Milestone anniversaries of Greg Norman’s near-misses at the Masters remind us why Augusta never forgets.
I didn’t want to bring it up, and for the first time I can remember, he didn’t want to talk about it. But then again, why would he?
Forty years since 1986. Thirty since 1996. Two Masters. Two Sundays. Two Greg Norman near-misses that became part of golf folklore – and part of us.
In ’86, the brash, fearless Queenslander went toe-to-toe with Jack Nicklaus at the Masters, only to watch the Golden Bear slip into immortality with a sixth green jacket thanks to one errant shot from ‘the Shark’. A decade later, Norman stood six shots clear and seemingly unshakeable before Nick Faldo was the benefactor of one of the cruellest final rounds the game has seen.
Two different Sundays, yet the same hollow silence Down Under. For Australians of a certain vintage, those collapses aren’t trivia. They’re emotional landmarks. You remember where you were, the pit in your stomach and that feeling of disbelief. You remember the Sunday roars and gasps.
On the 18th hole in 1986, Norman had options, the most likely being a 5-iron, solid and safe. Instead, he chose to finesse a 4-iron into the final green. It leaked right into the patrons and with it drifted Australia’s moment. A scratchy bogey, a green jacket slipping onto Nicklaus’ shoulders, not Sharky’s that were carrying the weight of an entire nation. How different might the narrative have been had he just pulled the bloody 5-iron?
Golf history turns on decisions that take less than a second to make. In 1996, however, it wasn’t one swing but a slow unravel. Faldo was relentless. Norman, uncharacteristically tight and off his game. The scoreboard bled red numbers in the wrong column. Yet what remains most vivid wasn’t the mind-blowing collapse but the dignity on show afterwards. Norman fronted up and owned it. He didn’t hide behind excuses or bad breaks, of which there were many. He stood there in the glare and absorbed it. There’s a particular kind of courage in that, the kind that doesn’t get stitched onto a jacket.
Norman once said of Augusta: “I love this place – it just doesn’t love me back.”
There may not be a more poetic summary of a relationship between golfer and golf course. Because Norman did love it. He still does. The contours, the theatre, the challenge and the possibility. It was a stage tailor-made for his swagger, a canvas for his bravado and undisputed tee-to-green superiority. And yet Augusta never quite yielded to the way of the Shark.
In 2024, decades removed from those scars and amid the turbulence of his tenure as chief executive officer of LIV Golf, Norman returned, not as contender, but as patron. No Charlie Chaplin moustache or camouflage, just that big straw hat complete with its iconic shark logo. There was no hiding.
“The few days I spent at Augusta walking for the first time ever behind the ropes, embedded in heartbeat of golf – the patrons – were extremely powerful and poignant,” he said.
The Shark, once the hunted and the hunter, now behind the ropes, feeling the pulse of a place that both crowned and crushed him, sadly not in equal measure.
And so these 30 and 40-year milestones remind us once more that Augusta National tests more than the world’s best swings. It challenges ego, patience and whether you can survive public heartbreak. Norman did, on several occasions (we haven’t even mentioned his playoff loss to that crazy Larry Mize chip-in in 1987) and it’s the part we don’t nearly talk about enough.
The lesson in Greg Norman’s time at Augusta National isn’t just about what slipped away, it’s about how he carried himself in the face of it all. He didn’t blame fate. He didn’t hold a grudge. He and Nicklaus remain close and recently shared lunch, no doubt reminiscing about what that Sunday meant to both. And that’s the paradox: Norman’s Masters legacy is built as much on grace as it is on anguish.
Each April, when the Champions Dinner brigade gathers over fine china and even finer wine, in the Australian imagination at least, there’s an empty chair at the table. Adam Scott’s presence helps ease that pain, but the scene has never felt entirely complete without the guy who reigned supreme for 331 weeks.
What if greatness in this game were defined less by what you collect and more by what you endure? What if it were measured not in jackets but in resilience and in the way a player steadies himself while the sporting world watches, and sometimes seems almost to brace for the fall?
What if Greg Norman was remembered every April for how many people he inspired to pick up a golf club, instead of the ones he chose to hit 30 and 40 years ago?
Anniversaries… they can twist the knife and warm the heart at the same time.
Photograph by getty images/stephen munday
