Nearly every time Norman teed it up in a tournament, he had to endure the laughter of spectators. He was often viewed as an amusing sideshow, not as the main event, and he reinforced his own reputation as a clown by playing to the galleries.

Norman is different in other ways as well. His personality is ec- centric, to say the least. He is uncomfortable with strangers and has difficulty making eye contact with people he doesn’t know. He does not like to be touched. He has never married or had a se- rious relationship with another person, and he has essentially no interests outside golf. He suffers from a crippling shyness that was often interpreted by others as arrogance or rudeness. Despite all he has accomplished, he has always been plagued by a fear that he doesn’t measure up.

That Norman managed any sort of competitive career can begin to seem astonishing. His upbringing was modest in the extreme and did little to prepare him for the U.S. tour, where he felt con- spicuous and inadequate next to famous players who dressed better and had more money than he did. He spent much of his 40-year competitive career in obscurity and poverty. He never had a mentor, a manager, or a sponsor. He sometimes carried his own bag in tournaments because he couldn’t afford a caddie. When he had money, he kept it in a wad in his front pocket and sometimes had to move it to one side so it wouldn’t interfere with his putting stroke.

He spent 14 winters–including the one before the 1956 Masters, to which he had been invited as the reigning Canadian Amateur champion–setting pins in a bowling alley for a few cents a line. As recently as eight years ago, he was so broke that only the last- minute intervention of friends prevented his car from being re- possessed. At that time, he was eking out a subsistence living by giving golf clinics for a couple of hundred dollars apiece. Even today, Norman lives in a $400-a-month motel room and has no telephone. He keeps his clothes in the back seat of his car.

Norman might be destitute and forgotten were it not for the ef- forts over the years of a few close friends. Among those friends are Gus and Audrey Maue. Gus Maue has known Norman for more than 40 years, and for a time was the pro at a golf club where Norman had caddied as a boy. Today, Maue owns Foxwood Golf Club, in Baden, Ontario, where Norman spends most of his days during the warm months. (He spends his win- ters in Florida, where he plays at a golf club owned by the Canadian PGA.) In 1987, the Maues conducted a golf tourna- ment at Foxwood, which raised $25,000 for Norman and put him back on his feet.

For Audrey Maue, the key to understanding Norman came seve- ral years later, in a movie theater. “We went to see Rain Man,” she said, “and suddenly it came to me: that’s Moe. It just seemed like a light was turned on. I had always known that Moe was dif- ferent, and I had known a little about autism, but I had never thought about it in connection with Moe. I don’t know that he’s ever seen a doctor, about that or anything else, but everyone who knows him who saw the movie felt the very same way.

“Most people don’t understand where Moe’s coming from or why he is like he is. Life has always been a struggle for him. Just to be around people, period, made him feel uncomfortable. What he accomplished, he accomplished on his own.”

Part Two

When you first see Moe Norman hit a golf ball you wonder, Why on earth does he swing the club that way? After you have watched him hit half a dozen 250-yard drives out of a divot, though, you begin to wonder, Why on earth don’t I?

On the practice tee at Foxwood Golf Club not long ago, Norman warmed up with a pitching wedge, although “warming up” does- n’t really describe any part of Norman’s practice routine. The first shot was perfect, the second was identical to the first, the third to the second, and so on. Then he switched to his 4-iron. His swing–for all appearances, a nearly effortless half-swing– was the same with the 4-iron as it had been with the wedge. The shots came one after another, just three or four seconds apart.

“How far you hitting those?” a spectator asked. “One-eighty,” Norman said. Every shot was within a few degrees of dead straight, despite a stiff crosswind, unless he announced ahead of time that he was going to hit a draw or a fade. The divots were identical (surreally rectangular scrapes that Norman calls “bacon strips.”)

Norman switched to his driver. Once again, the swing was the same. If you watched only his arms and hands, you wouldn’t know that he wasn’t still swinging his wedge. After hitting one ball, he would watch it a moment, then bend over and place another on the tee–and I mean place it. The tee never came out of the ground. In fact, it didn’t move a millimeter.

