ABC TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT: Monday, 2 September , 2013

ADAM SCOTT, PRESENTER: Hi I’m Adam Scott. Tonight’s Australian Story is about one of our countries most iconic sporting stars. This is Greg Norman’s story.

GREG NORMAN: Some people think I’m very guarded and standoffish. But once I have you in my inner circle, I’m an extremely loyal guy. But once you cross that line of loyalty and go to the other side then you know, I’m very quick to cut people out of my life, because I have no time for it, you know.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, FRIEND: I always liked him. And I thought that a lot of the resentment against him, and there was a fair amount then, was because of his success and because he made it look easy, he was a big good-looking guy, he looked like he was having a good time.

(Bill Clinton playing golf with Greg Norman)
VOX POP: Are you nervous Mr President?
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, FRIEND: Terrified.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, FRIEND: But he was never embraced in a way that some great golfers are.

PETER FITZSIMONS, COLUMNIST: He’d have to be the most brilliant golfer Australia’s produced, ever, certainly in terms of just simple net talent, as good as it gets. A marketing man’s dream. The golfing public adored him and rightly so. The wider public, I think, remained to be convinced.

(Greg Norman playing golf)
SPORTING COMMENTATOR: Standing back, look at this!

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: Greg was the original swash-buckler; he sort of swaggered around the world’s fairways as though he owned them. People thought, sometimes, he was up himself. He had his chest pushed out like a bantam rooster, that he had, his ego was rampant.

(Crowd cheering. "Awesome. Whoa!")

GREG NORMAN: I was never an arrogant player or person, I’m never, I don’t have a whole lot of ego. Actually I can’t tolerate people with egos, so I know I don’t have an ego. But at the same time I was very confident about how I could play the game of golf. There wasn’t a shot I didn’t think I could play because there wasn’t a shot I didn’t really practice.

(Crowd cheer "Oh nice")

ADAM SCOTT, GOLFER: The expectation on him to perform was huge, and he carried a lot of weight on his shoulders I think, for most of his career. He was classy in victory and defeat.

(Golf tournament)
SPORTS COMMENTATOR: This one might go down as one of the major tournament collapses in history.

(Montage of tabloid’s commentating on Greg Norman’s personal life)

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: Greg had always been bigger than life, he was the headline. He was the world’s number one golf player marrying the world’s former number one tennis player. As famous as him really.

(Greg Norman and Chris Evert on flight)
CHRIS EVERT, EX-WIFE: We both have foot fetishes.
GREG NORMAN: It comes with the flight department.

ANDREW FOX, FRIEND: I know there’s a lot of publicity about Greg’s personal life with his wives, that he’s had in the past. Love sort of blew his brain in terms of what he could and couldn’t see. He didn’t want to listen. Does he have regrets? I think everyone’s got regrets but I think he’s in a far, far better place today with himself and, and where his life’s going

KIRSTEN NORMAN, WIFE: People think that he’s so aggressive and volatile, but actually in private life he’s very calm and he never brings his burdens home, and he’s just always even keeled.

GREG NORMAN: Look I’m a guy now in my stage of my life I, I just don’t want any dramas, anymore. Had enough dramas in my life, whether it’s on the golf course. Good dramas, and bad drama, I just don’t want it anymore.

GREGORY NORMAN JNR, SON: Golf is a pure test of who you are. I love the fact that you can go out there in a, you know the course can be playing easy one day and incredibly difficult the next day when the wind starts blowing and you have to learn how to manage that because you’re not playing the other golfer, you’re playing yourself and the course.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, FRIEND: It isn’t just a matter of skill. Golf becomes a head game. He had the great advantage of knowing quite early what he wanted to do, and he gave himself over to it. Mind and body.

GREG NORMAN: I was just the quintessential Queenslander, growing up on the beach. I was born in Mt Isa. When I was three months old my parents trucked me outta there and we moved to Townsville.

JANIS BISHOP, SISTER: We had a great childhood. Greg and I are both water people, love it. And we had a great family life as kids.

