The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story

By Tim O'Connor

From the award-winning journalist and coach: a biography of “the ‘Rain Man’ of golf. It’s a character drama. It’s an underdog story” (Barry Morrow, Academy Award–winning screenwriter).

Documentary now in production!

In The Feeling of Greatness, second edition, golf coach Tim O’Connor updates his previous biography of the late great, Canadian golfer Moe Norman, who was famous for introducing the single plane golf swing. This edition includes new anecdotes about Moe both on and off the course by golfers, journalists, friends, and family, and offers a more in-depth portrait of the man and golfer, especially in the last years of his life. O’Connor shares with readers his personal and professional friendships with Moe along the way. Some twenty years later, from a distanced perspective, O’Connor sets the record straight about Norman, promotes his legacy as the legendary golfer he was, and reflects on life lessons learned from their association over the years.

Praise for Moe Norman and The Feeling of Greatness

“Only two players have ever owned their swings: Moe Norman and Ben Hogan.” —Tiger Woods

“Well-written and meticulously researched.” —James McCarten, PGATour.com

“Tim O’Connor has helped us better understand one of golf’s most intriguing and disturbing members.” —Hal Quinn, The Financial Post

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781612549798

Tim O'Connor

Tim O'Connor is an award-winning journalist who has written about golf for thirty years and plays the game avidly. Tim is the editor of Single Plane Golfer magazine published by the Graves Golf Academy. Tim has written three previous golf books, including The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story, and he edited The Final Missing Piece of Ben Hogan's Secret Puzzle. Tim has written for GOLF, Golf World, LINKS, Golfweek, SCOREGolf, and Golf Canada. He was golf columnist for The Financial Post and covered golf for the radio division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Tim was named International Network of Golf Reporter of the Year three straight years (1994–96). He was music critic for the Canadian Press news agency and has done communications consulting for the golf industry. Tim lives in Rockwood, Ontario, with his wife Sandy and sons, Corey and Sean.

Book preview

1

YOU HAVE TO SEE It TO BELIEVE IT

Early one morning, Moe was playing at Tomoka Oaks in Daytona Beach, Florida, with friend Ken Venning, a golf professional. Moe hit three drives on the tenth hole. As they walked, Venning said he saw a big mushroom growing in the middle of the fairway. The mushroom turned out to be Moe’s three balls—touching. You could see the lines in the dew where they rolled up against each other.

—Ken Venning

As a young teenager, I had neither met Moe Norman nor seen a picture of him. But I had quite a picture of him in my head. Outside of Canada, Moe was a minor celebrity known mainly by hardcore golfers. But if you were around golf in southwestern Ontario during the 1950s through, say, the ’80s, you knew about Moe.

My father, Dennis, had told me many stories about Moe. The tales were either about his ability to hit a golf ball absolutely dead straight every time or fantastic and preposterous stories that didn’t make him seem real. Many were the stories that golfers around the world still tell. Stories about Moe sleeping in bunkers or in the backseat of his Cadillac. Stories about the trunk of his car, full of balls, clubs, shoes, and tees. About selling prizes at amateur tournaments and hiding from trophy presentations. About hitting balls off foot-high tees on the PGA tour. About his incessant chattering and the way he repeated himself: Golf’s a walk in the park, a walk in the park.

And about a man who looked like Joe Zilch but hit a golf ball like a god, straighter than any human being and with greater control than the mighty Ben Hogan. The fastest player in the world. My father told me that it was unlikely that anyone in the world hit more balls than Moe Norman—upward of seven or eight hundred a day, in Canada in season and in Florida in the winter. Someone figured that he hit about seven or eight million balls over his lifetime.

It was written elsewhere that Moe was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. I remember envisioning him as something along the lines of a hunchbacked, hairy troll in a black turtleneck, a ratty leather bag full of rusty irons with knobby wooden shafts strapped across his back, walking up on a green shrouded in grey, damp mist to a ball within tap-in range of the hole. For avid players like my dad—who played in amateur invitational events throughout southern Ontario, where Moe grew up and played his own amateur golf—Moe was a legendary character who both fascinated and confused them. In the mid-’50s—Moe’s heyday—golfers would attend amateur events as fans, especially to watch Moe.

It was almost impossible to square his ability and record with the perception people had of him as the clown prince of golf, a halfwit who spat out bizarre words like a Gatling gun, repeated himself, and dressed in mismatched clothes. To me, guys who could really play the game dressed smartly and carried themselves with an air of regal haughtiness and confidence. Yet this strange cat had won two Canadian Amateur Championships, played in two Masters, won fifty-six tournaments (not including one-day events), set thirty-three course records, scored seventeen holes in one, and shot fifty-nine three times. But rather than earning respect and recognition as a Canadian golf hero, Moe was viewed with a mixture of curiosity and, in some quarters, disdain.

