1986 Open Championship - Sharkive - Sharkwatch

It was midnight. The crowds had long since gone with their own particular memories of another Open Championship. The sea breeze sighed gently through the gaunt grandstands, empty except for one small group of people. They had with them the championship trophy and a bottle of champagne, and among them was Greg Norman. Between sips, he reflected on the day's events. "It just seemed the thing to do," he reflected later. "It was a magic little interlude, savouring it all again, just with a few dose friends." The police found them but let them be. They understood, not wanting to break the spell.

A whole galaxy of memories danced and interchanged in Norman's mind- He had done it at last and won a major championship; moreover it was the one he would always place before all others. As an Australian and a member of the Commonwealth, Norman has viewed the Open as always enjoying a special importance that may never be attained by the U.S. Open, Masters or PGA.

But for Norman it had been a long time coming. He was now thirty-one and there had begun to be doubts that he might never quite ciimb the game's highest mountains. Questions had not been asked about his game, which was invariably majestic, but about his nerve. Three times he had been close and three times he had failed. It was something of which he had been constantly reminded, though he always took it with a smile and put it down to the learning process.

In the 1984 U.S. Open at Winged Foot he had scrambled like mad over the closing holes, culminating in the most outrageous four at the last where he sank a putt right across the green after hitting a long iron into a grandstand. It earned him a tie, but Fuzzy Zoeller was in a different class in the play-off.

Then, earlier this year at Augusta in the U.S. Masters, Norman had come to the eighteenth hole on the last day needing a birdie to beat Jack Nicklaus. No second shot could have been more reminiscent than that other second shot at Winged Foot. It cost the Australian even a tie as he took five. But opportunity was to beckon yet again in the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills a month before he came to Turnben-y.

This time he led, at one point by three strokes in the third round and by a shot as he waited on the first tee for the last eighteen holes to begin. Already a spectator has accused him of "choking." Norman was not amused. Nor did he choke. He just faded quietly away, for some reason quite unable to get himself motivated.

All these things had played on Norman's mind, he reflected as he sat by the darkened eighteenth green at Turnberry, though now he had that inner warmth that comes with victory. He looked back twenty-four hours to when again, as in the U.S. Open, he nursed a slender one-stroke lead, this time from Tsuneyuki (Tommy) Nakajima. He remembered sitting in the dining room of the Tumberry Hotel that Saturday evening and he remembered Jack Nicklaus coming across and pulling up a chair.

No man in the whole golfing world is more familiar with the turmoil he knew must be going through the Australian's stomach, and head, too, for that matter. The essence of Nicklaus's brief conversation was that he believed Norman had everything that was now needed to win, that he would win and that he (Nicklaus) could think of no one he would rather win. "Just concentrate on the pressure of your grip," he advised. "That will orchestrate your tempo."

Norman was touched by the gesture, as he was, too, by other words of encouragement he received from such players as Fuzzy Zoeller, John Mahaffey and Hubert Green, who regretfully had to withdraw from the final round because of illness- That all these, who had been through this major championship mill themselves, seemed to really want him to win, was the spur.

The Australian spent a fitful night but did not rise from his bed until around 9.30 a.m. He felt nervous and that worried him. He had felt nervous, too, when only a few weeks before he had faced the last round of the U.S. Open. Slowly the morning passed until the appointed hour of 2.40 p.m. That knotted feeling in Norman's stomach still persisted but that was no bad thing- It is being able to control it that matters. The club still felt good in his hands, as good as it had felt all week. His state of mind was also positive. He felt determined that Turnberry should not get the better of him. He had a genuine desire not just to win but also to break par for the four rounds; to show that it could be done.

What was heartening also was that the weather had finally relented, as if to show what Turnberry could really be like. The sun had come out, the wind had dropped, and across the waters of the Firth of Clyde sprang Arran and the Mull of Kintyre in all their purple glory. This was a different, more manageable golf course and if Norman needed any proof, it came from the man who, at the beginning of the week, a good many people had expected to win. It was too late but Seve Ballesteros had finally come to life with a 64. From equal thirty-eighth place after sluggish rounds of 76, 75 and 73, Ballesteros shot up in the end to equal sixth and for the first time got a place on the leaderboard.

If Norman ever needed assurance that destiny was to be on his side, it was not long in coming. Indeed it could hardly have come sooner. His main challenger had to be Nakajima, with whom he was partnered. But to extend his one-stroke lead to three at the first hole was totally unpredictable, particularly after the Japanese had split the fairway with his opening tee shot.

There is more to the playing of a hole than that, however, and Nakajima then missed the green; not seriously but missing it nonetheless. All seemed well when he chipped to five or six feet but from there, quite increduously, he took three putts for a six.

Norman could hardly believe his eyes, but dame fortune had not finished with him yet. At the third he bunkered his four-iron second and then holed the recovery from some twenty-five yards for a birdie- Such must have exceeded his wildest expectations as his lead increased even further. Yet even then the waters in which he sailed were not entirely smooth.