GREG NORMAN: My father built a very small family hut on Magnetic Island and that’s where I learned to skin dive, spear fish. Then I learnt how to sail with my sister, learnt the art of reading the water and reading gusts of wind and.

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: He didn’t like school at all. One of the teachers, he used to shake his head, "What’s going to become of Greg" he says, because he’s just not interested in his school work.

GREG NORMAN: Golf wasn’t really on my radar screen at all. My mum was a very good golfer, my Dad played the occasional game, and one day I went out and caddied for my mum. And I figured if my mum can play this game I can play this game. You know, the old macho kid at ah fifteen, sixteen years old. I just kind of hit a golf ball around and I was hooked. And then I started falling in love with the technical side of the game. What made you swing the golf club around your body in an effortless fashion to develop so much power and club head speed of you know, a 130 mile an hour. In a period of 18 month I went from a 27 handicap to scratch.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: I first saw him play in 1974, he played at Ryde Parramatta in an interstate junior series and it was like wow, this guy is unbelievable. Well he smashed it. I mean he just smashed it. He had a great big powerful game very early on, and you wonder, I never thought about it, I wonder how much of his personality was shaped around this game that he had.

GREG NORMAN: I know when I started mentioning about turning professional my family went ‘whoa, what, what are you talking about’.

MERV NORMAN, FATHER: As a parent you’ve got to think ‘well he’s got to earn a living. Is he going to earn a living?’

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: But Greg you know decided that’s what he wanted to do, so we said OK.

GREG NORMAN: Well I had to make golf clubs to pass my assistant trainee professional stuff, so there are golf clubs up here that I had to hand make from a block of wood, so some of these have a lot of these have a lot of history. You adapted your set of golf clubs the way you wanted them yourself personally, so it’s your fingerprint, and that’s what I loved about it.

ARCHIVE SPORTS COMMENTATOR: 21 year old Brisbane assistant professional, Greg Norman the youngest player ever to represent Australia in the world cup…

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: Successful golfers tend to hit their peak when they’re sort of in their mid thirties. Along comes this bloke from Queensland who not many people had heard of, big strapping boy from Mt Isa and he won at his third start, the West Lakes classic, which is almost unheard of. So that kind of announced his arrival. And he was such a sort of fine physical specimen. He had a shock of blond hair, broad shoulders, big chest, and the crowds warmed to him straight away.

GREG NORMAN: I won what I think was $7000, if my memory’s right. I thought I was the richest guy in the world.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: It was the very next week he goes to the Australian Open, which was a big deal because Kerry Packer was sponsoring it, all the big stars were there, Packer had brought all the big stars in.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: Jack Nicklaus was the greatest figure in the game of golf, and still is. So for Greg just turned pro, to tee up alongside Jack, which he did, would have been an enormous moment for him.

GREG NORMAN: I cold topped my tee shot, absolutely cold topped it. Hit it from me to the camera and it was I mean obviously there was thousands and thousands of people around cos Jack was Jack and he was the king in those days. And so Jack witnessed it and he felt for me.

JACK NICKLAUS, US GOLFE: I knew he was nervous and I knew he didn’t play well, but that wasn’t the important thing. The important thing I knew that he had a great future.

GREG NORMAN: We sat down in the locker room and he said to me you’ll make it in America.

ARCHIVE SPORTS COMMENTATOR: He went from being a 27 handicap to a scratch in less than two years. And for him there’s a lot…

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: He went and played his first season in America and he dominated. He was winning tournaments from day one. So Greg developed this mid Pacific drawl as well. He loved America and he wanted to gain acceptance from the American golfing public.

DR RICHARD ANDRASSY, FORMER BROTHER-IN-LAW: About 35 years ago my sister was a flight attendant with American Airlines and she called me one day and she said on the flight she met a young pro golfer who was from Australia.

(1997)
LAURA ANDRASSY: We met on an aeroplane. I was a flight attendant and he was coming back from the ’79 US Open.

GREG NORMAN: And there was Laura standing at the front door welcoming all the passengers and we walk in and I sat down and I said "I bet I marry her". Swear to god. And I never even said one word to her, right? And boom.

LAURA ANDRASSY: It’s hard for me to believe but you know, it’s what he said and then we went out after the flight.

