Media Buffet: How Nervous Was Greg Norman? 'Shark' Falls Short in Telling Us
Like most installments of ESPN’s 30-for-30 series over the years, the network’s documentary on Greg Norman ("Shark" premiered last week) is a pretty movie built thematically on the usual allotment of sharp turns and rough edges. And as all passionate golf fans are fully aware, no player dealt with changes in direction and steep falls more famously than Norman, whose collection of major-championship failures is the reason co-directors Jason Hehir and Thomas Odelfelt made the film in the first place.
Pun intended. Almost required.
More than any golfer in the game’s history, the Shark turned losing into an industry. He became the most popular and dynamic performer of his era, a charismatic maverick owing more to style than substance. When he blew that six-shot lead in the final round of the 1996 Masters, losing to Nick Faldo by five, Norman emerged from the wreckage with the presence of a conquering hero, his Q rating still heading north.
Arnold Palmer squandered many a Big One, as did Phil Mickelson for a while, but neither totes a legacy nearly as tarnished as the one nailed to Norman — although Philly Mick’s recent “obnoxious greed” tirade at the PGA Tour has forced the jury of public perception to reconvene. Hehir and Odelfelt tell viewers about Norman’s 331 total weeks atop the Official World Golf ranking. The 89 victories worldwide. The lavish business portfolio.
They even got the Shark to return to Augusta National GC for a round of golf, 25 years after his most tragic competitive collapse. Norman says it was an honor to receive the invitation, and if a lot of the on-site footage in the documentary is flashier than it is effective, the two men did a reasonable job of portraying a guy whose darkest hours remain more definitive than all those days of sunshine.
As television-friendly narratives go, however, this 30-for-30 presentation wasn’t constructed for the aforementioned golf nuts. It’s a mainstream-oriented program designed for prime-time air on the world’s largest sports network — hardly a must-watch for folks who witnessed Norman’s meltdowns on the same afternoons they occurred. It’s nicely done, but it it insightful? Some eyeballs adhere to higher standards than others.
In perhaps the best anecdote served up over the 90 minutes, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson corroborate a conversation Nicklaus had with Norman at the Turnberry Hotel the night before the final round of the 1986 British Open. That Saturday evening, the Golden Bear took it upon himself to approach the 54-hole leader and offer some wisdom while the two men were eating dinner at separate tables.
“I’ve watched you finish up the last couple of majors and you didn’t quite get it done,” Nicklaus recalls. “I saw a flaw that I’ve seen repeated.”
Watson: “Typical Jack, he had great advice. Just keep it simple. Keep your hands on the club lightly.”
With that loosened grip came a looser Norman. On a day when nobody within striking distance came close to breaking par, he closed with a 69 to win by five.
Of course, he would succumb at the next two majors on unfathomable hole-outs — Bob Tway from the sand at the ’86 PGA Championship and Larry Mize in sudden-death at the ’87 Masters—the first of which Norman stumbled home with a final-nine 40. What happened to Jack’s suggestion? Faldo would notice Norman regripping the club constantly during the early stages of his’96 nosedive, but at no point in the documentary is the Shark asked specifically about whether he suffered from an overdose of nerves during those landmark losses.
It’s a question that has to be asked. Not easy to do, but necessary. As one might guess, the sharpest opinions on Norman’s inability to close the deal are offered by Brandel Chamblee and Peter Kostis, a pair of longtime TV analysts with superb articulation skills and a highly advanced grasp of swing mechanics.
“He took it as if he was being robbed of these major championships,” Chamblee states, “but if you look a little closer, he wasn’t being robbed.”
A closer look is what this entire production could have used. Instead of aiming at a wider breadth of potential viewers, many of whom have surely lost interest in a man who has barely competed in the last quarter-century, this 30-for-30 needed to bear down on the heart of the matter. How could a player capable of appearing so dominant suddenly look so helpless in pro golf’s ultimate moments of truth? Yes, Norman’s career was fascinating, but it’s not the kind of stuff worthy of a refresher course two weeks after Augusta National has crowned yet another Masters champion.
Perhaps we shouldn’t expect much, if anything at all, from the Worldwide Leader. The Norman biography was just the second full-length, 30-for-30 episode devoted solely to golf among the 117 that have aired since October 2009. John Daly (2015) was the other. Two tons of remorse and a handful of belly laughs from another of the game’s most notable underachievers.
Not for nothing, a 30-for-30 short on the King himself debuted in the fall of 2012. It was about Arnold Palmer the beverage, not the player.
Ours is a niche sport, one with demographics that basically run counter to ESPN’s growing pursuit of teenagers addicted to LeBron James, Steph Curry and a dozen slam dunks per night on SportsCenter. That’s only a few million miles away from 30-for-30's early days, when the series produced creative, compelling and journalistically stout features such as The Band That Wouldn’t Die, The Legend of Jimmy the Greek and Once Brothers.
Never heard of those titles? Donate five bucks to the Worldwide Leader and treat yourself to a subscription to ESPN+. You won’t be half as sorry as the junk running on the cable channel.
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