“I hit balls, not tees,” he explained. On a driving range once, he hit 131 drives in a row from the same tee without having to straighten or adjust it. In tournaments, he sometimes entertained galleries by hitting drives from the mouth of the bottle of Coke he had just been drinking.

“When was the last time you hit a bad shot, Moe?” I asked him.

“Thirty years ago,” he said as he bent over to tee up another.

After he had been hitting drives awhile, a friend of his asked if he could try. The friend took Norman’s driver and placed a ball on Norman’s tee. The shot wasn’t too bad, but the tee came out of the ground and tumbled into the long grass 20 feet ahead.

“Oh, dear, I loved that tee,” Norman said wistfully. “I had it for seven years.”

Before Norman’s demonstration on the practice tee, he and I had spent some time together in Foxwood’s unpretentious dining room. It was there, about a month before, that he had been in- ducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. The audience at Norman’s induction was limited mostly to friends. At his re- quest, the dinner was served family style.

As we talked, Norman held a putter and fiddled with his grip, or rolled a golf ball in his palm. He often finds it easier to be with children than with adults, and if a child is present he will someti- mes pull a ball from his pocket and start an impromptu game of

catch. I had been told that it might be hard to get him to talk, but that once he had started, it might be hard to get him to stop. He didn’t look me in the eye at first, but gradually he seemed to re- lax. Bit by bit, with numerous digressions–all of them related to golf–he told me about his life.

“It’s tough to do things when you’re broke,” he said. “Hitchhiking to tournaments, sleeping on park benches, sleeping in bunkers. I slept in bunkers all over Canada. You name it. I’d go and shoot 61 or 65, win the tournament, then hitchhike back on the highway with my TV set or whatever my first prize was, soaking wet. Couldn’t afford an umbrella then. Sometimes I had to put my golf bag over my head. Nobody would come to my re- scue, not back then. This was back in the early ’50s. I was born in ’29.”

Norman grew up in a small house in a working-class neighbor- hood in Kitchener, an industrial city about 1 1/2 hours outside Toronto. The house was just 1 1/2 blocks from a Uniroyal Tire factory. The sky was often black, the air smelled of burning rub- ber. Money was very tight.

Norman’s grade-school years were difficult. He had trouble get- ting along with other children and with other members of his fa- mily. He struggled in all subjects at school, except math, at which he was a prodigy. He also had a phenomenal memory. Today,he can recite the yardage of virtually every golf hole he has ever played, and he remembers every golf shot from every tournament that meant anything to him. He has a reputation as a deadly cribbage player because he remembers all the cards.

When Norman was a child, other children teased him merciless- ly over his academic difficulties, his shyness, his big ears, his highvoice, and his tendency to repeat himself.

An expert quoted in O’Connor’s book speculates that Norman’s speech and personality quirks, and even his unusual mathemati- cal ability, may have arisen not from the mild autism that Audrey Maue suspects, but from untreated head injuries he may have suffered in a sledding accident when he was five. In that acci- dent, he was dragged under a car a long distance, and he says he remembers seeing a tire roll over the side of his face. His parents could not afford to take him to the hospital, and his mother wor- ried for the rest of her life that the accident had made a perma- nent change in her son’s personality. Whatever the reason, Norman’s childhood was mostly lonely. He found refuge in sports, and especially in golf, which he pursued with a devotion verging on mania.

Norman’s first golf club was a tree branch he and his older brot- her used to knock balls around their yard; his second was a hoc- key stick. At the age of 12, he began caddying at a local club cal- led Westmount. He bought his first real golf club, an old 5-iron, from a member who let him pay it off at 10 cents a week. “Oh, I was as happy as a pig in s—,” he told me. “I had a steel-shafted club.” Norman was left-handed, but the member was right-hand- ed, so he switched.

Norman practiced in his family’s tiny backyard by hitting balls against a neighbor’s garage. He rapidly developed a local reputa- tion as a golf terrorist. When he would break a neighbor’s win- dow–as he did 11 times in two years, usually because he was ai- ming at one–he would shout, “Bull’s-eye!” He built his golf game against enormous odds. The other members of his family

made fun of him for playing what they viewed as an effeminate game and called him a sissy at the dinner table.

