“We went everywhere, or so it seemed,” Bruce said. “Everything was big-time, first class all the way. Five-star hotels, private jets, fancy cars, the best restaurants. Greg never did anything quietly, it just wasn’t his way. It was fun and exciting at the start, although very, very different.”
Jay and Natalie Edwards remember getting a call that first year from Bruce while he was on a trip to Australia. “He was calling from a cell phone, which was just about unheard of back then,” Jay said. “And he said he was about to take his first scuba-diving lesson. We were all pretty impressed with where he had landed himself, even if we’d had concerns about him leaving Tom.”
What amazed Bruce more than anything about Norman was his energy. There seemed to be no downtime in his life. “There were days when he would play eighteen holes and practice, go to a planning meeting for a golf course he was building, and then do some corporate deal at night,” he said. “I know there were times when he didn’t feel like doing some of those things, but he always did them. And if you watched him, you would never think he was tired or bored or had done these things a million times. He just kept on going.”
For his part, Norman was thrilled with his new caddy. “I thought we meshed very quickly, although I knew it was an adjustment for Bruce,” he said. “I felt comfortable with him, felt like we were friends. When we were overseas and I didn’t have my family with me, we went to dinner. He was bright and interesting and we could talk about a lot of different things. It was like having a buddy traveling with you.”
Less than two months after signing on with Norman, Bruce almost got to do something he had never done with Watson: win a British Open. Norman’s only major victory at that stage had come in the 1986 British Open at Turnberry. On the second day, with the Giant blowing in off the Firth of Clyde and scores skyrocketing, Norman shot a mind-blowing 63 to take complete control of the tournament. Watson, who knew a thing or two about playing well in tough conditions, later told Bruce it was one of the great rounds of golf ever played.
Norman was better known, however, for the major championships he had lost than the one he had won. In 1984 he had made remarkable putts on the final three holes of the U.S. Open to force a playoff with Fuzzy Zoeller and then lost the 18-hole playoff the next day by eight shots. In 1986 he had bogeyed 18 to lose the Masters to Jack Nicklaus by one shot. Later that year he had blown a four-shot lead on the final nine holes of the PGA and lost when Bob Tway holed a bunker shot on 18 to beat him by two. A year later he had lost the Masters when Larry Mize miraculously chipped in from 140 feet to beat him on the second hole of sudden death.
Some people thought Norman got too keyed up in pressure situations, played too aggressively, and beat himself. Others thought he was more flash than substance and pointed to his record down the stretch in majors as proof. Still others thought he had just been unlucky: Nicklaus had come out of nowhere with 65 on Sunday at Augusta in ’86; Tway and Mize had produced miraculous shots. Norman was just thirty-four when Bruce signed on with him, a player very much in his prime, especially since he was perhaps the best-conditioned player on the tour.
Bruce had heard the stories about Norman being a tough and demanding boss. He respected both Pete Bender and Steve Williams and knew both had been fired by Norman. He was convinced he could handle the pressures that he knew would come with the new job.
“I told myself right from the beginning that I should never compare Greg to Tom,” he said. “It was pointless and it wasn’t fair. No one was Tom and no one was Greg. They were entirely different people. It was up to me to adapt to a new boss. People do that in life all the time.”
Norman and entourage flew in to the British, which was at Royal Troon that year, after a two-day exhibition in Brussels. The weather that year was completely out of character: dry and hot. It had been that way all summer in Scotland. “I brought sweaters, raincoats, umbrellas, rain pants, extra shoes, you name it,” Bruce said. “As it turned out, the only thing I needed was chapstick. It was amazing looking at all the Scots. They were all completely red from the sun because none of them had any idea what sunblock was or how to go about getting it.”
Bruce’s first truly awkward moment since his job switch occurred early that week. Bruce was carrying Norman’s bag up to his room in the Marine Hotel, which is located a few yards from the Troon clubhouse. As he began to walk up the stairs (there are only four floors in the hotel and the elevator is tiny and slow), he bumped into Linda Watson. After an initial cordial greeting, Linda said to him, “You know, things have changed between us because you left to go work for Greg.”
