US Open at Merion a month earlier. In a superlative performance on the final day, the 32-year-old South African-born golfer beat Phil Mickelson and Jason Day by two strokes. At the last, he hit a four-iron from beside the plaque celebrating Ben Hogan’s famous shot at the 1950 US Open. Rose hit another beauty just off the back of the green and made his par. On Father’s Day, he gave a nod to the heavens, acknowledging his dad, Ken, who died in 2002 but not before instilling the essential ingredients for golf and life in his son.

Rose was the teenage amateur who holed a wonder shot at the last to finish fourth in the Open at Birkdale in 1998 but then turned professional and missed his first 21 cuts. ‘He’s a classy guy,’ Faldo said after having lunch with Rose two weeks before the US Open. ‘No matter how many times he got knocked down, he still had self-belief.’

‘I don’t know why, but I could just tell that Justin was ready,’ Faldo later told the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘He had pieced it all together, got everything right in that relationship between swing and mind and, after being there a few times, was finally able to deal with it. You have to think that Justin’s becoming the complete golfer and I expect him to win more majors.’

Rose had achieved something not even Faldo had managed, winning America’s national championship. The list of English winners (barring early champions who had emigrated to the States as the country’s first professionals, along with many from Scotland) is a short but impressive one: Harry Vardon (1900), Ted Ray (1920) and Tony Jacklin (1970). Since the days of Vardon, Ray and J.H. Taylor, England’s golfers have usually been ploughing a lone furrow on the world stage – think of Henry Cotton, Jacklin and Faldo.

But Rose said: ‘There’s been a very strong crop of English players for quite some time now, with myself, obviously Westwood and then Donald and Poulter as well. Paul Casey was up there for a good while and is probably going to make a comeback, I think. I really hope it does inspire them.

‘I think it was always going to be a matter of time before one of us broke through. I always hoped it was going to be me, obviously.’ Casey, in fact, claimed his first win for two and a half years, most of them spent battling injuries, only two weeks later and admitted he was inspired by his old friend.

But the person who did most to inspire Rose was Adam Scott. When Rose texted his congratulations to the Australian for his Masters win, Scott wrote back that he was next. ‘I feel like it’s our time,’ Scott added. The pair shared a joint celebration later in the year at their homes in the Bahamas. ‘I couldn’t be happier for him,’ Scott said. ‘You can see when a guy is ready and I saw that in Justin.’ Just before the Masters, Rose had beaten Scott a couple of times in practice rounds. ‘The good thing for him about me winning the Masters was that it probably fired him up even more. Sometimes that’s all you need.’

Rose said: ‘It’s been a learning process and all the self-improvement over the years enabled me to get to the point where I believe in myself 100 per cent down the stretch. It’s how you deal with the pressure in the moment. That’s what Merion was all
about. Me signalling up to my dad, before I’d even won, it was just that I felt I had done the job I needed to do. As a golfer that’s all you can do – control your emotions and control your own game. That’s how you become a tough competitor.’

No one was tougher than Faldo. But a second miracle rally from six shots down in 1996 was beyond him. To paraphrase Colin Montgomerie from his third-round press conference at the 1997 Masters, Greg Norman was not leading and it wasn’t the same Nick Faldo who was lying second. At Lytham, baked hard by unbroken sun all week, Faldo had three rounds of 68 but Lehman, after two 67s, had a 64 on the Saturday to get half a dozen clear. ‘Ground control to Major Tom,’ as the headline in the
Independent on Sunday
summed up.

Faldo was not quite sending out the same positive signals as he had after three rounds at Augusta in April. ‘It’s a different time and a different course. I have to go out and shoot a great round and see what happens. Tom will be under enormous pressure. He is going for his first major, while I have it all to gain and nothing to lose. I will need at least a 63.’

While Lehman, who had finished 18th at Augusta and second at the US Open already that season, was not as heralded an opponent as Norman, he was at least able to smile when the scenario from Augusta was put to him that night. ‘You mean like lightning striking twice? I feel like I’m playing very well, and I like my chances. I would rather be six strokes ahead than six strokes behind.’

This was different from Augusta. Despite what he had said, this time there was far more pressure on Faldo. He had done it once, he could surely do it again. If he could beat the world
number one from such a position, what chance did a player have who had never won at the highest level and had struggled all around the globe just to get to the big stage? In front of a huge home gallery, it was a different Faldo from the one who had started the last day at Augusta so relaxed, setting out more in hope than expectation.