Norman told me: “My father used to say, ‘Come on, play a man’s game. Play hockey or baseball.’ I said, ‘No, Dad, I’m too light.’ I was a little skinny kid then, wasn’t over 130 pounds. I couldn’t play any other sport and be good at it so I kept playing golf. But my father wouldn’t let me bring my clubs into the house. I had to hide them under the front porch.”

When he wasn’t aiming at the neighbors’ windows, Norman practiced in a field at a nearby public course. When I referred to this field as a driving range, Norman laughed. “Nobody had ranges then,” he said. “It was only a field, maybe 200 yards long. I had to wait till there was nobody playing to hit my driver. And the grass was tall. We had to use our irons to cut the grass down to fairway height, in a little square, and hit our balls from that.”

Norman carried his cherished collection of battered golf balls in an old canvas bowling bag. After he had hit them all, he would drop the bag among them and chip into it. Fear of losing his balls in the tall grass increased his desire to hit straight shots. He often hit balls until his hands were bleeding. When the blood made his grip slippery, he wiped hands on his golf towel and his pants, and kept hitting balls until it was too dark to see. When he got home, he looked as though he had spent the afternoon slaughte- ring chickens.

Norman assembled his swing by feel, with a few clues gleaned from photographs in newspapers and magazines, and occasional encouragement from a kindly local pro. His progress was not immediate; he didn’t break 100 until he was 16. But gradually his golf game fell into place. By the time he was 19, he felt he had his swing “trapped.” From that point forward, he says, “I knew I could hit a golf ball where I wanted it to go for the rest of my life.”

Part Three

The first significant step in Norman’s competitive career came in 1949 at the St. Thomas Golf and Country Club, at a one-day amateur event later known as the Early Bird. He had not been in- vited. He showed up the day of the tournament and was given an empty slot. He was wearing sneakers. He had just seven clubs and carried them in his own bag, which was falling apart. Against a field that included several of Ontario’s amateur stars, he shot 67 and won by two strokes. Too shy to attend the awards dinner, he slipped away after finishing his round. A friend had to make apologies and bring him his prize.

Norman wasn’t like the other golfers in the tournaments he play- ed. For one thing, he played fast. He would sometimes lie down and pretend to sleep in the fairway, waiting for slower players to hit. “I always thought the day was going to come when I’d get penalized two strokes for playing too fast,” he told me. “They had a meeting about it at one tournament. They said that people were complaining because they had taken off work to come to the tournament, and I was four under after five holes and they hadn’t seen me hit a shot. They said, ‘Please don’t walk so abruptly to your ball. Walk like you’re drunk.'”

At the Masters in 1956, Norman hit his first tee shot while the announcer was in the middle of introducing him. Asked by a playing partner why he took so little time to line up his shots, he

said, “Why? Did they move the greens since yesterday?” He once putted between the foot and outstretched arm of a competi- tor who was marking his ball.

Norman’s background also set him apart. Unlike most of the ot- her top amateurs, he didn’t belong to a country club. He often hitchhiked to and from tournaments, and he had to juggle his competitive schedule with a succession of dreary factory jobs, including one stitching rubber boots. He had to play hooky in or- der to compete in weekday tournaments, and he was fired five ti- mes. “There was no sense saying I was sick,” he says, “because they’d read the headline NORMAN SHOOTS 65 AGAIN AND WINS.” He liked night jobs best, because they left his days free for practice.

Norman also supported himself by selling the prizes he won in amateur events. As his confidence in his playing ability increa- sed, he sometimes sold the prizes before the tournaments began. According to friends, on at least five occasions he intentionally finished second because his customers hadn’t wanted the first- place prize.

In 1955, with a birdie on the 39th hole in the final match, he won the Canadian Amateur–the first Canadian to do so since 1951. His victory was widely viewed as a fluke by those who felt that no one with such an unconventional swing and seemingly frivo- lous attitude could really play golf at the highest levels. But then the next year he won it again, and even more decisively.

