Teddy Ballgame
08-08-2005, 12:02 AM
LAST SEPTEMBER, on the fourth day of the month, the world's greatest golfer tee to green, Moe Norman, died at the age of 75. Since he was a Canadian and a legend and I even got to meet him, I posted this tribute in another forum at the time.
I'm posting it here for those who might otherwise have no clue about this great golfer.
- KITCHENER'S MOE NORMAN, who died yesterday of heart failure at 75, was in the words of Lee Trevino (and just about everyone else who saw him play golf), "a genius when it comes to playing the game of golf." Norman was called "Pipeline Moe" because almost every ball he hit from the tee - or, when he was goofing around - from eight inch tees, wooden tee markers, even coke bottles - went straight as an arrow as if guided by a 280 yard pipeline only a few feet wide. At the bottom of this piece of mine I have included a fine column by the Sun's Ken Fidlin about how even two years ago at 73, just before his first heart attack, Norman would appear at the Canadian Open and wow everyone incluidng the top pros by hitting a series of 280 yard drives and another series of irons that would land within inches of each other out on the range. (If you don't know golf, read the Fidlin column and then come back and read this.)
- Moe Norman might be termed a golf savant, almost a Rainman of the game. He was an eccentric personality with bad teeth, unmatched clothing, painfully shy and self conscious, sometimes living out of his car because he had no money to live anywhere else, and totally unsuited for the life of a touring pro in the PGA which was why he lasted only a few months in the US and then came home never to play the PGA tour again (even so, he had a fourth place finish in one of his few PGA tournaments). He never had a date, never owned a home, had only a few friends and they were golfers, didn't speak to his family for almost fifty years until a reunion about three years ago, never really cared for or was able to do anything except golf.
- But boy could he play golf! The lowest 18 hole scores ever shot are 59s. Moe had four 59s. He also had 17 holes in one, 33 course records, and 13 Canadian Tour victories and was seven times the Canadian PGA Seniors champion.
- Pipeline Moe's only weaknesses were his nerves and his putting. He often didn't even bother to read putts and would just walk up and strike the putt without setting himself. But from tee to green, he was the greatest striker of the ball of all time and this opinion is shared by almost every famous pro who ever saw him swing. There is a video of the perect golf swing featuring, naturally, Moe Norman.
- I had the privelege of meeting Moe by accident one August day in 1994 outside a gas station and coffee bar in Burlington. My mother in law lived near the Lasalle Park and Marina and was ill at the time so we spent the summer with our boat (which I sold, reluctantly, a couple of months ago) anchored in Burlington Bay near her place and about 100 yards from Tim Horton's then owner and now Wendy's largest share holder Ron Joyce's mansion down on the water. Most mornings, I would walk up the hill to the PetroCan gas and coffee bar for the Globe and a coffee.
- One morning I saw Ron Joyce standing outside the PetroCan speaking animatedly with a scruffy looking older chap holding an extra large cup of coffee. Inside the station in the line up, I asked Joyce when he came in to pay for his gas if that was the legendary Moe Norman. Joyce replied that it was and said that Moe was so damned frustrating because he was trying to get Moe to give a golf clinic for a day to Horton's executives and Norman didn't seem to show any interest whatsoever so he finally ended their awkward chat.
- Undeterred, I got my paper and coffee and went outside to see if I could get Moe to talk. It helped, I'm sure, that while Joyce was wearing a high end Italian suit, I was dressed in casual summer golf shirt and slacks. Anyway, I was one of the few who was able to get Moe Norman to open up to a stranger and we had a fascinating discussion about golf for probably half an hour before he had to leave to visit his golf friend, the great amateur Nick Westlock who lived in the area which was why Moe was there.
- Having played with them all up to and including Nicklaus, I asked Norman to name his greatest golfers. He told me that the top three were Snead, Nicklaus and Hogan; Snead as the best and the greatest natural golfer of all time, Hogan for his work ethic and nerves of steel and short game, and Nicklaus for his all around game.
- I asked Moe what he was up to these days and he said that he lived in the same motel near Kitchener that he'd been staying at for over twenty years except for the winter months when he went to Florida, and that he was able to make a little money and enjoy himself playing at the clubs in Ontario and in Florida and that he would sometimes give golf clinics for $1000 a day. Still, it was clear that the aging legend was not as flush as he had been in his prime. Instead of the customary new cadillac, Moe was driving a new Chevrolet and just had an air of falling on tougher times.
