Greg Norman
Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
Gregory John Norman AM (born February 10, 1955) is an Australian professional golfer and entrepreneur who spent 331 weeks as the world’s number one ranked golfer in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He is nicknamed “The Great White Shark,” or simply “The Shark,” a reference to a shark inhabiting Australian waters as well as Norman’s size, aggressive golf style, and blonde locks.
Norman was born in Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia to Merv and Toini Norman. As a youth, he played sports such as rugby and cricket. His mother Toini Norman was a fine golfer, who earned a handicap in the low single digits. Greg Norman took up golf for the first time at age 16, and within a year was playing to a scratch handicap. He began his career in golf as a trainee in the Royal Queensland golf shop for the famed Charlie Earp, earning $28 a week. The first professional tournament he won was the 1976 Westlakes Classic in his home country, and he soon moved on to success on the European Tour and later the PGA Tour.
Norman won The Open Championship twice, in 1986 and 1993, and also won The Players Championship in 1994 in record-setting fashion (averaging 68.81 per round for the year). Despite his huge success on the U.S. PGA Tour and his many wins around the world, Norman will be forever regarded as an underachiever (given his talents), a characterization fueled by his myriad near-misses in The Masters, the U.S. Open, and the PGA Championship. He was equally a victim of his own bad luck and good luck on the part of his fellow golfers in major championships. He infamously lost a near-certain PGA Championship in 1986 after Bob Tway holed a greenside bunker shot (though Norman himself shot a 76 that day), and lost The Masters the following year in a playoff on an even more miraculous 45-yard chip shot by Larry Mize on the second play-off hole.
After a career slump in the early 1990s, Norman turned to Butch Harmon, a well-known coach and instructor, for help. Together, the two rebuilt Norman’s game to top form (The Pro, by Claude ‘Butch’ Harmon Jr., 2006) by solving mechanical problems which had crept into Norman’s swing.
After Jack Nicklaus left his prime, Norman was regarded as probably the game’s greatest long hitter. In his heyday, driving long and incredibly straight off the tee similar to that of Nick Price his contemporary with a persimmon (wood) clubhead, he intimidated most of his fellow professionals. However, with the advent of the “metal-wood” by TaylorMade and other subsequent advances in golf ball and golf club technology (especially the variable face depth driver), his dominance was significantly diminished, as the “new technology” enabled less precise ball-strikers than Norman to achieve equal (or even better) results in accuracy and distance.
Norman won the PGA Tour of Australia’s Order of Merit six times: 1978, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1986, and 1988. He won the European Tour’s Order of Merit in 1982, and topped the PGA Tour’s Money List in 1986, 1990, and 1995. He won the Vardon Trophy for lowest scoring average on the PGA Tour three times: 1989, 1990, and 1994; and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001.
His dominance over his peers (despite his comparative lack of success in the majors) was probably best expressed in the Official World Golf Rankings: Norman finished the season on top of the ranking list on seven occasions, in 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996 and 1997, and was second at the end of 1988, 1993 and 1994.
In 1986, Norman was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award, a feat he replicated in 1993 to join Muhammad Ali and Björn Borg as multiple winners (They have since been joined by Roger Federer).
