Norman Wins The Crowds With His Commitment At Open
The Age
Tuesday November 30, 1993
Greg Norman may not have won the tournament, but he upstaged David Iwasaki-Smith, who wore magnetic therapy pads around his elbows as protection against tendon trouble, as the walking magnet at the Australian Open.
Weakened by a stomach complaint and playing like it, Norman nevertheless had the crowd clinging to him, and by Sunday had attracted as much coverage in the media, and perhaps a little more, as winner Brad Faxon.
You had to hand it to the Shark. He should have been a scratching because of his illness, but teed off on Thursday, slumped to a 74, then rallied well enough to make the cut and ensure even larger crowds at the weekend. He could not have tried harder if it were his own tournament (that's this week).
Then Norman took a stand against the slow play that has become an insidious part of golf, and said he would recommend a two-tee start for the first two rounds of the inaugural Greg Norman Classic, which begins at the Lakes in Sydney on Thursday.
He was as good as his word. On Sunday, he announced that the recommendation had been accepted on a trial basis.
Factors other than slow play have to be considered, including the exposure that sponsors can expect to have on television under both starting systems, but Norman said two-tee starts had worked in the United States at televised tournaments.
The Australian Open last had two-tee starts in 1988, at Royal Sydney, and a return to two tees will be one of the options considered when the Australian Golf Union reviews this year's Open.
The deputy executive director of the AGU, Tom Duguid, said yesterday that the Australian Open was a major event that ``everyone wants to win", and was not held on easy courses.
But despite sometimes extenuating circumstances, slow play is harming the game. Norman's comments during the Australian Open should help make the concerns stick _ like a magnet.
AMERICAN golfers, it seems, never waste an opportunity to visit Melbourne's sandbelt courses; to play them, or just to admire them.
Faxon, who had nothing but praise for Metropolitan, even slipped away during the Open to see Kingston Heath, and yesterday Curtis Strange played the West Course at Royal Melbourne.
``I don't think I've ever seen a bunch of golf courses in one city that are as good as these are," Faxon said during a presentation speech that was as gracious as his putting was deadly.
And while Faxon was being such a thoughtful and sporting winner on Sunday, compatriot Payne Stewart was showing similar traits at Palm Desert in California, where he gave his winner's trophy from the Skins Game to a 17-year-old leukemia patient.
Agence France Presse reported that the lad, Joel Broering, spent four days with the champion golfer during the Skins, as part of the Special Wish Foundation program. ``A lot of people can learn from him," said Stewart.
THE LAST word on the Australian Open. Was it prescience that one of the AGU's media releases in the weeks leading up to the tournament was headed, ``Metropolitan has bad memories for Greg Norman"? It told how the Shark had, in the 1979 Open at Metro, three-putted the last green to miss going into a playoff against Jack Newton. But it may well have been a headline of dramas at the Open this year.
© 1993 The Age