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National Catholic Reporter, May 24, 1996 by Colman McCarthy

Enough time has passed since Greg Norman fizzled to a 78 in the final round of the Masters Tournament for it to be realized that this Australian golfer deserves a place in the highest ranks of athletic heroes. He understands that defeat is what someone else hands you, failure is what you do to yourself.

Norman's going from a seemingly sure thing lead of 6 strokes to finishing 5 behind evoked a national gasp, as if we were watching the invincible Titanic going down. It was, in fact, a water hole -- the 16th at Augusta -- where Norman sank himself with an oceanic flub: a hooked midiron into the pond. After winner Nick Faldo holed his last putt, Norman revealed the extra reserves of his character. He accepted the embrace of the man who had just trounced him. He walked arm in arm off the green with him. Then he went to the press room to face the media, the music and himself and to give a 20-minute apologia why this had not been the Norman Conquest. There was no sulking off to the parking lot, no turning over the water coolers in the locker room. In the week following Augusta, Norman could have holed up in self-absorbed misery and given the world a "no comment." Instead, he went to the next tournament and answered all the questions from all the askers.

What other athletes have lately risen to this kind of gallantry? On NBA basketball courts, soreheads hit refs and throw tantrums. NASCAR drivers punch out each other after races because of some imagined sideswipe on the far turn. Baseball pitchers throw at the heads of batters they don't like. And hockey players? They're as dirty fighters as ever.

Fans who keep pulling on the bridle of this runaway brutishness have responded appreciatively to Norman's winsome way of facing defeat. He has been awash in phone calls, telegrams and letters an outpouring of support far different from the gush of ephemeral applause had he won. Fellow pros, who know the fragility of success and the pain of falling from it, have told Norman that the game is better for his post-Augusta greatness.

All this has brought on a conversion. "I can honestly tell you that it's changed my total outlook on life and on people," Norman told The New York Times several days after Augusta. "I've admitted in the past how cynical I'd become. There's no need for me to be cynical anymore. .. It's extraordinary how I reached out and touched people by losing."

Games -- golf and all sports are no more than that -- are mirrors of life, reflecting what should be fundamental to living well, regardless of the score. Bobby Jones, who fathered the Masters and who wrote essays as pure as his putting stroke, described the travail: "The trouble with all of us, who grumble over the game and thus spoil an otherwise pleasant afternoon with congenial friends, is that we do not understand the game, nor ourselves."

This may be the zone into which Norman has been delivered. Self-understanding is the most elusive form of enlightenment, since it involves an unmasking. Individualistic games like golf offer the best opportunity for a stripping of the public self, and do so painlessly. It wasn't as if Norman endured any real suffering at Augusta. He didn't lose a loved one or a job. He rode out of Magnolia Lane that Sunday evening to his private jet richer by $270,000, earning more in four days than a clubhouse dishwasher will make in a lifetime.

Professional sports are theater; athletes are actors. A few are able to rise to a role that transcends the trivia of scores. In "The Troubled Dream of Life," ethicist Daniel Callahan writes that people "who manage the course of life most effectively are the ones who both savor the benefits of the different stages of life and accept their accompanying burdens with good cheer. They have an optimal self, but it is not one dependent for its sustenance upon their external circumstances. It is instead a self of their own making, fashioned from the ingredient of their enduring values and ideals."

That's what Augusta was for Greg Norman and why he reached the heights of public favor. His optimal self -- not his birdie-making self -- took over. His blowing the tournament wasn't a fall from grace, it was a finding of grace.