Bruce was both surprised and hurt by the comment. He had assumed—hoped?—that Linda felt the same way Tom did about his decision. “Nothing will change the way I feel about you and Tom,” he said. “I’m really sorry if you feel hurt. I would never want you to feel that way.”
“I believe that,” Linda answered. “But I do.”
Bruce had always felt close to Linda, felt she had gone out of her way, especially in the early days, to take care of him. It upset him to see how she felt. “All I could do,” he said, “was hope that someday she would understand.”
In the midst of the record heat wave, Royal Troon was playing fast and, with little wind, relatively easy. Scores were predictably low all week with no wind to protect the golf course. For three days Norman played solidly, hanging on the fringes of contention, but several shots behind the leader, Wayne Grady, a fellow Australian, who played resolute golf for 54 holes and led the championship by one shot going into the final day over, you guessed it, Tom Watson. Norman was six shots back and playing about eight holes in front of Grady and Watson in the last group.
He would have trailed Grady by only five shots if not for a bogey at the 18th hole on Saturday that left Bruce upset with his player. “He was right in the middle of the fairway, maybe a hundred and forty yards from the flag, which was cut on the right side of the green,” he remembered. “It was an eight-iron and the play was left of the flag, get it on the middle of the green, and try to make a birdie putt from there.”
Instead Norman drilled the shot directly at the flag and, when it drifted a little bit right, it landed in the right-hand bunker. Norman had made the classic overaggressive mistake: short-siding himself by playing at a pin instead of at a safe spot on the green.
“Absolutely dead,” Bruce said. “No green to work with and it was downhill to the pin to boot. He hit a good shot from there to get it to twenty feet and make bogey.”
Later, after the scorecards were signed and everyone had a chance to relax a little, Bruce, who was still feeling his way with Norman at that point said, “Why did you play that shot right at the flag on eighteen?”
“I was trying to be aggressive,” Norman said.
“You can’t be aggressive to that kind of pin,” Bruce said. “You have to aim for an area of the green and be sure you make par.”
Norman said nothing. Bruce had no way of knowing what that meant. Only later would he figure it out.
The next day was one of those remarkable rounds when Norman left people in awe of his talent. Knowing he had to make birdies all over the place to make any sort of run at the leaders, he came out firing on Troon’s much easier front nine. “Now that was a situation where his aggressiveness was great,” Bruce said. “There were birdies to be made, and he went after them. He could really get on a roll out there when he was hot and confident. It was something to see.”
Norman birdied the first six holes. As a past Open champion, he is hugely popular in Great Britain, and the crowds came running as he charged up the leader board. Bruce found himself looking around in awe at the scene as Norman continued to close on the leaders. Norman might have shot 62 if he hadn’t bogeyed Troon’s most famous hole, the tiny par-three eighth hole, known as the Postage Stamp because the green is so small and difficult to hit. Eight years later, in his first British Open as a pro, Tiger Woods would make a seven on the hole, which is barely more than 100 yards in length.
Norman made one other mistake that day. After hitting a superb second shot on the par-five 16th to within 15 feet, he charged his putt for eagle five feet past the hole and then missed the birdie putt coming back. “Three putts for par,” he said. “Inexcusable. I made a real mental mistake there.”
Even with that mistake, Norman came to the 18th hole seven under par for the day and tied for the lead with Grady, still out on the golf course, and Mark Calcavecchia, who had also made a run to get to nine under par for the championship. Bruce had enough major championship experience by then to know the best thing Norman could do was post a number and make the players behind him on the golf course match it or beat it.
“I was convinced if we could make one more birdie we would win,” he said. “Of course that’s easier said than done.”
The 18th at Troon is a difficult par-four even without the wind. A driver is risky for a big hitter because of a large fairway bunker on the right side that comes into play if one crushes the ball off the tee. A three-wood is a safer play, although it will almost certainly leave a long second shot to the green because the hole is almost always played into the wind, even in mild conditions. Norman absolutely killed a driver down the left side of the fairway into perfect position. Just as he and Bruce arrived at the ball, they spotted Jack Nicklaus cutting across the fairway behind them to the ABC-TV tower, which sat to the right of the 18th hole. In those days Nicklaus worked for ABC at the majors, arriving in the booth soon after he finished playing—unless of course he was in one of the final groups.