My father was enthralled by Moe. At the Ontario Open in the early ’60s in Ottawa, he recalled Moe making the gallery laugh while his opponent Gerry Kesselring was trying to line up a putt. Moe was bouncing his ball off his putter into fans’ shirt pockets, my father said. Kesselring looked over and said, ‘Moe, will you knock it off until I get through with this?’ They were friends, so Kesselring was used to this. I watched the whole match. It was the greatest entertainment that I ever had on a golf course.

Watching Moe wasn’t always pretty, my father said. At the Bay of Quinte Golf Club in Belleville, a fan was making comments to Moe that he didn’t appreciate. Moe told the guy to ‘eff off.’ The guy was embarrassed and left. It was extreme, but Moe was never the most tactful kind of guy. Like many fans, my father ran into him years later and wished to say hello, the way that friendly people do. Moe ignored my father and turned away rudely.

Guys at clubs across southern Ontario—like my father’s club, Sunningdale Golf & Country Club in London, Ontario—all had stories about Moe. They were in awe of how he could hit a golf ball and mystified by his savant-like brilliance at math and his photographic memory, which made him an all-star at gin rummy.

Many people were quite blunt in their assessment and called him whacko, weird, and probably retarded. From today’s viewpoint, in which inclusiveness and diversity have become entrenched societal values, these kinds of judgments are vile, the worst kind of labeling. But that was the norm for the world at the time. He dressed funny. He needed to see a dentist, my father said. It was difficult for people to know what to think. He was odd.

By my late teens, golf had slipped off my radar as I became obsessed with rock music; I played electric bass in a number of bands, but they all imploded. The most money I made was playing in a Polish polka band, complete with shirts with puffy sleeves; our version of Bird Dance always got the church basements rocking. I had a beat like a cop, but I read voraciously about music and wrote album and concert reviews in high school and at university, which launched me into a career as a journalist.

I didn’t follow news about Moe for about fifteen years, until I moved back into my golf phase, devouring VHS videos, magazines, and books. Lorne Rubenstein’s column was the first thing that I looked for in the Globe and Mail newspaper. I loved his 1988 book Links: An Insider’s Tour Through the World of Golf, especially a chapter called The Eccentric Genius of Golf, which skillfully and compassionately told Moe’s story. An ardent golfer himself, Rubenstein focused on both Moe’s incredible ability to control a golf ball and his bittersweet life. Through his book and columns, I believe Rubenstein reawakened interest in Moe, who was by now in his late fifties and starting to lose his competitive edge—and thus his ability to earn money playing in golf tournaments. (Remarkably, Moe won the PGA of Canada Seniors’ Championship eight times in nine years, from 1979 to 1985 and in 1987.)

In the late ’80s, I was the national music writer for the Canadian Press news agency. This was a dream gig, and it allowed me to interview some of my heroes, such as Robert Plant, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Johnny Winter, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. But a few years into the job, I wanted to be a full-time golf writer like Rubenstein. In 1992, I took the plunge and went freelance to write about golf.

Shortly afterward, I met Mark Evershed—a rare bird in his own right, especially since he was a golf professional who exclusively taught the game for a living.¹ He wanted me to help him write a script about his daughter Robyn. I was bowled over by Evershed, a big personality with a brilliant mind and an encyclopedic knowledge of the golf swing. Like Moe, he wasn’t particularly sensitive to others’ feelings or to interpretations of his bold pronouncements, which both paid off and cost him throughout his career.

Robyn was born to Mark and Karen Evershed in 1980 with Down syndrome. A nurse said Robyn would ruin their marriage. A doctor told them that she would peak with the mental capacity of a five-year-old and not advance past grade one. He said they should put her in an institution. Five months later, the Eversheds were directed to the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, which prescribed a plan that could help Robyn live a full life. Thus, they started a program that included seventy-two volunteers a week working with Robyn sixteen hours a day with no days off for four years.

We were teaching Robyn how to read when she was six months old, and she could read by the time that she was two, Evershed said. Robyn entered elementary school and not only participated with her peer group but also excelled. She went through high school on the honor roll, her proud father said. Today Robyn lives with Karen, Mark’s ex-wife, and is still taking classes, volunteering, and writing. (Her blog at RobynsWriting.WordPress.com is wonderful and inspiring.)

When Robyn was around twelve, Evershed contacted me after reading my work in SCOREGolf magazine; he wanted to talk about creating a movie about learning based on their experiences with their daughter. So much of how I teach golf is through what I learned with Robyn, said Evershed, who was known throughout the industry simply as Shed.

At the time, Evershed was one of Canada’s top teaching professionals. With his inquisitive nature and sharp mind, Evershed was a certified instructor in the Golf Machine methodology, which was based on a complicated book written by Homer Kelly that focused on the physics of the swing. Evershed’s clientele included elite amateurs and some of Canada’s best touring professionals. Many of Canada’s top club professionals trusted their swings to Shed.²

As I grew to know Evershed, he told me stories about Moe Norman from a perspective that I had never heard before. At sixteen, as a gifted and hardworking junior, Evershed had become intrigued with Moe at the Lido Golf Center, a driving range in Oakville, just west of Toronto. He asked the legend for advice, but he rarely understood what he said. Moe said, ‘Me and [Ben] Hogan and [Arnold] Palmer are the only guys whose hands work backward through a golf ball,’ Evershed recalled. I didn’t know what he was saying. I didn’t take him seriously. People would laugh at him for the things that he said.

