Bowed But Not Broken

On this matter, Norman speaks from counsel with the Bear, who has become something of a soul mate. "I asked Nicklaus, 'How did you handle that stuff?' " says Norman. "And Jack said he found that whenever he was in contention to win a major, the other players lifted the level of their game just to beat him. That's a great honor for him to have. People respected him. And he said, 'You're going to find out that's what is going to happen to you, too.' "

O.K., but of Norman's major misses, how many can be chalked up to players like Tway and Mize lifting their acts to just one notch below the miraculous loaves and fishes, and how many can be laid on Norman his ownself?

Take the 1986 Masters. Norman played brilliantly with four consecutive birdies through the 17th hole on Sunday. He was in the middle of the fairway on 18, needing only a par to tie. But instead of aiming for the middle of the green, he went for the pin. He attempted a hard draw with a four-iron and shoved it right instead. He missed the green by 10 yards, chipped to 17 feet and missed the putt. Ego 1, Greg 0.

"Greg wanted five straight birdies," Bender says. "He wanted to make history. He wasn't going to go for the middle of the green." But if he had to do it again, Norman says he would pull out a five-iron and hit it high. "I guess what makes me the maddest is that everybody remembers my bogey at the last and not the four birdies to get there."

Take the 1986 U.S. Open. "You're chokin', Norman," two sudsed hecklers yelled at Greg on the 14th hole at Shinnecock on Saturday, when he held a one-shot lead. Norman may live in America, but he's Aussie to the marrow, and he marched over to the ropes. "If you want to say that, then say it to me afterward. But until then, shut your face!" he snapped. It cost Norman his momentum, Bender says, "and when you've lost momentum in this game, you've lost everything." One small victory, however: The hecklers never did show up when the round was finished, proving they were more sober than people thought.

Take the 1986 PGA. To this day, Norman has a hard time believing he lost. "A lot of people have said to me my last-round 76 was a bad day, but I say, I hit the ball as good as I hit it the first day [65].... It's just that nothing happened. Like at 11 [a double bogey], I hit a perfect one-iron, but my ball rolled right into the bottom of a divot. I couldn't get it out. An inch either way, I win the golf tournament, simple as that...but I never thought I was ever going to lose that golf tournament.... Even when he chipped it in, I still thought I was going to chip it in! 'Cause I'll be damned if I was going to lose that championship."

Take the 1987 Masters. Please. "From the last day of the 1986 tournament, when I hit that second shot and missed the putt for par, from that very moment, and for the next year, 24 hours a day, I thought about the Masters," Norman says. "Every day it was in my mind. More than anything else in my life I wanted to win that one." And though Norman wasn't allowed the moment he coveted the most—Nicklaus putting the green coat on him—he still thinks of the 1987 Masters as a triumph. "I got myself there. I was there at the end with a chance to win it. So that to me was the greatest pat on my back.... It was a shot that will go down in history that prevented me from doing it."

Later, Seve Ballesteros, who was eliminated on the first hole of the playoff, told Golf World, a British monthly, that Norman made a mistake hitting for the center of the green on the playoff hole instead of going for the pin. That, according to Ballesteros, allowed Mize to believe he still had a chance, that Norman was not a lock to two-putt from where he was, just on the fringe.

Hearing this did not make Norman happy. "Seve is so detrimental to his name right now," Norman says. "He can't shut his mouth up, because he keeps chastising other players for what they've done.... I don't understand the guy, I really don't. I thought I got to know him the years I played in Europe, but now I'm totally lost with him.... It's always easy for somebody like him to sit back and make comments when he's lost. If he's going to throw stones at a glass house, he would never have three-putted the 10th.... If he was in exactly the same position I was, I promise you, Seve Ballesteros would've hit it to the middle-right of the green."

None of this makes the defeat any less painful. "It was the worst loss I've ever had in my life. I mean, it was tough.... Walking down the fairway, I said to myself, 'I can two-putt from there. I know I can two-putt from there!'...I wish Larry had holed his putt on 10, rather than do what he did at 11. To me and Seve and to the whole world that would've been much better than to see what happened on 11."