- At one point, he joked with me that the end of this month was special because he would be receiving the first thing he ever received from the #&*#@ government, his first old age pension cheque. And he said he also had plans to make a golf video with Canada's other golf legend, George Knudson. (This didn't happen and Knudson died with lung cancer not too long after that.)
- Anyhow, I wished him luck and we went on our separate ways, with me hoping that Moe would not wind up in golf as he had started, by sleeping on park benches and in his car. And the fates were kind when a little over a year later Wally Uihlein, President of Titleist, decided that his company would pay Moe Norman $5,000 a month US for the rest of Moe's life just for being Moe Norman, the greatest striker of the ball that golf has ever seen. Not for making ads or making speeches or wearing titleist products but for being a legend who deserved in his senior years to live with comfort and dignity. Moe, of course, didn't let this windfall change him very much. He still lived in one room in motels in Kitchener and Florida but now he drove a new cadillac every year as he had done in his prime years.
- RIP, PIPELINE MOE and may you long enjoy matches with Slammin Sammy and with Hogan up there at the Pearly Gates Golf and Country Club.
One Moe time
Still The Man, Norman continues to wow 'em like no one else
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
MARKHAM -- He wandered the driving range for a couple of hours, kibitzing, watching, coaching, drinking it all in, dozens of pairs of eyes following him everywhere he went.
"Hey Moe ... hit some balls," came the call from the gallery, more than once.
Moe Norman would just smile that crooked, self-conscious smile of his.
"Oh, no," he responded each time. "Oh God, no. I'm just a spectator."
Moe Norman is many things, including the greatest pure striker of the golf ball ever produced in this, or perhaps any, country. But a spectator? Never.
With all due respect to the touring pros assembled at Angus Glen for this week's Canadian Open, Moe Norman, even at the age of 73, is The Man.
His appearance on the range at major pro tournaments in this country is a ritual treasured by golf fans and fellow professionals alike. It is a rare chance to see the legend in action.
And when the audience has pleaded long and forcefully enough, he will borrow a set of clubs, any brand, any dimension and proceed to make the sweetest music you can imagine.
And so it was yesterday. Finally tired of just talking, Moe answered the siren call as he always does, and wandered down to the far end of the Angus Glen range. As soon as he commandeered the utensils of a young pro named Jonathan Byrd, a crowd gathered.
By this time, it should be noted, dozens of pros who will compete for the big money later this week had been hitting balls for several hours. Some of the names you even might recognize. The spectators were interested but hardly in awe. Not one of them caused the kind of buzz that Moe created when he started hitting one exquisite shot after another.
As is always the case, all business stopped in his immediate area of the range as the pros joined with the gallery to watch a virtuoso make a little magic with his distinctive, simple swing.
There were a half-dozen young players, including Canadian amateur James Lepp, paying rapt attention as they sprawled in a semi-circle around Moe's hitting position. He worked his way through a bucket of balls, hitting each shot on a string, stopping only to deliver some of his cryptic commentary after each one.
Each successive club left a collection of balls out on the range that could be covered by a blanket. He finished off by launching a succession of 280-yard drives that looked as if they came off an assembly line, then warmed down with a wedge.
EXQUISITE
Generations of professionals have been introduced to Norman's exquisite craftsmanship over the years. Once a contemporary of Ben Hogan, Kitchener native Norman has enthralled them all, from Nicklaus and Watson to the likes of Fred Couples and Davis Love and now to another audience, some of them more than 50 years his junior.
"Every swing is the same, every shot is the same," murmured one young pro, more to himself than anyone around him. "Every shot."
For a half-century or so, Moe Norman has been a golf legend, born and raised in these parts but with an entertainment and education component that has been exported to the world. When you can count among your biggest fans people who are among golf's household names, the reputation clearly is well-earned.
Only the quirks of his own eccentric personality prevented Norman from becoming one of the great professionals of his era. But then, if he was somehow different, perhaps that is what has made him the superior talent who can walk onto a Canadian Open practice range and become the immediate focus.
When he was finished his exhibition, the crowd of perhaps 60 or 70 who had clustered around applauded warmly, then began drifting away as Moe, sweat pouring off his face, smiled and then drained a whole bottle of Coke in one or two gulps.