At the age of just 27, Norman had now laid the foundation for what might have been one of golf’s greatest amateur careers. But his clowning on the golf course and his penchant for selling his prizes had long infuriated the RCGA. Taking money under the table was a common practice among amateurs, but no player was as open about it as Norman was. The RCGA threatened to strip him of his amateur status. Afraid that he would lose his two nati- onal titles, he announced he was turning pro.

This was harder than it sounded. He didn’t have a club job and was an unlikely candidate for one, and thus could not qualify for a Canadian PGA Tour card. Finally, in 1958, under pressure from the public, and with the help of a driving-range pro who had hired Norman as an assistant, the CPGA relented. His first tournament as a card-carrying pro was the three-day Ontario Open. He shot 68-69-74 and won by three.

Norman’s obvious next move was to the U.S. tour, to which he won a partial exemption with a third-place finish in a Canadian qualifying event. His U.S. debut took place at the 1959 Los Angeles Open, which was held that year at Rancho Municipal. He putted poorly–a recurrent affliction–but was thrilled to be playing alongside Hogan, Sam Snead and his other golf idols. He continued to play indifferently, with occasional flashes of brilliance (among them a 62 at the San Diego Open) until the tour reached New Orleans. There he shot four solid rounds, play- ed in the final group on Sunday, led briefly, and finished fourth.

Gus and Audrey Maue were in Daytona, Fla., at that time. On Monday morning, Gus saw in the newspaper that Norman had played well and finished fourth. He predicted to his wife that Norman would win the following week in Pensacola.

“About two hours later,” Maue told me, “there was a knock at my door, and it was Moe. I said ‘Moe, why are you here? You’re

supposed to be in Pensacola.’ And Moe said, ‘I will never play that tour again.’ I asked him what had happened, but he said he would never tell me. He was distraught.

“He would come over each night with six Cokes, and we would play cribbage until the wee hours, and the next morning Audrey would wake up and there would be Moe’s six empty Coke bott- les. His heart was broken, but he wouldn’t talk about it; then he went back to Toronto.

“A few weeks later, a young tour player I knew came through Daytona, and I asked him what had happened to Moe in New Orleans. He said that some of the big names on the tour–and I’m not going to say who–were upset that Moe was hitting the ball off the big tee, and they were upset with the way he dressed, and they didn’t like his appearance. That’s the bottom line.”

Part Four

What had happened was that several well-known pros had cor- nered Norman in the locker room and chewed him out. They told him to stop clowning around, said he had to dress better and have his teeth fixed. It was a harrowing experience for someone who was already painfully shy and socially ill-at-ease, and Norman never went back. He doesn’t like to talk about it now. When Maue told me the story, Norman looked at his feet and said quietly, “It stopped me from having fun.”

The conventional wisdom about Moe Norman’s golf game is that he hits the ball extraordinarily well despite an extremely peculi- ar golf swing. “Moe’s swing is not fundamentally sound,” Bob Toski told me recently. “He gets away with it, I think, because by intuition and by instinct he played that way when he was young. He has great hand and eye coordination, and he has great hand and arm strength. But he doesn’t have the posture of a good play- er, where the arms look more relaxed and hanging from the body. He has very little bend from his waist. I think he’s another Lee Trevino–he’s a freak. And I use the word in a complimenta- ry sense. He learned his golf swing intuitively, he learned it by trial and error. He didn’t understand the fundamentals.”

Trevino is an interesting comparison, because if you asked other pros to name the best ball-striker among active players, Trevino would get a lot of votes. Are he and Norman really freaks? Or could there possibly be an advantage to having a golf swing that doesn’t look like Bob Toski’s?

Similar thoughts occurred to a Chicago businessman named Jack Kuykendall. In the early ’80s, Kuykendall was a middling midd- le-aged golfer with Walter Mittyish fantasies of making it as a pro. The senior tour was beginning to attract a lot of attention. Kuykendall’s handicap was 12. At 44, he decided to devote the next six years of his life to finding out once and for all whether he had the right stuff to play for money on TV.

