Only Thing Missing From Game Is Luck

CARLSBAD â€”  If you’re a golfer, you’d want to look and play just like Greg Norman. The inverted pyramid build, wide shoulders on top of no waist, the powerful stride, the move into the ball.

You’re to golf what Dempsey was to boxing. An attacker. A knockout puncher. A slugger.

He doesn’t romance a golf course. Bring it flowers. He grabs it by the hair and tries to drag it to the cave. Not for him defensive golf. Gimme-the-wood golf. Fore-on-the-right golf! Charge!

Only the exciting ones get nicknames. The Hawk (Hogan). The Bear (Nicklaus). The Squire (Sarazen). The Slammer. The Walrus. The Haig.

Norman was the Shark. And Norman fit the description. He looked predatory, restless. Like something swimming around a leaky boat with a fin showing. Jaws with a nine-iron. Let the golf course show the first sign of weakness and it was like blood in the water to a school of great whites. A birdie frenzy.

He had teeth that could light a room. And, with his Australian bush hat on and his rollicking walk, he made golf into theater. With Nicklaus and Palmer gone, he was the undisputed drawing card of the great game.

But you wouldn’t want to sit next to him in a lifeboat. Greg Norman’s luck was so bad, he would probably have stood in line to get tickets on the Titanic. You wouldn’t want to back his play at the crap table. He’d seven out every time he got the dice the way he was going.

His family coat-of-arms should have been a coiled snake about to bite on a coat of No. 13s rampant on a field of black cats.

You remember that character in L’il Abner that used to go around with a cloud over his head, leaking rain? Joe Bflspltk? That was Greg Norman on a golf course.

It was as if the gods of golf were trying to get even with him for all those birdies and eagles. For hitting all those 285-yard drives, 250-yard four-irons, hitting flags with chips.

Lots of golfers have bad luck. Hogan’s foot slipping on the 90th hole at Olympic Club in the 1955 Open. Snead gaffing an 18-inch putt at St. Louis in 1947.

But the bad luck didn’t follow them around.

The things that happened to Greg Norman shouldn’t. Never mind Larry Mize chipping in over his head to win a Masters playoff. Never mind Bob Tway coming out of a sand trap over his head to snatch a PGA. Never mind Robert Gamez sending a 170-yard seven-iron into the cup to win another while Norman is standing there rehearsing his trophy acceptance speech. Never mind David Frost chipping out of a trap to yank still another.

Since Craig Wood in the ‘30s, Greg Norman is the only guy to lose a playoff in all four of the majors. Even golf’s skewed law of averages should have dictated that he win one of those. Or even two.

Golf doesn’t recognize laws of averages. Or even royalty.

Even though it’s in its own best interests, golf goes out of its way to strike down its stars. Even Hogan lost a playoff for an Open. Arnold Palmer lost (count ‘em!) three. But Arnold won the only Masters playoff he was in.

How much of ill luck is self-inflicted? In Norman’s case, a measure. In his British Open playoff loss, he came up to an extra hole that had a sand trap so far out it was meant to catch second shots. Greg Norman dumped his first shot in there. It was a magnificent shot, 300 yards. It was also a stupid shot.

In another British Open, trailing Nick Faldo by two shots, Norman saw Faldo hit his tee shot into hip-high gorse. Norman then hit his ball into one of those halfway-to-China pot bunkers to toss the advantage away.

The facts of the matter are, the public loves this. At the Mercedes Championship here at the La Costa Resort and Spa this week, there is no doubt who The Man is. When he steps out on the tee with his digger hat at a rakish angle and his jaunty stride and take-no-prisoners swing, the Shark is the game’s matinee idol.

He is half-hero, half-martyr. They don’t know whether to cheer for him or cry for him. They wonder what nobody on the tour will next jinx him. You don’t know whether to cover your eyes or throw your hat in the air.

Consider the worthies who have contributed to his doom:

--Mize, who eliminated him with a 140-yard chip shot at the Masters in ‘87, didn’t win another tournament for six years.

--Tway, who holed out over his head at the ’86 PGA, almost disappeared from view when he bottomed out on the money list (179th) with $47,632 earned in 1992.

--Mark Calcavecchia, who bested him in the ’89 British Open playoff, has won only one tournament since.

The average man thus victimized would long since have retired to a rubber room with all sharp objects removed and afraid to go out and would sit in a darkened room muttering curses. But Greg Norman thinks it’s funny. “You guys make more of it than I do,� he says to the press. “That’s just golf.�

That’s just golf. The most perverse of sporting endeavors. The most malign of games. Eighteen holes of institutional malice. No one escapes its mockery, its vindictiveness.

Greg Norman should feel as if he’s stepping into a castle in Transylvania when he gets on a first tee. He should listen for the sound of wolves howling, bats flying.

But he finished the third round at the Mercedes Championships Saturday only four shots out of the lead shared by Fred Couples and Phil Mickelson.

If he makes up the four shots and gets in a playoff, should he toss his clubs in the trunk and head for the parking lot and concede another miracle shot to seal his doom?

Greg Norman doesn’t think so. “I’m playing good golf, I feel good about ‘94,� he protests. “I think it’s going to be a big year for me. I have to go back home (to Australia), then to Dubai and the Middle East, but I look forward to joining the tour at Doral and going on to a great season.�

He feels he’s owed a Masters and a PGA. But the gods of golf may have their own wicked idea for their favorite whipping boy.

Just to be safe, don’t get in any elevators with him. And if one more guy holes out over his head, look for Greg, no matter what he says, to be the first guy in history to have to learn to play golf in a straitjacket.