No matter what any of those lucky folks sees on the golf course later this week, what heroic shots the eventual winner is able to pull off, we'll wager the one true lasting memory any of them will take away is of Moe Norman, a legend in his own time, hitting it as pure as anyone ever has.
I'm posting it here for those who might otherwise have no clue about this great golfer.
- KITCHENER'S MOE NORMAN, who died yesterday of heart failure at 75, was in the words of Lee Trevino (and just about everyone else who saw him play golf), "a genius when it comes to playing the game of golf." Norman was called "Pipeline Moe" because almost every ball he hit from the tee - or, when he was goofing around - from eight inch tees, wooden tee markers, even coke bottles - went straight as an arrow as if guided by a 280 yard pipeline only a few feet wide. At the bottom of this piece of mine I have included a fine column by the Sun's Ken Fidlin about how even two years ago at 73, just before his first heart attack, Norman would appear at the Canadian Open and wow everyone incluidng the top pros by hitting a series of 280 yard drives and another series of irons that would land within inches of each other out on the range. (If you don't know golf, read the Fidlin column and then come back and read this.)
- Moe Norman might be termed a golf savant, almost a Rainman of the game. He was an eccentric personality with bad teeth, unmatched clothing, painfully shy and self conscious, sometimes living out of his car because he had no money to live anywhere else, and totally unsuited for the life of a touring pro in the PGA which was why he lasted only a few months in the US and then came home never to play the PGA tour again (even so, he had a fourth place finish in one of his few PGA tournaments). He never had a date, never owned a home, had only a few friends and they were golfers, didn't speak to his family for almost fifty years until a reunion about three years ago, never really cared for or was able to do anything except golf.
- But boy could he play golf! The lowest 18 hole scores ever shot are 59s. Moe had four 59s. He also had 17 holes in one, 33 course records, and 13 Canadian Tour victories and was seven times the Canadian PGA Seniors champion.
- Pipeline Moe's only weaknesses were his nerves and his putting. He often didn't even bother to read putts and would just walk up and strike the putt without setting himself. But from tee to green, he was the greatest striker of the ball of all time and this opinion is shared by almost every famous pro who ever saw him swing. There is a video of the perect golf swing featuring, naturally, Moe Norman.
- I had the privelege of meeting Moe by accident one August day in 1994 outside a gas station and coffee bar in Burlington. My mother in law lived near the Lasalle Park and Marina and was ill at the time so we spent the summer with our boat (which I sold, reluctantly, a couple of months ago) anchored in Burlington Bay near her place and about 100 yards from Tim Horton's then owner and now Wendy's largest share holder Ron Joyce's mansion down on the water. Most mornings, I would walk up the hill to the PetroCan gas and coffee bar for the Globe and a coffee.
- One morning I saw Ron Joyce standing outside the PetroCan speaking animatedly with a scruffy looking older chap holding an extra large cup of coffee. Inside the station in the line up, I asked Joyce when he came in to pay for his gas if that was the legendary Moe Norman. Joyce replied that it was and said that Moe was so damned frustrating because he was trying to get Moe to give a golf clinic for a day to Horton's executives and Norman didn't seem to show any interest whatsoever so he finally ended their awkward chat.
- Undeterred, I got my paper and coffee and went outside to see if I could get Moe to talk. It helped, I'm sure, that while Joyce was wearing a high end Italian suit, I was dressed in casual summer golf shirt and slacks. Anyway, I was one of the few who was able to get Moe Norman to open up to a stranger and we had a fascinating discussion about golf for probably half an hour before he had to leave to visit his golf friend, the great amateur Nick Westlock who lived in the area which was why Moe was there.
- Having played with them all up to and including Nicklaus, I asked Norman to name his greatest golfers. He told me that the top three were Snead, Nicklaus and Hogan; Snead as the best and the greatest natural golfer of all time, Hogan for his work ethic and nerves of steel and short game, and Nicklaus for his all around game.
- I asked Moe what he was up to these days and he said that he lived in the same motel near Kitchener that he'd been staying at for over twenty years except for the winter months when he went to Florida, and that he was able to make a little money and enjoy himself playing at the clubs in Ontario and in Florida and that he would sometimes give golf clinics for $1000 a day. Still, it was clear that the aging legend was not as flush as he had been in his prime. Instead of the customary new cadillac, Moe was driving a new Chevrolet and just had an air of falling on tougher times.
