Greg Norman has been the best golfer in the world for almost a decade. He is an electrifying performer - as ruthless on the golf course as he is in the boardroom - and a magnetic personality, yet his career record is rather less than the sum of these parts. Famous victories, such as the 1986 and 1993 Opens, are interspersed with inexplicable failings and outrageous strokes of misfortune, most notoriously at Augusta, where he lost a six-stroke lead to Nick Faldo in the 1996 Masters.
Norman's bold, do-or-die approach to the game is the key to his popularity as well as his phenomenal financial success. He lives at 100 mph, scuba-diving with sharks, racing Ferraris with Nigel Mansell, taking joy-rides in F-16 jets. In between he plays golf with Bill Clinton and negotiates multi-million-dollar deals, then he flies in to tournaments by helicopter and wins by five or ten strokes.
In charting Norman's tempestuous career, Lauren St John has journeyed from his roots in Queensland to Great White Shark Enterprises on the other side of the world in West Palm Beach, Florida, interviewing his wife, his caddies, coaches, managers, friends and foes, and of course, Greg Norman himself. The result is a comprehensive and dramatic portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic golfers ever.