A drive into the left rough at the fifth and a six iron which left him there led to a five. The short sixth he got through without mishap, which was a relief, but then he hooked again from the tee high in the dunes at the seventh. Norman admitted to feeling "jumpy" and no one was quicker to see it than his caddie, Pete Bender. There, Bender noticed, was that dreaded quickening swing rearing its head again.

As Norman hacked his way back on to the fairway again. Bender drew alongside and said, "I want you to do everything at my pace. Just walk at my speed and we'll do fine." Those were words of sound advice. Norman saved his par and needed little further bidding. Out near the lighthouse he got a three at the eighth with a drive, four iron and short putt, and when he went through the ninth green beneath a grandstand, he lofted a lovely little pitch from the dropping area close enough to hole the putt. He was out in 34.

An eight iron into a bunker at the eleventh led to one more bogey but that stroke was retrieved with a seven-iron second to within a yard of the flag at the fourteenth. By now Norman knew that he could hardly lose. "Even I was impressed with some of my shots" he said later without a hint of boastfulness. Drives and irons ritled atter one another and the only question was whether the Australian might establish a post-war-record winning margin.

This stood at six, by Arnold Palmer at Troon in 1962 and by Johnny Miller at Royal Birkdale in 1976, The chances were there, notably at the seventeenth where, after a drive into the right rough and a wedge back onto the fairway, he struck a six iron to five feet. By now, Norman's emotions were getting the better of him. He was playing by instinct as much as anything.

Norman could hardly see the hole, let alone read the putt, as he desperately tried to line it up. Not surprisingly perhaps, he missed it, having indeed to sink an even longer one coming back. At least he was able to enjoy his homecoming and, with a four at the last for an inward half of 35, he was round in 69- He had beaten par for the round but not for the championship. His total of 280 matched it and, all things considered, that may just about have been right.

The right man, and a very popular one, had triumphed and while his five-stroke winning margin from Gordon J. Brand was a convincing one, there had been just one moment when a gripping finish could have been in store. The threat had in fact not come from Brand, whose second place was due in the end to the eagle putt he holed for a three at the seventeenth, but from Bernhard Langer, who tied third with lan Woosnam on 286, six strokes behind.

Very warm the West German's reception was, too, as he reached the last green, for only the night before he had learned that his wife, Vicki, had given birth to their first child, a daughter, Jackie Carol. Congratulations were emblazoned across the scoreboard at the beginning of the day and, as he putted out for his 68, there were cries of "Come on Dad," which he clearly appreciated,

And "come on" he certainly had when, after an outward half of 36 that had done nothing for his prospects, Langer suddenly began to fire a whole sheath of arrows at the flagsticks. Seven irons to the tenth and twelfth brought him birdie-threes, the latter coming to rest an inch from the hole, and then an eight iron to the thirteenth yielded the formality of a third birdie. So that was three threes in a row and there ought to have been a fourth at the fourteenth. Here his second shot actually hit the flagstick before glancing no more than six feet away.

Had it gone in for a two, which well it might have done, the difference between rum ana Norman would have been only three strokes and that might have been very interesting. As it was, Langer failed not only to get a birdie but missed the one back as well. As with Ballesteros, the West German had reserved his best until last, which was too late. But, having now been second twice and third twice, his turn may well come.

Brand played above himself to finish runnerup. Nothing in his earlier'season form had suggested it any more than had his past record. Yet he kept his nerve, particularly in the last round when he could have vanished from sight. The Yorkshireman took 39 to reach the turn with three bogeys, one double bogey (at the fifth) and only one birdie, at the sixth. His driving was all awry and it was not until the twelfth that he found the fairway from the tee.

On reflection Brand thought that he might have been trying too hard. He worked out that perhaps he was not completing his backswing. But down the inward stretch he felt that he played "really well." A scrambled par at the tenth lifted his spirits and with a birdie at the twelfth they positively soared. From then on Brand was convinced that he could finish high. He did, home in 32, thanks in the end to that eagle at the seventeenth.

Woosnam, after a patchy outward half, was "killed" by a run of three bogeys from the tenth. It was one of those days when he could hole nothing on the greens. He had hoped that it might be windy and it was not. Birdies at the fourteenth and seventeenth hauled him back into a tie with Langer for third place, a stroke ahead of Nick Faldo, who was as consistent as anybody on this last day.

Faldo finished with a 70, his driving and long iron play delighting him. There was a bogey five at the fifth and a birdie at the eleventh. Otherwise all were pars. Such a high finish was, he felt, justification of all the hard work he had put into the re-construction of his swing.

Gary Koch, with a last round of 71, had meanwhile tied Ballesteros for sixth place on 288 and he was leading American. What a contrast to 1977 when eight Americans had filled the leading places. Such is the wheel of golfing fortune as, in a final salute to Norman and the first Australian victory since Peter Thomson in 1965, Concorde dipped its wings in a low-level fly-past.

Writers Renton Laidlaw Norman Mair Alister Nicol Donald Steel Michael Willams Mark Watson	Photographers Lawrence Levy Brian Morgan
	Editor Bev Norwood