GREG NORMAN: And that was it.

DR RICHARD ANDRASSY, FORMER BROTHER-IN-LAW: I felt when I first met him, was actually a bit shy. And I felt like that he was genuine – that he really cared about my sister.

(Greg Norman winning 1980 Dunhill Australian Open Champion)
ARCHIVE SPORTS COMMENTATOR II: You beauty. What a putt.
GREG NORMAN: Oh I’m a bit choked up, I can honestly say I am very choked up at the moment, this is the biggest tournament of my career.

GREG NORMAN: So while I was gallivanting around chasing my dream it was nice to be able to come back and have somebody there, to have a good partner is crucial for that and, you know, Laura was very engaging with that. We got married in 81, you know and again, golf is my priority and I went on with life.

(1982)
ARCHIVE SPORTS COMMENTATOR: The 1982 Dunlop Master golfer, Greg Norman. And he goes away with 13,160 pounds.
GREG NORMAN: Well you know the women always rule with an iron hand and my wife got onto me and she said I wasn’t earning enough big cheques and you know she couldn’t go out there and buy enough expensive gear but, so she told me to go out there and work on my putting and chipping so I did and it paid off.

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: In the early 80s…

MERV NORMAN, FATHER: He phoned us and said "I’ve made my first million".

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: Yes. (Merv laughs) But that was just to us, I mean, he didn’t do it worldwide.

ARCHIVE NEWS REPORTER: The man from down under, Greg Norman, known as the great white shark also is in the fight. The shark is actually the loving father of a baby girl. But on the fairways he has sharp teeth and shows them and shows them pearly white.

JANIS BISHOP, SISTER: They built a very strong family bond, like I am so proud of Greg and Laura for what they did and how they brought up those two children.

GREG NORMAN: (Picking up one of his daughter) Hi kiddo, oh yeah, what do you think?

MORGAN-LEIGH NORMAN, DAUGHTER – 2001 INTERVIEW: I think the first impression people get of my dad is that he’s very intimidating, because when they see him on the golf course he’s always very focused and then they might see that little stare he gives just, when he’s playing golf. But he’s really such an easy guy and so easy to get along with and joke with and he’s really not that intimidating and scary.

MORGAN-LEIGH NORMAN, DAUGHTER: Looking back or thinking back on our childhood, I mean he was definitely gone a lot. But mum did a really great job of balancing that out and being home when he was gone so we could have that feeling of always having one parent around.

ARCHIVE REPORTING: After 32 hours travelling from his Matchplay win in England…

GREGORY NORMAN JNR, SON – 2001 INTERVIEW
: It’s kinda hard most of the time because he’s always away, but you gotta understand it comes with the job.

GREGORY NORMAN JNR, SON: I remember him coming home from say, four weeks on the road and spending eight hours on the golf course practising all day, coming home, putting until the sun the sun was set.

GREG NORMAN: So it was really an unfair life on them. And that’s you know, when you look back on it you go, how could I have done it differently, well you couldn’t have done it differently unless you didn’t get married. But my profession, I loved it, so that was my priority, that’s where I wanted to go.

ARCHIVE SPORTS COMMENTATOR IV: Yes, and yet another birdie. He’s got some holes still to play but Greg Norman still very much in control here.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: He didn’t know about playing safe or conservatively, he was attack, attack, attack. He didn’t have any second gear; it was full throttle the whole way. Now that delivered spectacular results at times, and he won early in his career by six shots, and eight shots, and ten shots. But it also being such a high risk strategy brought him undone spectacularly.

ARCHIVE SPORTS COMMENTATOR: Only time seemed to separate the Aussie from the wearing of his first masters green, but time proved unkind.

JACK NICKLAUS, GOLFER: I think Greg was a little bit more of a, you know, I’m going to make this happen rather than letting it happen. And I think that in the end that will probably cost you more tournaments than it’s going to win you tournaments.

