by David Owen. Originally published as a 20 page cover story in Golf Digest of 1995, believed to be the longest article the magazine devoted to a single player.

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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 invited. 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 played. 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 competitor who was marking his ball.

Norman also supported himself by selling the prizes he won in amateur events. As his confidence in his playing ability increased, 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 frivolous 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 national 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, played 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 bottles. 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."

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