One of Australia’s greatest golfers, Greg Norman, was recognised at the 2017 Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, an event created by and today celebrates the career of the great Jack Nicklaus.

Two Professional golfers with the monikers of “The Great White Shark” and “The Golden Bear” were always going to share a special relationship and Norman says being named as an honoree in the 41^st edition of The Memorial Tournament is up there with the biggest highlight of his career, which is surprisingly not on a golf course.

“Look, I’d actually put it up in the top two. I think the number one for me was carrying the Olympic torch across the Sydney Harbour Bridge,” Norman said of the honour.

“That one you can never describe or explain, but just to be there with the 30-odd-thousand people, when there’s supposed to be 3,000.

“So I’d put this one in my top two, for sure. Because it’s a culmination of time, that’s what it is.”

Norman, twice a winner of The Memorial Tournament on the Nicklaus designed course in Columbus Ohio, is the second Australian to be recognised since Peter Thomson became the first in 1998. He said his fondest memories of playing the PGA TOUR event came from the people outside of the ropes.

“This is probably the most enjoyable tournament to play golf in front of a group of people. Why? I don’t know that. I don’t really know the answer, but the all encompassing answer is that they really, truly appreciated the game of golf.

“And every time I came here there would be family members, somebody even came up to me today that I signed an autograph for when she was six or seven years old going down the 14th fairway, and she lived in one of the houses. And that’s going back now 30 years.

“So that in its own right tells you the impression the people of this area have left on me. So I would say the people.”

Nicklaus made mention of the first time he and Norman shared a round together prior to honouring this year’s inductee’s, a memory the Queenslander would rather forget after topping his first shot.

“Exactly, as embarrassed as I’ve ever been on a golf course. And that is so true. I cold topped it. I was lucky to put the ball on the tee because I was shaking that much. I actually think I dropped it and hoping it just stayed on the tee,” Norman recalled.

“And I hit it 40 yards, not even 40 yards. I had just won the week before. So I was very, very much embarrassed, humiliated, but also stimulated in a lot of ways just by being there with Jack.

“But really the end of the 36 holes was probably the most memorable of all for me because he sat next to me in the locker room, changing his spiked shoes at that time, and he put his hand on my knee, he said, "You’ve got the game to do well in America." And that was that. Again, that was Jack saying the right thing at the right time to give me the confidence. But you would have been impressed with the cold top. It went dead straight, too, by the way!”

Showing the respect Norman holds in his birth country, the PGA of Australia introduced the Greg Norman Medal in 2015 to recognise the Australia’s best male or female Tour Professional on the international stage annually with Jason Day the incumbent.

Norman was asked his thoughts on the current crop of talent competing from his home country and with three of Australia’s brightest golfing prospects in Brett Coletta, Curtis Luck and Ryan Ruffels who could very well challenge for the Medal in his namesake in 2017, on display this week, he’s excited to see who will put their hand up to become the next Jason Day or Adam Scott.

“I think every time I look at the new wave of Aussie kids coming through, technically they’re all good, they really are. I think it’s an incredible indicator of what we’ve produced out of our small country of 25 million people and 1.2, 1.3 million golfers, that we have this ability to keep churning out these great players every 15 years,” Norman added.

“I think it’s just a reflection of the guys before who delivered the message and the stimulation to these young kids when they were five or seven or eight years old, watching their 22-year-old hero go do it. And they just want it.

“And I think it is a reflection on our DNA of what Australia is. We aren’t afraid to go overseas and take our talents, as good as they are, to showcase them anywhere.

“These young kids, they’ll be just as good as the Day’s of the world and Scott’s of the world and my generation. They’re emulating what I do or did, and I love to see them.”

At a tournament that has an emphasis on acknowledging the greats of golf, Norman said he’s impressed with the current crop of superstars competing each week globally.

“I think it’s (golf) in fantastic hands. The analogy I would make for my era, it’s comparable to the mid-’80s. In the mid-’80s, we had probably eight to 10 to 12 players that could equally have been Number 1 in the world.

“Today you probably have eight to 10 to 16 players equally in that realm. And it’s not just their player ability wise, but it’s the way they conduct themselves. Each and every one of them, they absolutely stand up and carry that baton for Number 1 in the world for a long period of time. They feel it. They see it.

“So I love where it is. I actually watched golf today and I hadn’t watched golf in 40 years. I’ve never really watched golf, because I do like to enjoy — even Thursday and Fridays in the gym, I’ll turn on golf to see what’s going on, to see what these kids are doing. And that’s an indicator to me that I like where golf is.”