ARCHIVE INTERVIEWER: Well about the only thing you haven’t yet won in world golf is one of the big four tournaments. Will 1984 be the year?
GREG NORMAN: Well I keep saying that every year. I hope it’s going to be because it’s nice to go along and win a major, it would be nice I should say, and I’m looking forward to it, I feel that I have the ability and I have the confidence I can do it.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: The currency by which great golfers are decided and valued is how many majors they’ve won. Major championships. There are four a year, a bit like tennis and they’re Grand Slam events.

ARCHIVE INTERVIEWER: If you could win any one of the major four tournaments, which one would you choose?
GREG NORMAN: The British Open.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: Throughout the 1980s, Greg Norman was winning consistently on the hardest circuit of all, the US Tour. But he failed to win any of the four major championships, the US Masters, the British Open, the US Open and the US PGA. In contention many times, but didn’t quite clinch it.

NEWS PRESENTER, ARCHIVES: The United States Open and Greg Norman is hanging onto a one stroke lead as the tournament enters the final round.

GREG NORMAN: A lot of people say to me, you know, why didn’t you win a major. Well there’s a lot of reasons why, because if you’ve got garbage in your head and things going on in your private life that people don’t know about, you know, sometimes you can’t be that, that, that, that central focus on the mission that you want to achieve.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: I n 1986 he became the world’s top ranked golfer for the first time.

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: And the pressure was on him, being number one in the world and not having won a major was [sighs] you know quite frustrating.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: 1986 was also the year he led golf’s four big events, the majors, after three rounds. So three quarters of the way through, each of the four big tournaments, G NORMAN was at the top of the leader-board.

(US Masters – April 1986)
TOURNAMENT COMMENTATOR: And Norman now had this to force a playoff. Jack Nicklaus has just won. Jack Nicklaus won his sixth masters and twentieth major.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: It’s become known as the Norman Slam. All these near misses started to play on Greg’s mind. I mean he got so close yet so far in all these majors. And he got heckled in 1986, it think it was at the US Open.

COMMENTATOR: Norman’s only bad drive cost him dearly, one spectator even urged Norman to choke.

GREG NORMAN: Well the guy was constantly from about the tenth hole he was just on my case. Just yelling and screaming abusive stuff.

COMMENTATOR I: And now you can hear the crowd, they were yelling for it to be long …

GREG NORMAN: I stop, I, you know, it’s amazing how you can pick out [clicks fingers] somebody you don’t even know, and you know that voice came straight from that face right. So I made a bee line right up there and now all of a sudden everybody’s like, ‘Woah, what is going on here’ and I had to release what was in me, right. So I went up to the guy and I said look if you want something to say to me, meet me in the car park at when I’m finished playing, when I can do something about it. So this guy melted when I said that to him.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: These are not the things, the reactions of a golfer sort of in control of his of his mental state.

GREG NORMAN: You get to the point where enough’s enough. So it really left a bad taste in my mouth to say the truth. I mean if I’d won, it would have been different maybe, who knows, but now we’re going to be second guessing. But I didn’t win.

(The Open Championships, 1986)

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: He goes to the British Open, the course is brutal, it’s the hardest set up I’ve ever seen anywhere by a long way, the fairways are narrow, the rough is like hay, thick, wet, long, incredibly difficult.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Beautifully struck second shot.

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: Coming into the British Open of course, it was another major.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Well he’s led in two majors going into the final round, and that’s the reason why.

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: We got up at 11 o’clock and watched the whole thing on television, and because he was under so much pressure the last couple of years while he was number one, and he hadn’t won a major tournament, so the pressure was a bit great.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: This to take him to five under par.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: There are a few times in your career when someone shoots a round you can’t comprehend.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Supreme confidence oozing from Greg Norman.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: No one saw anyone being capable of shooting that score.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: And Norman, suddenly he begins to look vulnerable. Over the space of five holes he drops three shots and leads by just two from Nakijima who is one over now. And distracted, a little noise, a movement, something in the crowd has made Mr Norman look very cross indeed. I wonder if it’s wise? No, it stops in heavy rough. Some 70 or 80 yards short of the green. Is he just beginning to lose it at the crucial moment.

