Word: nicklauses
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...modern history. Only twice have golfers chipped in from off the green on the final hole to win major tournaments. Both times, at the 1986 P.G.A. Championship and the 1987 Masters, Norman was the victim. He has placed second in two other majors, losing the 1986 Masters to Jack Nicklaus because of a wild 4-iron on the very last hole. Despite Olympian skills and what Nicklaus calls "virtually unlimited potential," Greg Norman has only one major-tournament victory under his belt; the Golden Bear, Nicklaus, has tucked away a record 18. Norman at age 33 is golf...
...graceful Australian with the preternaturally blond hair first captures attention with his power. When he hits a drive the ball gets small in a hurry, as though some invisible agent is pulling it into the far reaches of that vault of air that is the golfer's working space. Nicklaus calls him the "longest straight hitter ever...
...contention to win. It is then that the crowd seems to recede as Norman's concentration grows and he falls into that state of tunnel vision the pros call "owl's eyes." Pumped with adrenaline, he is usually hitting shots breathtakingly farther toward the end of a tournament. Nicklaus likens Norman to himself as a young man: a player with the confidence and skills to "overpower a golf course...
...Australia, in subtropical Queensland. The prevailing Australian ethos held that "if you don't get hit, it isn't a sport," so Norman played Australian Rules football, essentially a riot with goalposts. When he was 16 his mother, a low-handicap amateur of Finnish descent, gave him two of Nicklaus' books. The boy read them and decided to give golf a try. It soon became clear that the late starter was a prodigy. Greg's father Merv recalls that he made "phenomenal progress," shooting par within 18 months of first picking up a golf club...
...visible on the sea. An old Spitfire runway has been commandeered by a wing of gulls. Their strafing missions are conducted over a neglected lighthouse. All in all, quite beautiful. Still, it's easy to see how Tom Watson was able to close with 65-65 to Jack Nicklaus' 65-66 in their famous staring match at the 1977 Open. Turnberry is a soft place to start...