Spotting Nicklaus, Norman waved and said, “Hey Jack, you flying home tonight?”
Nicklaus, a close friend who had been a mentor to Norman early in his career, stopped for a moment and said, “Greg, why don’t you just focus on birdieing this hole and winning the golf tournament, okay?”
That exchange may well sum up the difference between Norman and Nicklaus—or Watson for that matter. Norman is by nature always outgoing. He sees everything and everyone. Nicklaus is the opposite; if his own
mother
had been walking across the fairway at that moment, chances are good he never would have noticed her. If he had, he would have ignored her. There was work to be done.
Norman’s second shot ran through the green and started up a little hill that led to an out-of-bounds marker. But it rolled back down the hill and stopped just off the green, about 30 feet from the hole. As Norman and Bruce walked up to the green, the huge crowd around the green was screaming. At the British Open, the 18th green is surrounded on three sides by huge grandstands, and players will tell you that on Sunday afternoon, when the stands are full and the tension is highest, walking to the 18th green is one of the great moments of their golf lives. It is a great moment for caddies too. For Bruce, this was the first time, since his only British Open with Watson, back in 1976, had ended on the third day, when Watson missed the 54-hole cut.
“I remember looking around and thinking, ‘So this is what it would have been like with Tom all those years,’” he said.
Norman had a long putt for birdie, but he had already made a 35-footer and a 60-footer that day, so anything seemed possible. Bruce tended the pin and watched the putt die a foot short, “right in the heart,” he said later. Norman tapped in for 64, an amazing round under any circumstances on the final day of a major championship. Then he and Bruce waited to see what Grady and Calcavecchia would do. Calcavecchia came through with a birdie at 18 to tie Norman. Then, with a chance to win, Grady missed a birdie putt, and all three men headed back to the first tee for a playoff.
As Norman’s luck would have it, this was the first year the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, which administers the British Open, had decided to abandon the 18-hole playoff format. Given the momentum he had built with his 64, Norman probably would have been tough to beat over 18 holes on Monday. He also would have been tough to beat in sudden death, since he birdied the first hole of the playoff. But the playoff wasn’t sudden death either: It was played over four holes, the Royal and Ancient feeling that 18 holes were too many and one hole was not enough. So Norman’s birdie—his ninth of the day—simply gave him a one-shot lead over Calcavecchia and Grady, who both made par.
“If it’s sudden death, end of story,” Norman said, forcing a laugh years later. “But you know the old saying, there’s a reason why golf is a four-letter word.”
Norman hadn’t won after the first playoff hole, but he was still sizzling. He birdied the short, downwind second hole to go two under on the playoff. Calcavecchia also made birdie, though, and trailed by one; Grady was now two shots behind. The players cut across from the second green to the 17th tee to play the last two holes. Standing on the tee, Norman asked Bruce for the same four-iron he had hit in regulation. Bruce hesitated.
“I know a little bit about adrenaline,” he said. “And at that point Greg was really, really pumped up. I started to say to him, ‘You know, right now the play might be the five,’ but I didn’t. If it had been Tom, I just would have said it and then let him decide. In fact I think I can honestly say, with Tom if I had said it, he would have known exactly
why
I said it and would take the adrenaline into account before deciding what to hit. But I wasn’t that comfortable with Greg and didn’t know how he would react if I said something he wasn’t expecting. So I decided to let him go with what he felt most comfortable with at that moment.
“It was a mistake. As soon as the ball was in the air, I could see it had too much on it.”
The ball went through the green to the back fringe. When Bruce and Norman got to the ball, they could see some high grass right behind the ball. Norman would have to be careful to keep his putter from getting stuck on the grass when he drew it back. Norman tried a couple practice swings, then told Bruce to stay close because he might want his wedge. Bruce didn’t like that idea either. “It was a downhill shot on a green without much grass on it,” he said. “Once the ball landed, it was going to take off no matter how much he got under it.”