Is Greg Norman leading the British Open or are we living in the Twilight Zone?
Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 03:10PM If confronted between choosing a more improbable scenario -- Tiger Woods winning the US Open with a broken leg, or Greg Norman leading the British Open after 54 -- most sane golf fans would deem a Shark attack more unlikely.
Nothing Tiger does surprises anyone. Greg Norman leading the British Open borders on madness. It doesn't just strain credulity; it requires a colossal suspension of reality.
And yet somehow, a 53 year old man who hasn't played in a major in three years, or contended in one in over a decade, stands on the brink of re-writing the record books and re-writing his legacy.
Talk about redemption. With a victory tomorrow, Norman would lay waste to the demons that have terrorized him for so long. Maybe it wouldn't completely erase the '96 Masters, but it would certainly replace it as his signature moment.
Where would a Norman victory rank in the history of the sport? The only comprable moment would be Nicklaus at Augusta in '86, but even that would pale to a Norman conquest. Nicklaus was 46 at the time, and still fairly competitive. Norman spends more time with his wines than his golf clubs.
You'd have to turn to Buster Douglass over Mike Tyson, or the 2004 Red Sox, to find something of similar magnitude. And to think: the golf world was concerned about interesting story lines without Tiger Woods. Greg Norman may be authoring the most improbable story in the history of the sport.
Footnote: So it didn't happen for Norman on Sunday, but he didn't choke this one way like all the others. Pudraig Harrington played a brilliant round, and deserved to win. The t-3 finish still gets Norman into the Masters, which along with Tiger's comeback will be one of the storylines next year.
Reader Comments (1)
If he wins, the only sport story that would come close to this underdog-type story is USA beating Russia in 1980 Olympic games - and that was a team sport so hard to truly compare.
I personally would rank a Norman victory well above Tiger's US Open heroics. He has even confessed in the past few years that his wine labels, clothing line and other business interests are far more important than trying to compete in golf - that the game has passed him by. He was a 500-1 bet in Vegas, one of the lowest odds in entire field.
This is the "Rudy" story times 100.