Two years later, after many hours of hard work, Kuykendall’s handicap was two strokes worse. Frustrated and discouraged, he decided the problem lay not in himself but in the golf swing. “I was convinced,” he says, “that there had to be an easier way to hit a round object on the ground with a stick.”

Kuykendall had been a physics major in college, and he had put in two years toward a master’s before deciding there wasn’t enough money in academics. Examining the golf swing from the

point of view of basic physics, he decided the problem was the modern grip. Holding a golf club in the fingers, as virtually all golfers are taught to do, creates a complex mechanical system involving so many different angles, axes, and planes that for most players hitting the ball squarely is an accident, Kuykendall believed. He redesigned his golf swing based on the principles he had discovered. After a month of practice, Kuykendall told me, he shot three consecutive subpar rounds. The next day he started a company, which today is called Natural Golf.

Overthrowing the modern golf swing is a major undertaking. Kuykendall peddled his system for several years without much success. Then, one day, after a clinic in Florida, Kuykendall was approached by a Canadian pro named Mark Evershed. “Mark came up to me and said, ‘You’re talking about Moe Norman.’ I still remember my reaction. I said, ‘What’s a Moe Norman?'” Evershed sent Kuykendall a videotape of Norman’s swing, and Kuykendall was flabbergasted. Point by point Norman’s swing matched the one he had devised.

“Scientifically, what Moe does is perfect,” Kuykendall says. “It’s what we call an ideal mechanically advantaged golf swing. It is maximum force with least effort. It’s as perfect as a human being can do. Incidentally, the second best is Lee Trevino’s. Most peo- ple think of his mechanics as unorthodox, but that’s only becau- se it’s not what they’re used to seeing.

“But Lee Trevino and Moe Norman are very, very close in their swings. If Trevino moved his right hand under the club a little more, he and Moe Norman would be identical. The closest on tour right now would be Paul Azinger. He has a single-axis right- hand grip, like Moe’s, but he also has something that hurts him– a super-strong left-hand grip. Moe’s left-hand grip is about as weak as you can make it. Azinger, because of his strong left hand, has to block the ball by spinning his hips to get the clubfa- ce square at impact, to keep his left hand from shutting the club- face down. If he moved his left hand to neutral and stopped spin- ning his hips, he would be almost unbeatable. He would be Moe Norman.”

Kuykendall set out to get in touch with Norman, but had no luck for two years. Norman seldom talks to people he doesn’t know. Kuykendall persevered, though, and eventually Norman agreed to meet him in Florida, where Norman was spending the winter.

“I spent an hour going through the science with Moe,” Kuykendall says. “When I finished, Moe stood up and pulled some film out of his pocket and threw it on the table. He said, ‘Here, take this. You can help someone with it.’ It was some old black-and-white pictures, from 1966, of what he called his best swing ever. He said, ‘All my life I’ve wondered why I can do what I can do with a golf club. And you are the first person who ever explained it to me.'”

Meeting Kuykendall was a major turning point for Norman. Natural Golf pays Norman a modest fee for the use of his name and image, and he and Kuykendall conduct several dozen clinics a year. Their alliance led to an article in the Wall Street Journal last year, and the article caught the attention of Wally Uihlein, who is the president of Titleist and Foot-Joy Worldwide. Uihlein got in touch with Kuykendall and Gus Maue, and arranged to meet Norman at the 1995 PGA Merchandise Show.

“Mr. Uihlein told Moe that Titleist would like to shoot a video,” Kuykendall told me, “so that his swing would never be lost. The Titleist booth had one of those big blocks of video monitors, and Moe said, ‘Can I be on there next year? Can I be on there next year?’ And Mr. Uihlein said he could.”

Uihlein then told Norman that Titleist would like to pay him $5,000 a month for the rest of his life.

