“‘Golf is like a walk in the park, a walk in the park’… He repeated himself,” adds O’Connor, describing Norman’s way of speaking. “He had a kind of lilting melody in his voice and his eyes were all over the place.”
But, like Babbitt, Norman’s unusual personality was matched by a dash of genius – such fine golf skills earned him the self-proclaimed title of ‘the greatest ball striker that ever lived’.
At a time when golfing legends like Ben Hogan, Gary Player and Lee Trevino regularly won major titles, Norman appeared in the Masters only twice, but his accuracy still drew the respect of many of his fellow players and earned him cult status.
His signature “single plane swing” – which he created, practiced and perfected himself and which current players such as US Open winner Bryson DeChambeau have now adopted elements – Norman was able to repeatedly hit the same spot on the fairway or green with unfailing regularity.
Nevertheless, the Canadian is not a household name.
Whether it was shyness around newcomers, his “eccentric” personality, or the fact that he never enjoyed the same success on the PGA Tour as his contemporaries, those who knew him often said Norman just didn’t fit in.
“We live in this culture where we celebrate celebrities and those who have performed at the highest level. Moe didn’t,” O’Connor — author of “The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story” — told DailyExpertNews Sport. “Moe was just this lovely character. He was a very complicated person.
“And I think if Moe had come around in the last 20 years, maybe we would have embraced his eccentricities and he could have flourished a little bit more.”
Different from the start
Born in 1929 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, Norman loved to spend his days with friends or playing hockey as a child. However, once he discovered golf, his life began to change, but at a price, O’Connor says.
As Norman’s interest in golf blossomed, fueled by regularly playing caddy at a local club, his working-class family wondered why he chose a sport often associated with the more elite members of society.
Despite Norman’s ever-increasing passion for the game, his family “totally rejected it,” leading Norman to ignore their support when they came to see him years later, O’Connor said.
“His family was against this thing he loved,” O’Connor explained. “And it really caused the schism in the family and really total alienation.”
During his late teens and early twenties, Norman devoted himself to perfecting his single plane swing so that he could routinely hit the ball wherever he wanted with remarkable accuracy.
The “single plane swing” was Norman’s attempt to improve shot efficiency and remove the number of variables involved. Norman focused on the ball, making sure to maintain the position of the club’s shaft at impact, and he did this by using a wide stance, extended stance and aligned hands. It was a swing that synchronized the movements of the hips, shoulders, arms and hands.
His dedication to perfecting his swing was so great. There are stories that Norman spent so much time on the practice track that by the time he left, his palms were bloody from the repetition of his practice.
Later in his career, Norman would conduct clinics for fans, demonstrating his accuracy. He would even attract the attention of fellow professionals, that was his precision.
But for Norman, winning tournaments was not the ultimate goal. The process of hitting the ball was more “spiritual” to him – something he described to O’Connor as the “sense of grandeur.”
Professional Todd Graves spent a year trying to learn Norman’s swing from a videotape given to him by a friend; but he says his first experience of seeing the Canadian balls hitting up close still blew him away.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do what Moe could do with a golf ball, in terms of the consistency of flight, the windows he would hit the golf ball, and with such simplicity,” Graves — co-founder of Graves Golf Academy — told DailyExpertNews Sport.
‘Very weird’
Norman only really relies on his best friends and can seem “very strange” if you don’t know him, according to O’Connor, who recounts how the golfer once ran from a restaurant halfway through an interview — for Norman’s own book — just to avoid the inconvenience. to alleviate that he experienced around a particular question.
Given these personality traits, O’Connor says some people have subsequently hypothesized that Norman may have been on the autism spectrum.
Included on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of symptoms for autism are avoiding eye contact and wanting to be alone, repeating or repeating words or phrases, or “repeating words or phrases instead of normal language,” and being unable to relate to others or “have no interest in other people at all”. Any of these symptoms could, in retrospect, apply to Norman.
However, in researching his book, O’Connor discovered another possible theory to explain Norman’s personality traits.
When Norman was about five years old, he was sledding with a friend, and when they slid down a road, O’Connor said he was hit in the forehead by the tire of a reversing car.
Because there were no broken bones, his family did not take him to the hospital, and the neuroscientists O’Connor interviewed theorized that Norman’s different personality could be due to a brain injury in the frontal lobe.
“He knew what was important in life. He just wasn’t able to express it in a way that a lot of people would. He wasn’t joking at all. And he just lived in this very limited golf area and came across as a strange character to a lot of people,” said O’Connor.
Feel at home
On a golf course, however, Norman was in his element.
O’Connor recalls stories of Norman talking easily to spectators during rounds and even taking bets from spectators as to whether he could bounce a ball off his driver more than 100 times or slam a ball into their shirt pockets.
Graves, who is also the executive producer of an upcoming documentary about Norman, recalls talking to Henry Brunton, a former PGA or Canada professional, about the change in Norman’s behavior on and off the track.
While Brunton describes Norman as “extremely confident” with a bat in hand, he was “like a 12-year-old boy” when confronted alone with his fellow players in the clubhouse.
“He was intimidated. He didn’t understand how to behave around other players. He was so intimidated by his colleagues,” Brunton told Graves.
Although he enjoyed much success in his native Canada, Norman struggled on the bigger stage of the US PGA Tour.
While racking up more than 60 wins on the Canadian Tour, Norman played in 27 events on the PGA Tour over 15 years, finishing in the top 10 just once, earning just $7,139.
He also played in five Senior PGA Tour events, earning $22,900 in prize money.
He appeared in the four majors only twice and played in the Masters in 1956 and 1957.
According to Graves, it was difficult for Norman to adjust to life on the road in a new country and without the fame of his support system.
He also had to endure at least one alleged bullying incident by unnamed fellow professionals. In just his sophomore year on the Tour, he was cornered by two players in the middle of a tournament – in which Norman clashed – and told: “You have to stop hanging out, get a caddy, stop hitting the big tees. O’Connor said.
The PGA of America — which led the tour before the modern PGA Tour was founded in 1968 — did not respond to DailyExpertNews’s request for comment.
“That led to Moe feeling for a lifetime that he didn’t belong and that he wasn’t welcome there,” added O’Connor. “Because he just felt like they didn’t like him. And if Moe felt like people were into him, or that they were here and he was here or if he felt belittled by you, he’d write you off. “
In later life, money was also an issue for Norman. According to Golf Digest in 1995, the golfer lived in a $400 a month motel room and kept his clothes in his car. Later in life, golf manufacturer Titleist paid Norman $5,000 a month for the rest of his life for his service to the sport.
Just a few years later, in 2004, Moe Norman died at the age of 75. And while he didn’t achieve the tournament-winning success that his contemporaries enjoyed, the legacy of this true golf pioneer and self-proclaimed “best ball striker that ever lived” should not be forgotten.