MERV NORMAN, FATHER: And when Greg started going backwards on that second day, we thought oh well here we go, but you know Greg get into it and keep going.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Oh, Greg’s Norman’s in trouble here, an awkward spot in the bunker.

(Greg Norman holes the bunker shot – crowds cheer )

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Well the gods are surely smiling on him today. If he doesn’t win this one well, questions will be asked and letters written to the Times as to why.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: Greg holes the bunker shot on the third hole.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Things going very much his way.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: And it’s pretty much all over. He’s the best player in the world, he’s flying, here he is. But it’s a procession, hits great shots, hits the flag at 14.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: It really is very much Greg Norman’s day.

(Crowd cheer)

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: The last night of the British Open was absolutely incredible, it was quite exciting, quite exciting.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: I wonder what he’s thinking now. He’s waited a long time.

JANIS BISHOP, SISTER: That was just, I couldn’t believe it. It was just so surreal and I still can see him walking down the fairway.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: A misty eye.

JANIS BISHOP, SISTER: Y ou know that is the best of the best to win.

(Crowd cheering)

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Just listen to this…

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: It was amazing how they just went round and followed him into the last green.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: Like this especially when you’re a handful of strokes ahead…He’ll ride in like a gladiator of old.

MERV NORMAN, FATHER: It’s your child out there and to us it was the result of all the effort he’d put in over the years and, the result came up.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: A great victory for Greg Norman. He’s waited a long time. Many doubters wondered whether he would, whether he could do it. He certainly has, and I wonder how many more times we’ll see scenes like this.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: He wins easily. So it was yeah that was the there it was, that was, that was a long time coming and he played like he played in Australia, he just blew everyone away.

BRITISH OPEN COMMENTARY: He’s removed the one flaw in his otherwise outstanding record, he’s won a major.

TOINI NORMAN, MOTHER: He was so thrilled about the win he gave us the British Open trophy so I have it inside, because hopefully, he said he was hoping to win another one.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: The unsaid assumption I suppose was that once he wins one he’s going to win a lot. I think his destiny was to win ten major tournaments. So the question is when is he is when is he going to win the next one? And how many is he going to win?

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: And what happened is that Norman, through the sort of extraordinary freakish shots almost of his opponents, Norman was denied again.

GREG NORMAN: Fast forward to the PGA Championship, and you’ve got Bob Tway, right, and he holes a bunker shot.

(PGA Championship footage)
PGA TOURNAMENT COMMENTARY: That is the shot of Bob Tway out of the bunker. It’s in the hole, it’s in the hole. This, for the tie, it’s all over. Bob Tway has won the PGA championship at aged 27.

CHARLIE HAPPELL, SPORTS JOURNALIST: The next major, Larry Mize at the US Masters, chipped in from an impossible position, 140 feet from the pin.

(US Masters footage)
US MASTERS COMMENTARY: How does that look. Oh!

GREG NORMAN: I never expected Larry to chip it in. You know, I didn’t even look at his shot until it was half way down the green. But when it hit the flag [claps hands] and dropped in, you know it was like, I head to regroup big time. Because I’d never heard a noise like that in my life, because you’re in like an amphitheatre there. You could feel the energy and the atmosphere like ‘oh god’, it was just incredible. Even when I was over the putt, now everybody’s thinking ‘oh my god we thought he was going to win, now he’s going to lose’.

US MASTERS COMMENTARY: Norman could still conquer. He needed this putt to win.
US MASTERS COMMENTARY: That’s it, Larry Mize the 1987 masters champion.

MIKE CLAYTON, GOLF WRITER: Australia woke up every Monday morning sweating on this these golf tournaments, that here was Greg in the lead again, and I mean how many times did kids go to school like gutted, because their hero had lost again, you know?

PETER FITZSIMONS, COLUMNIST: If ever there was a man that had the right to shake his fist at the bitter sporting gods who have done me down, it was Greg Norman. I mean two guys more anonymous than a wrong number hit shots they’ve never hit before or since to deny him his rights.

GREG NORMAN: I could have won the slam or I could have won four tournaments if it wasn’t for these circumstances that the game of golf decides to roll the dice and it goes against you. And you learn that, okay, expect the unexpected.