“Moe looked kind of funny,” Kuykendall says. “He took a step backward and said, ‘I’ve played your balls all my life. I’ve played your balls all my life. What do I have to do for that money?’ And Mr. Uihlein said, ‘You don’t have to do anything. You’ve already done it. We just want to thank you for what you’ve already done.’

“Mr. Uihlein said that Moe was in the same league as Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones and that he deserved the same kind of respect. Moe didn’t say anything. He just went kind of limp, and he al- most went into shock. I thought he was going to pass out. By that time, the hair was standing up on my arms, and all of us who were there were about to cry. Moe and I had to go do a clinic right after that, and in the car on the way there, Moe said, ‘Jack, I don’t know if I can hit the ball.'”

The Titleist stipend has made a huge difference in Norman’s life. He still lives in the same motel room, eats all his meals in inex- pensive restaurants and keeps his clothes in the back seat of his car. But he doesn’t have to worry about money anymore. Eight years ago, Norman told Gus Maue that he was worried he’d ne- ver be able to afford to get back to Florida, saying, with deep sorrow, “My days are through.” Today, he can go anywhere he wants.

Even more important, Norman has finally received the kind of recognition that throughout his playing career he felt he was de- nied. He sometimes grumbles that his induction to the hall of fame came 20 years too late, but he is nonetheless pleased to be there. Recently, he has even begun to talk about returning to competitive golf, perhaps by playing some events on the U.S. se- nior tour.

Although the hall of fame induction was a great honor, most pe- ople who hear Norman’s story end up feeling that a huge oppor- tunity was missed. If circumstances had been different–if he’d had a sponsor, if he’d had a mentor, if other players had been kin- der, if he had worked harder on his putting–could he have domi- nated the PGA Tour?

The more I think about it, though, the more I think the question misses the point. The most striking fact about Norman’s compe- titive record is not that it falls short of Hogan’s or Nelson’s or an- yone else’s but that it exists at all, especially if Norman is dis- abled in anything like the way people who know him speculate that he may be.

Norman overcame gargantuan obstacles as a young man and then went public with a golf swing that provoked titters. He set out to learn how to hit a golf ball, and he worked at it until he could do it better than anyone else–maybe better than anyone else who ever lived. His succeeding required skill and courage and self-assurance on an almost inconceivable scale.

My first encounter with the great Moe Norman

by John Hamarik

It all began during a 1980 collegiate golf tournament in Columbus, Georgia. I was paired with Paul Azinger, a good friend of mine from Florida State. During a twenty minute wait on an unfair 225 yard, into the wind, uphill par three, a shot that none of us was looking forward to playing, Paul started telling me some stories about a little Canadian guy who he claimed to have met in Florida the past Summer. Paul began describing this somebody as the best shotmaker he has ever seen. When I asked Azinger what this guy’s name was? He replied, “Moe Norman”. Hell, I had never heard of a Moe Norman before. Who was this mysterious golfer? Could he just be fictitious character, created by golfers and passed along the line ’til Paul Azinger advanced some of these most unrealistic stories my way? I knew about Hogan. I have seen him on video and read that he was the best in the business as far as hitting shots and hard work on his game, but to hear what Paul was saying about this short, stocky Norman character was beyond belief. He revealed how Moe had played in tournaments and had hit every green. I told Paul, “I think you are a victim of an overzealous storyteller. No human can hit every green in a tournament, not even the great Hogan.” Paul assured me that he had personally witnessed this man hit balls straighter than anyone he has ever seen and had actually played a couple rounds of golf with him. I just smiled and said, “Sure Paul, where did this guy come from, another planet?” Azinger just laughed and said, “Hammer, one of these days you’re going to meet Moe.”

Four years later while I was playing in the 1984 Canadian Open at Glen Abby near Toronto, it happened. I made the two-day cut and was especially excited about playing on the weekend in such a big tournament with so many great players. Saturday’s round was even better. I shot a 70 under some pretty intense windy conditions and passed up a ton of players. After my round, I was totally unaware that I was about to experience something that I never imagined possible.

