Moe Norman Article 1995

This article says “no-one” has ever tried to copy Norman’s style.  Today hundreds of thousands of golfer have copied Moe.  How times have changed.

‘Basic’ golf doesn’t always work

You have to wonder about golfer — even the great ones Arnold Palmer, for example, probably has more putters in his collection than any golfer in the world. No matter where he goes, it seem, there’s always someone handling him in different type of putter that, the donor claims, will cure his putting ills. Sure!

But get this. Palmer experimented with cross-handed putting and the long putter and admitted that he putted better but wouldn’t stick with either one.

“I putt better cross-handed, no doubt it,” he was quoted in Golf World as saying. “But I have a mental fixation that says do it right. . . basic. I’d putt better if I used a long putter, too, but it’s just personal thing with me.

“The way I feel about my golf is, if I can’t do it the way I’ve always done it, I won’t do it. Gimmicks are not for me. But I think I can putt good enough the right way to do what I want to do. If I hit it on the green where I want to, I think the putting will work.”

Now, far be it for me to second guess King Arnie, the man who could charm the bark off a live oak tree, but personally, if I could sink those 15 footers with a Felix Potvin goalie stick, I’d have one in my golf bag.

To hell with tradition or what it looks like. It’s that number that goes down on the scorecard that interests me.

I once played with a visitor to the city who had never seen Moe Norman play and he asked me about Norman’s un-orthodox setup whereby he stands stiff-legged with the club a foot or so behind the ball.

The guy, a low handicapper, tried it for the remainder of the round and couldn’t believe either the distance or the accuracy he was getting.

I ran into him a few weeks later and asked him if was still using the Norman setup.

“No,” he replied, “It just doesn’t look right.”

Look right? Hey sport, do you want to look good or lighten the load of your opponent’s wallet? Norman is considered by many experts, even at age 65, to be one of ball in the world. Lee Trevino, for one, has maintained this for years.

Moe will leave golfers and golf fans shaking their heads in disbelief after he gives one of his excellent clinics yet no one, NO ONE, has never tried to copy Norman’s style.

Strange, isn’t it. We don’t hesitate to dish out hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars for a new set of high-tech clubs but don’t take either time or the effort to see how a guy like Norman could do it all with the cheapest clubs you could buy.

And speaking of those high-tech clubs, it makes you wonder when you see some of the greatest players in the world being paid fees in the six- and seven- figure range to go on TV and run out of adjectives telling us how good certain clubs are. Yet, n too many cases, you won’t find those clubs in the pro’s bag when he’s on tour.

They’ve been known to endorse one club, for a big, fat fee, and use another.

There’s nothing illegal about this, it’s not a capital crime. But there’s no question the public is being misled.

The boys at the ad agencies would call it slick marketing.

I’d call it deception.

But, as I said at the outset, you have to wonder about golfers.

Rick Fraser’s golf column normally appears Saturdays.