- At one point, he joked with me that the end of this month was special because he would be receiving the first thing he ever received from the #&*#@ government, his first old age pension cheque. And he said he also had plans to make a golf video with Canada's other golf legend, George Knudson. (This didn't happen and Knudson died with lung cancer not too long after that.)
- Anyhow, I wished him luck and we went on our separate ways, with me hoping that Moe would not wind up in golf as he had started, by sleeping on park benches and in his car. And the fates were kind when a little over a year later Wally Uihlein, President of Titleist, decided that his company would pay Moe Norman $5,000 a month US for the rest of Moe's life just for being Moe Norman, the greatest striker of the ball that golf has ever seen. Not for making ads or making speeches or wearing titleist products but for being a legend who deserved in his senior years to live with comfort and dignity. Moe, of course, didn't let this windfall change him very much. He still lived in one room in motels in Kitchener and Florida but now he drove a new cadillac every year as he had done in his prime years.
- RIP, PIPELINE MOE and may you long enjoy matches with Slammin Sammy and with Hogan up there at the Pearly Gates Golf and Country Club.
One Moe time
Still The Man, Norman continues to wow 'em like no one else
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
MARKHAM -- He wandered the driving range for a couple of hours, kibitzing, watching, coaching, drinking it all in, dozens of pairs of eyes following him everywhere he went.
"Hey Moe ... hit some balls," came the call from the gallery, more than once.
Moe Norman would just smile that crooked, self-conscious smile of his.
"Oh, no," he responded each time. "Oh God, no. I'm just a spectator."
Moe Norman is many things, including the greatest pure striker of the golf ball ever produced in this, or perhaps any, country. But a spectator? Never.
With all due respect to the touring pros assembled at Angus Glen for this week's Canadian Open, Moe Norman, even at the age of 73, is The Man.
His appearance on the range at major pro tournaments in this country is a ritual treasured by golf fans and fellow professionals alike. It is a rare chance to see the legend in action.
And when the audience has pleaded long and forcefully enough, he will borrow a set of clubs, any brand, any dimension and proceed to make the sweetest music you can imagine.
And so it was yesterday. Finally tired of just talking, Moe answered the siren call as he always does, and wandered down to the far end of the Angus Glen range. As soon as he commandeered the utensils of a young pro named Jonathan Byrd, a crowd gathered.
By this time, it should be noted, dozens of pros who will compete for the big money later this week had been hitting balls for several hours. Some of the names you even might recognize. The spectators were interested but hardly in awe. Not one of them caused the kind of buzz that Moe created when he started hitting one exquisite shot after another.
As is always the case, all business stopped in his immediate area of the range as the pros joined with the gallery to watch a virtuoso make a little magic with his distinctive, simple swing.
There were a half-dozen young players, including Canadian amateur James Lepp, paying rapt attention as they sprawled in a semi-circle around Moe's hitting position. He worked his way through a bucket of balls, hitting each shot on a string, stopping only to deliver some of his cryptic commentary after each one.
Each successive club left a collection of balls out on the range that could be covered by a blanket. He finished off by launching a succession of 280-yard drives that looked as if they came off an assembly line, then warmed down with a wedge.
EXQUISITE
Generations of professionals have been introduced to Norman's exquisite craftsmanship over the years. Once a contemporary of Ben Hogan, Kitchener native Norman has enthralled them all, from Nicklaus and Watson to the likes of Fred Couples and Davis Love and now to another audience, some of them more than 50 years his junior.
"Every swing is the same, every shot is the same," murmured one young pro, more to himself than anyone around him. "Every shot."
For a half-century or so, Moe Norman has been a golf legend, born and raised in these parts but with an entertainment and education component that has been exported to the world. When you can count among your biggest fans people who are among golf's household names, the reputation clearly is well-earned.
Only the quirks of his own eccentric personality prevented Norman from becoming one of the great professionals of his era. But then, if he was somehow different, perhaps that is what has made him the superior talent who can walk onto a Canadian Open practice range and become the immediate focus.
When he was finished his exhibition, the crowd of perhaps 60 or 70 who had clustered around applauded warmly, then began drifting away as Moe, sweat pouring off his face, smiled and then drained a whole bottle of Coke in one or two gulps.
No matter what any of those lucky folks sees on the golf course later this week, what heroic shots the eventual winner is able to pull off, we'll wager the one true lasting memory any of them will take away is of Moe Norman, a legend in his own time, hitting it as pure as anyone ever has.