For Australian golf fans of a certain
generation, this week marks the anniversary of one of the more painful events
in the game’s history.

The nation awoke on Monday, April 15, 1996
buoyant in the knowledge that after a decade and a half of torment, the best
player on earth, our own Greg Norman, was finally to fulfill his destiny and
claim the coveted US Masters.

Six times in the previous 15 years Norman
had been inside the top-five, twice a runner-up in excruciating circumstances.
But on this day, all that would be washed away.

At the end of play the previous day The
Shark had left Augusta National in possession of a six shot lead.

Surely, this was an unassailable position
and Norman was finally to overcome his final round demons and earn that much
coveted Green Jacket.

Alas, everybody with even a passing
interest in the game knows the outcome of that final round. Norman’s
capitulation to Nick Faldo was a long, drawn out affair, the Shark’s 78 strokes
to Faldo’s 67 saying everything that needs to be said.

But while the loss was hard to bear it was
Norman’s handling of the meltdown that was extraordinary. He had lost big
events before but never in a manner so spectacular and cruel.

Regardless, Norman fronted up in the press
room and answered questions without flinching.

"I screwed up," he told the
waiting media afterwards. "It’s all on me. I know that.

"But losing this Masters is not the end of
the world. I let this one get away, but I still have a pretty good life.

"I’ll wake up tomorrow, still breathing, I
hope."

That honesty in the face of what must have
been one of the most difficult moments of his life is just one of the qualities
that make Norman so revered, both here and overseas.

And it’s just one of the reasons why the
PGA of Australia last year unveiled an annual award in the Shark’s name, the
Greg Norman Medal.

What happened that Sunday afternoon in
Georgia wasn’t the result Norman, or the golf fans of Australia, wanted. But its
impact, in a strange way, turned out to be quite a positive.