tories of
what Moe
Norman could
do with his golf
clubs are legion.
In demonstrations
he would hit
balls off of asphalt with a driver with contact
so clean he wouldn’t nick the soleplate of
his club. He hit 800 balls a day for 40 years
but on the golf course never took a single
practice swing. The best pros in the game
would drop what they were doing when
Norman arrived at the practice range, en-
tranced by his ability to hit perfect shot
after perfect shot. Vijay Singh called him
the best ball-striker ever, while Tiger Woods
declared that only two men – Moe Norman
and Ben Hogan – “truly owned their swings.”
What Moe Norman couldn’t handle was
life apart from golf. He talked funny, using
repetitive phrasing that made listeners
think him a weirdo, and dressed oddly for
a professional golfer. He was so insecure
that after he won the Canadian Amateur in
1955 he hid in bulrushes along a river rather
than go inside and give the traditional win-
ner’s address. That win got him invited to
the 1956 Masters, where Norman alarmed
members by hitting full shots off the prac-
tice putting green – without leaving divots –
and trying to carry his own clubs because
The legend that was Moe Norman
he didn’t have money for a caddie.
“Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe
Norman, Golf’s Mysterious Genius,” (ECS
Press, $19.95) by Lorne Rubenstein, is
both an affectionate account of his long
history with Norman, whom he had met as
a teenager, and an earnest attempt to
explain this man who was a square ball in
a sport that only wants them perfectly
round. Rubenstein is a onetime profes-
sional caddie, accomplished amateur
player, longtime golf writer for Toronto’s
Globe and Mail
and author of 11 books,
but one other bit of background best
prepared him to search for the real Moe
Norman. He has a master’s degree in
psychology, which makes “Moe & Me” a
golf bio on one hand, but also a serious
exploration of what made Moe Norman
the “mysterious genius” of his subtitle.
Was it a childhood accident that left
Norman brain-damaged? Was he autistic?
Or was the problem not always Norman’s
behavior but the way others in the golf
world perceived him? Rubenstein said he
has for four decades attempted to “chase
the truth of the man.”
It was not an easy pursuit. As magical as
Norman was with a ball and club he could
not abide the public side of golf. He
would charm and amaze audiences while
pounding shots on the range but on the
course he hated being watched between
shots, hated feeling rejected for being
different, hated feeling laughed at for the
way he dressed or talked. So great was his
talent that one year he won 17 of 21
amateur tournaments in Canada, yet only
briefly played on the PGA Tour because he
never felt accepted.
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