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 One

Sam Snead played an exhibition match with Ed (Porky) Oliver and Moe Norman in Toronto in 1969. On one par-4 hole, a creek crossed the fairway about 240 yards from the tee. Norman, a Canadian pro who lived in the area, reached for his driver.

"This is a lay-up hole, Moe," Snead warned him. "You can't clear the creek with a driver." "Not trying to," Norman said. "I'm playing for the bridge." Snead's and Oliver's tee shots ended up safely on the near side of the water. Norman's drive landed short and rolled over the bridge to the other side.

Every golfer hits a lucky shot from time to time. But Norman, who recently turned 66, has hit so many lucky shots during the last half-century that you begin to search for a different adjective.

Consider Norman's experience during a practice round before the 1971 Canadian Open. A week earlier, at the Quebec Open, he had come to the final hole with a one-stroke lead, but had four-putted the final green to finish second. (His playing partner, Gary Slatter, explained later that Norman putted poorly on the hole because he was upset that the crowd had not applauded him for being the only player that day to reach that green in two.) "Any four-putts today?" a reporter asked Norman as he came to the tee of a 233-yard par 3. Norman teed up a ball in silence and hit it straight at the pin. He watched the ball's flight a moment, then turned to the reporter and said, "Not putting today." The ball landed on the front of the green and rolled into the cup.

Norman is mostly unknown to American golf fans, but he has long been a nearly mythical figure among tour professionals. Paul Azinger first saw him hit balls on a driving range in Florida 15 years ago when Azinger was a college player.

"He started ripping these drivers right off the ground at the 250-yard marker, and he never hit one more than 10 yards to either side of it, and he hit at least 50," Azinger told Tim O'Connor, a Canadian writer whose forthcoming biography of Norman, A Feeling of Greatness, is excerpted in the December issue of Golf Digest. "It was an incredible sight. When he hit irons, he was calling how many times you would see it bounce after he hit it--sometimes before he hit it--and he'd do it. It was unbelievable," said Azinger.

He likes bright colors and enjoys mixing stripes and plaids. His teeth would give an orthodontist pause. A huge proportion of his daily caloric intake is in the form of Coca-Cola. His voice is high; he speaks rapidly and often repeats himself, especially when he's nervous. But Iron Byron doesn't have much star quality, either. Professional golfers' high regard for Norman has always been based primarily on his phenomenal ball striking. Lee Trevino ranks Norman with the game's very best, including Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson.

Ken Venturi agrees: "Because Moe is kind of eccentric, he never got the credit he deserved or played the kind of golf he was capable of. You had to ignore the way he looked over the ball and judge his ball striking. Hogan, Snead, Nelson--they all look esthetic. Moe looked very awkward. But he could do anything. He is one of the premier ball-strikers I have ever seen. Hell, I'd give Moe three strokes a side just to watch him hit the golf ball."

In his heyday, Norman translated his ball-striking genius into an impressive competitive record. In the late '50s, he won dozens of amateur tournaments in Canada, including the Canadian Amateur two years in a row. His best year as a pro was 1966, when he won five of the 12 Canadian tournaments he entered, came in second in five, finished no lower than fifth, and won the CPGA scoring-average title by 2 1/2 strokes, with 69.8.

Beginning in 1979, when Norman turned 50, he won seven consecutive Canadian PGA senior championships, finished second in the eighth, and won the ninth by eight strokes. He has set more than 30 course records, including three with scores of 59 and four with scores of 61. (He shot his most recent 59 four years ago, at the age of 62.) Last August, the Royal Canadian Golf Association inducted him into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.

These are considerable accomplishments. Still, there are conspicuous gaps in Norman's record. He played almost exclusively in Canada and made only a brief attempt, in 1959, to play on the U.S. tour. If Norman is one of the greatest ball-strikers in history, why doesn't he also have one of the greatest records?

The reasons are complex. One of them, paradoxically, has to do with the very foundation of his game: his golf swing. Simply put, Moe Norman's swing doesn't look like the ones you see on TV. He grips the club in his palms rather than his fingers, stands far from the ball with his legs spread wide; he soles the club as much as a foot behind the ball, squeezes the grip almost unbelievably hard with his left hand, takes the club back scarcely past the level of his right shoulder, makes only a moderate shoulder turn and virtually no hip turn, and finishes with the club pointing up at the sky. 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 eccentric, 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 serious 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 conspicuous 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 repossessed. 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 efforts 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 winters in Florida, where he plays at a golf club owned by the Canadian PGA.) In 1987, the Maues conducted a golf tournament at Foxwood, which raised $25,000 for Norman and put him back on his feet.

For Audrey Maue, the key to understanding Norman came several 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 different, 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."

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