Giving Norman his props

At the risk of sounding hypocritical because I have taken the occasional cheap shot at Greg Norman for all his opulence and sometimes gaudy display of his wealth as well as his proclivity for finding disaster at the most inopportune times, I have to be fair.

Fairness dictates that we tip our tam to the man from down under for one of the most amazing feats in golf since maybe ever. In the space of three continuous weeks, Norman finished T3 in the British Open, T5 in the British Senior Open and a solo 4th in the U.S. senior Open.

For you naysayers out there and I know who you are (you’re people like me), who will criticize the now Great Gray Shark for not winning when he obviously had three chances, there were a lot of factors at work out there.

First, Norman is 53-years old and even if he was more than an occasional part time player, he should never venture onto the PGA Tour. He proved that in the three Tour events he played earlier in the year when he failed to make the cut at Pebble Beach, Atlanta and the Mexican event which was a minor tournament played opposite a WGC event.

Second, until the three aforementioned events, Norman hadn’t competed at all for almost to years. He’d spent more time on the operating table repaying the physical debt with surgery to his shoulder and hip. He also was very far removed from giving anymore than cursory attention to the playing of golf. He had morphed into the undoubtedly most successful professional golfer-turned businessman in history. He has the responsibility of running MacGregor, The Greg Norman apparel line, Greg Norman Estates winery, Greg Norman Golf Course Design and a few other companies as well. With all of this, when would he play golf?

Given the above schedule and let’s throw in an unpleasant divorce that was more public than he wanted and a recent wedding to Chris Evert, he somehow returned from total golf inactivity to have the mental strength and concentration to deal with three Majors in three weeks and compete so well.

The TV commentators, practicing amateur psychology as they usually do, credited Mrs. Norman, nee Evert for Norman’s calmer demeanor without sacrifice of concentration. If that’s the case, ladies I’m available. Maybe then I could tone it down to a Type B personality and people would marvel at my confidant stride instead of referring to my gait as a controlled stumble. Watch out golf world, Jack is coming back.

The truth is, for a wonderful three week stretch we were reminded of what a great player Greg Norman was. We were reminded that he is still one of the most charismatic golfers we’ve ever seen. We also were given a chance to wonder, could he? And we know that we haven’t received an answer. The best of all is we get to see him at the Masters again, the stage where he suffered so many tragedies. Could he? Can he? Would he? We’ll have the chance to find out and let’s face it, we can’t wait.

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Let’s take a quick look at the PGA Championship. Phil Mickelson has spent a lot of time working on keeping his driver in play. Last week, he kept it in check until he needed it and blew it out of play on the last two holes. Perhaps a better strategy like using a 3-wood might have made a difference. Unfortunately, he’s let work on his short game suffer. However that will come back.
I like Lefty this week without the shadow of Tiger. His mistakes won’t be so damaging.

Vijay Singh won last week. The record shows he’s never won a Major using his belly putter. The greens at Oakland Hills are a lot more severe than at Firestone. I don’t like the Fijian this week. To be honest, I never like him any week.

Kenny Perry is the anti-Major man having refused to play both the US and British Opens. Some guys win championships, some win tournaments. He did come close to winning the PGA Championship when he lost the PGA Championship in a playoff to Mark Brooks. He’ll hang in, but win? I doubt it.

Lee Westwood has found his game again and has been a factor in majors this year. If gets over the hump and makes the big putt at the big time, the Wannamaker Trophy could be heading across the Atlantic.

Jim Furyk is always hanging around the top of the leader board in Majors. However, he has had an uncharacteristically poor putting year. If he can find the magic wand, he will be a threat.

Bartender, please poor me a large tumbler of whatever will get the taste of the milk of human kindness out of my mouth. I will then raise the glass and toast Greg for reminding me what a great golfer he has been for so long. Yecch, can we get to next week—fast.

See you on the first tee.

Jack

The wonderful world of drug testing

Welcome to the wonderful world of drug testing. In knee jerk reaction to the misconduct of athletes in other sports, the ruling class of the PGA Tour, the European Tour and the LPGA Tour decided that golf needed to show the world just how clean professional golf is.

What they produced was a bad joke. If any of these guys or ladies walks the aisles of Walgreens and CVS they’re liable to be suspended. It appears that if a professional golfer takes ANYTHING that relieves in any measure an ache or a pain, they’re going to get some time out.

If you’re wondering if the U.S. Open had been played this weekend instead of Father’s Day weekend, would Tiger Woods have been disqualified? If it was his week to be randomly tested, he would. Realistically, they wouldn’t even think of testing him on a week like that—no matter how obvious it was that he was taking something. Remember, there are rules for the rank and file of the PGA Tour and then there are rules for Tiger and they’re not very similar. Before you raise your indignity level, it’s called self preservation.

As we are seeing now, the PGA Tour is paying the price the NBA did when they built the league around Michael Jordan and he retired. The league floundered for a few years and is just now on the road to recovery, but did they learn from their mistake? I give you LeBron James.

Just a couple of weeks of the World Without Tiger and the PGA Tour is churning the PR mill and the world has been presented with 22-year old Anthony Kim as the heir apparent. Don’t get me wrong, Kim is a nice player with a tremendous upside, but he’s just 22. At 22, young adults are still making poor decisions. For instance, I got married at 22 and that was at least 30 years too soon. You still have to file Kim and his two wins this year under “potential.”

There are other players who could carry the load until Tiger returns, but unfortunately, they’re on the shelf as well and as of July 1st that was the Tour’s fault. Wouldn’t you think that Vijay Singh might want to take some anti-inflammatory medicine for his myriad of muscular ailments? Adam Scott might want to take the edge off the discomfort he has in the slight break in his right hand, but he can’t even think about it. There are others who are hobbled and could have helped themselves, but will have to weather the storm cold turkey costing them money and quality golf.

I know that part of golf is focus and stamina, but somewhere common sense has to be acknowledged. The people at the Titleist Performance Institute regarded as the best golf fitness group in the business thinks this policy to be ridiculous citing that there are no steroids or human growth hormones that could help a golfer. In fact, any effect would probably be counterproductive.

This is just a façade for the real purpose of the drug test. By “joining” the other sports in keeping their game clean, Timmie Finchem and the boys can go to the International Olympic Committee with a proposal to put golf into the summer Olympics in four years.

Me? I go along with the European Tour executive who said, “We really only have to test one player, don’t we? If he’s not using anything, what difference will it make with the rest.”

Bartender, please pour me a whiskey and water and hold the whiskey. I don’t want to chance Timmie taking my laptop away for violating any of his foolish tests.

See you on the first tee.

Jack