When he returns briefly to his home town of Warrnambool at the completion of the Australian PGA Championship this week, Marc Leishman will be reminded of the lasting impression made by Aussie golf icon Greg Norman during his glorious prime.
Leishman’s latest honour in a career-best season was being awarded the Greg Norman Medal at a glittering awards function hosted by the PGA of Australia at RACV Royal Pines Resort on Tuesday night, adding to a year in which he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational and BMW Championship on the US PGA Tour and moved up to a career high of No.13 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
One of the headline acts for the Australian PGA, Leishman only made late arrangements to play in the tournament when it became clear he was a leading contender to receive the award, eager to do the award justice given the name that the medal bears.
As a kid growing up in regional Victoria the now 34-year-old would head into Melbourne each year with his parents to join the throng of Aussie golf fans who would clamour for even a glimpse of Norman taking on the world at the Australian Masters at Huntingdale.
On one occasion as he sat patiently beside the 18th green waiting for his hero to finish, Norman’s long-time caddie Steve Williams serendipitously handed a young Leishman a ball as they walked from the putting surface, a ball that retains a pride of place in his boyhood bedroom.
“I think for everyone probably around my age and a little bit older, he was the man we’d go and watch,” Leishman told Australian Golf Digest.
“We used to go down to Huntingdale and you’d always want to see him. You’d only get to see him a couple of times throughout the day because there were so many people but one of my first memories of being there was being next to the 18th green with my mum. Dad was out following someone else. He walked off the green and Steve Williams was right behind him and he handed me one of Greg’s golf balls as he was walking off. We actually got it mounted and I’ve still got it home in my bedroom at Mum and Dad’s house.
https://www.facebook.com/PGAofAustralia/videos/10155901736472760/
“So to have this medal is a huge honour. To have something named in his honour that has been won twice now by Jason [Day], it’s awesome to be one of the guys on there forever. Hopefully I can continue playing good and try and win it again.”
A member of the professional ranks for more than a decade now, Leishman’s rise into golf’s broader consciousness has come relatively late despite four top-10 finishes in Major championships and now three wins on the US PGA Tour.
In a year in which neither Day nor Adam Scott posted a tournament win anywhere in the world, Leishman has flown the Aussie flag on the US PGA Tour but insists he must first win a Major before he can command the same level of attention as his countrymen.
“They’re both Major champions so until I hopefully do that I will be,” Leishman said when asked whether he still somewhat lives in their shadows. “They’ve done a lot for Australian golf. I just want to keep playing good and not worry about whether I’m in their shadows or not. They’ve earned the stature they’ve got, for sure.”
Prior to his win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March to break a five-year winless drought on the US PGA Tour, Leishman admitted that he had endured a “case of the Sundays” that saw opportunities slip through his fingers. In contention at the Farmers Insurance Open, Waste Management Phoenix Open and The Honda Classic, Leishman shot 73 in all three final rounds until his wife Audrey reminded him of the circumstances surrounding his maiden win on tour five years earlier.
“I had chances to win a lot of events early,” said Leishman, who suffered something of a relapse when he posted a final-round 70 at the Dell Technologies Championship in September’s FedEx Cup Playoffs after sharing the lead with eventual champion Justin Thomas going into the last round.
“My wife called it a case of the ‘Sundays’. I was up there on Sundays and then just faded away. That actually happened before I won the Travellers in 2012 and she reminded me of that. When that happens you learn from disappointments and from not winning and I felt like I learnt a lot from that. I looked at the positives from those days and learnt from the negatives that didn’t quite work out and was able to take that through the rest of the year.”