First though, I had a great lunch in the men’s grill room and I do mean a GREAT lunch. The Canadian open is famous for providing the pros with excellent food. Carved prime rib and steamed vegetables was a normal lunch at Glen Abby. Yea, I know what you’re thinking; “wow, those Tour Pros are spoiled!” And I have to tell you, yes we are and I enjoyed every minute of it. Ok, let me get back to the story.

My next stop after lunch was the putting green. I spent about thirty minutes working on five footers and after feeling comfortable with the short stroke, I yelled to my caddy Speedway, who was resting on my bag, “Hey, lets go to the range and work on the long iron and the driver!” A few minutes later, I was looking at a hundred brand new Titleist Tour 100 compression balls to hit on Glen Abby’s range. Yea, I know what you’re thinking, “I wouldn’t hit a new Titleist on a par three over water and you Tour guys use them as range balls?????” I thought I told you that the Pros were spoiled! Anyway, I started hitting a few seven irons, just trying to get the “feel” after spending a couple hours having lunch, BS-ing with the players and putting. I felt pretty good about my swing and asked Speedway for the knife. (That’s a one iron for Tour Pros). I was just getting ready to hit my first shot with the toughest iron to hit in any one’s bag when I heard a voice say, “Hey, there’s Moe Norman!” I turned around and be- gan looking into the gallery just outside the ropes. Was I about to meet the most exceptional golfer in the world? My heart began to pump harder and my palms began to sweat. Where is this guy?

I walked away from the practice tee, leaving my caddy wondering what I was doing and began to approach the spectators standing behind the brightly colored gold ropes that allow the pros some sense of freedom from the sometimes rowdy and auto- graph seeking fans. After glancing past a couple hundred specta- tors, I spotted Moe standing twenty feet from me. Excitedly, I walked to the rope, stuck out my hand and said, “Excuse me, but you’re Moe Norman, aren’t you?” Then in a split second, a very fast voice answered, “Yes I am, Yes I am.” I then asked Moe if he would hit a few golf balls so I could witness his incredible ball striking ability. His answer was a very disappointing “No, No, No, I can’t. Canadian PGA Officials won’t like me hitting balls on the range!”

I was discouraged but did not give up as I procee- ded to reach into my pocket and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and asked again. The answer was the same, No! Finally, I begged Moe to please hit some shots for me. I said, “Moe, I heard that you are the best ever!” He cracked a smile and said, “Yes I am, me, Hogan and George Knudson!” (George Knudson was a very successful Canadian pro who had some wonderful tournaments in the United States).

Finally, Moe agreed to climb under the ropes and headed toward my golf bag. I immediately grabbed my camera and told Moe to loosen up with a mid iron. I remember him grabbing my Titleist Tour Blade five iron and what I saw next was the most amazing display of shots I had ever seen. He hit fifteen shots and not one of them was off line. Same trajectory and dead straight. Every single shot. Moe did not even have golf shoes on, he was wearing street shoes. His balance and position at impact were beyond words. His wide stance and unorthodox set-up was a bit unusual, but the ball came off the clubface exactly the same way every time. After the iron shots, Moe grabbed my driver, felt it and put it back into my bag. He obviously did not like the feel of my metal wood. So I told him to try my good friend Jim Kane’s persimmon driver. He looked at it, took a few waggles and pro- ceeded to point to a sand trap about 235 yards in the middle of the range. Moe hit eighteen out of twenty into the bunker. Not even a machine could do that. I knew that I was witnessing the absolute best shotmaker that I have ever seen.

Moe was so im- pressive that the entire range stopped practicing, O’Meara, Fuzzy, Greg Norman, and every one else who was working on his game stood in amazement shaking their heads watching Moe hit every drive into the bunker on a fly. It was so magical wat- ching him swing that I was waiting for Rod Serling to approach me and say, “John you have just entered the Twilight Zone.” Our meeting ended when Moe handed me the driver, let out a smile as I shook his hand and thanked him for allowing us to watch him practice. I now knew that the stories Paul Azinger told me in college were real. Moe Norman exceeded every expectation that I had. I will never forget that Saturday afternoon at Glen Abby.