It’s been 30 years since Greg Norman’s final round collapse at the 1996 Masters, and the two key players from that fateful day couldn’t have drifted further apart.
Etched into the memories of sports fans is the final-round meltdown, which saw Norman’s six-shot lead evaporate in a torturous round of golf at Augusta National.
Norman won The Open Championship twice in 1986 and 1993, but he is best known for his near misses at Augusta and being arguably the greatest golfer never to win a green jacket.
Golf fans can still recall Larry Mize’s impossible chip-in to beat Norman at the 1987 Masters, as well as Bob Tway’s bunker shot at the 1986 PGA Championship, plus several others. Norman was also in contention at the 1986 and 1999 Masters, but it simply wasn’t to be.
His Masters collapse in 1996 will go down in history. Thirty years on, Norman and Faldo have reflected on the final round that changed both their legacies forever.
For Faldo, his 2-iron approach shot at the 13th hole has gone down in golf folklore as one of the most clutch shots ever, after he spent minutes agonizing over which club to use to clear the water.
The five-shot victory was a crowning glory for Faldo, who shared a touching embrace with Norman on the 18th green and whispered in his ear: “Don’t let the bastards get you down”.
Faldo, one of just three golfers to be knighted, is now reliving his 1996 Masters win, but Norman has teed off at the Brit over criticism directed at LIV Golf, which Norman helped establish before stepping away last year.“Sport is bloody tough. The fear of failure is just as powerful as the quest to win. And I think when you’re on a fail-free tour, you can’t fail,” Faldo said of LIV’s 54-hole format that has since expanded to 72-hole tournaments.
“It makes you go soft. I think some of those players have gone soft. They’re the luckiest golfers in the world because you’ve got half the field you haven’t heard of playing in a $25 million tournament each week. You’ve got the middle ranking guys who are either injured or about to retire, earning 10 times more than what they could’ve earned on tour with the same golf.
“Then, you’ve got half a dozen superstars being paid a fortune and haven’t moved the needle, and the other golfers are locked out.”
Those comments didn’t go down well at all with Norman.
“We never had any sort of relationship. We were chalk and cheese. He was a loner, I couldn’t be like him,” Norman told The Telegraph in a recent interview ahead of The Masters.
“Nick said some things about me during my time at LIV, some really nasty things. I don’t have any respect for someone who gives their opinion on something in that sort of manner when they don’t know both sides.
“Come on, we have a history, he could have called me and asked for the other side of the story and I’d have gladly given it. And if he still hadn’t agreed then fine – his opinion and as he knows the facts, he would have been entitled to say anything he likes. Happy days. But just to sound off?
“Like I said, no respect for him. He still comes out with stuff that’s interestingly stupid, to be honest with you. Too right, I’ll bear a grudge, if somebody crosses paths with me, says something derogatory, tries to screw me over.
“You know, he was the one who came up to me, he’s the one who hugged me (on the 18th green in 1996. He’s the one who said, ‘don’t let those bastards get to you’. But it didn’t really mean much to me, because I knew he’d soon go back to being the way he was before.”
All bad blood aside, the cold reality is Faldo has three green jackets and Norman doesn’t have a seat the Masters’ Champions Dinner.
He began the final round in 1996 with a six-shot lead that evaporated courtesy of wayward shots that went into the water or fell short of the green.
“I just said to myself, ‘Get within three shots after nine, anything can happen,” Faldo said. “I knew he was in trouble because he made a mess of (hole) 10. He had a really straightforward 8-iron into 10, pulled it left.
“Greg was leading ‘86 Masters, going down 10 and made a horrendous swing with an 8-iron. That might have gone through his mind. By the time we get to the 12th tee we’re tied.”
Faldo played a flawless 18 holes, while Norman put his tee shot at the 12th in the water and sunk to his knees at the 15th when his chip went just past the hole and any chance of winning went up in smoke.
Faldo added: “I felt for the guy. Greg was a heck of a golfer.”
Norman’s collapse is the subject of a 2022 ESPN documentary in which he grimaces watching back footage of his Masters collapse, and even returns to August National for a round, managing to hit shots much better than he did back on that fateful day in 1996.
These days, Norman is surprisingly philosophical about his relationship with the Masters.
“It’s not going to ruin your life – unless you let it,” he said. “You must accept it, take responsibility for it and understand it, because that’s what you owe the game. It teaches you that nobody is above golf. So I have no problem with talking about it. Even though I never won.
“You’ve got to take it on the chin and that’s the way I am. That resilience is in my DNA. That’s what got me there. You can’t be selective. Look, I can remember the sights and sounds of that Masters. Vividly.
“I remember on the Saturday evening when I was leaving the locker room and Peter Dobereiner (the late British golf writer) was standing at the corner of the bar you had to walk past. ‘Not even you can f–k this up,’ he said to me. And I replied ‘Thanks, Peter’. I laughed. Peter was my friend. Because that’s part of it. That’s sport.”
“Hate it? I don’t hate it,” Norman previously said when asked how he feels about Augusta National. “I love it. The problem is, it doesn’t love me back.”