Expectation is the equivalent of Kryptonite to any golfer. It shows first in the putting, as Norman found at Augusta. At Lytham, Faldo hit a fine opening tee shot at the par-three 1st to six feet. But he missed the putt while Lehman holed from a similar distance to save par. It might have been a two-shot swing, the sort of early encouragement the Englishman got against Norman and needed now. He went on to miss from ten feet at the 2nd, six feet at the 5th, three feet at the 6th and six feet at the 7th. He could not take his chances and never got to feed on the momentum of the situation as he had at Augusta. The difference was cut by two to four strokes after four holes but Faldo only gained one more shot for the rest of the round.

‘Faldo, as a big, blond Australian can confirm, is one of the few who can intimidate opponents,’ wrote Michael Henderson in
The Times
. ‘He really shook Lehman, make no mistake about that. As he marched ahead from tee to green in those crucial opening holes, he walked with a purpose that suggested that he, and not the Minnesotan, was defending a six-stroke lead. The mood was something like a revivalist gathering as spectators hailed him as the one true leader. There were ocean breakers of applause, wave upon wave, as even ordinary shots brought yells of encouragement. Alas, he was not up to it.’

Faldo ended up in fourth place, as Lehman won by two from Ernie Els and Mark McCumber. Faldo shot a 70, and only if he had holed more of those early putts could he have exerted the sort of pressure he had on Norman. He drove into a bunker at
the 15th and knew his challenge was over, his shoulders sagging, his head dropping. ‘I had so many chances but was unable to take them, as simple as that,’ he said.

Lehman closed with a two-over 73. ‘I didn’t play well at all,’ he said, ‘but I stuck it out and I came through.’ Bobby Jones won the first of his three Open crowns at Lytham in 1926, with a wonder shot at the 17th hole, but Lehman was the first American professional to win at the Lancashire course. At 37, and having overcome cancer two years earlier, Lehman was made of stern stuff. He became the world number one, albeit only for one week, but one or 331, who’s counting? For four years in a row, from 1995 to 1998, he played in the last pairing at the US Open but could not win any of them. After one of the defeats, amid a gaggle of reporters, he was asked how he would get over the disappointment. ‘How about hot sex all night long?’ suggested his wife, Melissa. ‘Yep, that’ll do it,’ he said.

After Lytham, David Davies wrote in
The Guardian
: ‘In April Faldo destroyed Norman, not only overhauling a six-shot lead but turning it into a five-stroke win. On Sunday Faldo tried to stare his man down again, but failed. Lehman, one of golf’s nice guys, is also one of its strong guys, and he stared right back. He admitted to nerves, that his swing lacked tempo and that his putting was poor. But the American dug as deeply as he needed into his reserves of will power and determination.’

It was a strange time for golf, the rest of the 1996 season after Augusta. Everyone was a little traumatised after the epic showdown between Faldo and Norman, and there already seemed to be a sense that everything would change once Woods turned professional. He finally did so in the autumn, making a grand
entrance that culminated in his record-breaking Masters win the following April. The lull was over. A new cast list was assembling, headed by Woods but including Els, Mickelson, Vijay Singh and David Duval.

Faldo and Norman were like two heavyweight boxers who had punched themselves out. Neither won another regular tour event for the rest of the season. When Faldo won at Riviera on 2 March, 1997, it was to be his last top-flight victory. He was 39 and it was his fourth win in America, aside from the three Augusta victories, to go with 30 European Tour wins and a handful of others. Norman won the St Jude Classic and the old World Series of Golf at Firestone in 1997 to bring his tally of PGA Tour wins in the States to 20. His last significant victory turned out to be the Greg Norman Holden Invitational in Australia in 1998.

Neither stopped playing but all the ten-hour-plus practice days take their toll in the end – Norman has had multiple surgeries on shoulders, back, hips and knees. Neither took full-time to the Senior tours once passing 50, although Faldo, inspired by making a brief comeback for the latest Open at Muirfield, was planning to play a handful of events in 2014 around his television commitments. These days Norman is more likely to feature in the business journals than the golf magazines.
Forbes
profiled the Shark in 2013: ‘The way you feel about Greg Norman probably says as much about you as it does about him. Define him by his major meltdowns or his go-for-broke playing style or the $300 million (revenues) business he built from scratch. It’s up to you.

‘But this much cannot be denied: the man has lived. Number one golfer in the world, international businessman, peripatetic adventure-seeker, personal friend of US presidents (remember when Bill Clinton famously fell down his stairs?), one-time husband of Chris Evert and folk hero to the Chinese.’ The marriage to Evert was short-lived but he is now happily married for the
third time, while he has been building courses in China and is an adviser to their Olympic golf programme. The sport returns to the Games in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and the Chinese team may well include Guan Tianlang, who made the cut as a 14-year-old at the 2013 Masters.