Later, with his own maturity and experience with Robyn, Evershed grew sympathetic to Moe’s eccentricities and found himself getting angry with local professionals for making fun of Moe and saying he had lucked out or didn’t know what he was doing. One morning in 1990, he walked up to Moe on the range at Carlisle Golf Club near Burlington and said, Moe, do you know what you’re doing, or do you not? For seven hours, Moe explained his swing and why he preferred heavy clubs, thick grips, and a flat lie angle. "After that, I knew that Moe knew exactly what he was doing.

I realized that I was in front of a genius. I started to listen to what he was saying, and I realized he just said things in a funny way. Moe appeared to people as a funny package. You had to look through the package. I started to accept that Moe wouldn’t say something straight out; you had to decipher it.

For instance, when Moe talked about the hands moving backward, he meant that as the arms moved forward to impact, the hands lagged behind with the left wrist flat and right wrist bent. This helped sustain a line of compression through the ball, Evershed said.

While working in my home office in early 1993, I got a call from Peter Carter, who was editor of the Metropolitan Toronto Board of Trade magazine. As Peter always did, he asked me, What’s new? I immediately told him that I had been learning a lot about a golfer named Moe Norman.

Who’s Moe Norman?

I spoke for probably about ten minutes. When I took a breath, Carter said, Fantastic story. We’ll put him on the cover of our April issue.

Shed was excited about the news, but he warned me that I now faced a major challenge: Moe would have to agree to meet with me. Evershed warned me that Moe had never liked journalists very much, feeling that they often ridiculed him and made him look foolish. Shed said he had put in a good word for me, saying that I was good guy, that I was a golf writer who understood the game, and that the article would be positive.

Evershed called me a few days later and, somewhat surprised, reported that Moe had agreed to meet me. But it would require me to travel to Florida, where Moe hung out every winter. I took myself down to Royal Oak Golf Club in Titusville near Cape Canaveral, on the eastern side of Florida.³

After greeting me in the parking lot, Evershed brought me over to the patio outside the clubhouse. Moe was wearing a dark-blue, long-sleeved turtleneck and black dress pants with crisp creases and cuffs. Evershed gently introduced me, and we shook hands. Moe’s large, meaty right hand felt like sandpaper.

Without Evershed, this would never have happened. For someone from outside Moe’s circle to meet him required someone inside to convince him that the person was all right. Evershed started the conversation, describing to Moe the article that I planned to write. Moe didn’t bother with pleasantries such as asking about my flight. He got right to it.

I’m the best striker of the ball the world has ever known, he said matter-of-factly. That’s not me saying it. Ask all the pros who’s the best. Not the best player, the best striker of the ball. Ben Hogan and I are in a different world, which doesn’t exist for anyone else, for hitting it pure—dead straight, every time.

Our initial chat was awkward. I was bowled over by his bluntness. My first reaction was to ask, If you’re so damn good, how come you didn’t play on the PGA tour? But I didn’t. That would have been rude, certainly, and I felt instinctually that I already knew the answer. I also probably feared offending him as so many journalists had before.

Later, I wondered why I hadn’t immediately started asking for stories of great ball-striking. Rather, my mind had gone immediately to the question of what happened to this guy such that he couldn’t take advantage of his otherworldly skill. After all, he was in a league with Ben Hogan, George Knudson, and Lee Trevino. This wasn’t empty bragging. Rather than feeling awe, I felt sad for the guy. This would be a constant.

***

We arranged to meet on the first tee in half an hour. Moe disappeared. As our tee time approached, we didn’t see Moe. Just then, Moe appeared, striding up on the tee, and said, Hi, guys. Then, in what appeared to be one continuous motion, he extracted a driver from his bag, poked a tee in the ground, and bashed his ball.

The ball surged into the sky like a rifle shot and floated down on the other side of a palm tree beside a lake. It looked like he had put his drive in the water. That wasn’t so great, I thought. The ball had just disappeared over the tree when he launched another one—over the same tree. Hell, over the same palm on the same branch.

As I hustled awkwardly down the fairway, trying like a kid brother to keep up with him, I noticed that his turtleneck hugged a powerful chest and a thick, linebacker’s neck, the back of which was crisscrossed by deep lines.

The red sunburn on his face looked like it hurt. His snaggleteeth were sore looking. When he listened, his thick grey eyebrows arched upward while his soft blue eyes widened like he was constantly surprised. His grey hair was clipped short at the sides, but longer, untamed tufts stuck out in various directions on top. Though in his midsixties, he looked fit enough to give a Florida gator a good wrestle.

When we got to his golf balls, they were about four feet from each other and about six feet from the water. Then it occured to me—he aimed for this spot. He’d taken the shortest route to the hole by playing as close to the water as possible. He reached out, placed his wedge about twelve inches behind one ball, and pulled the trigger. The ball arced in the air and landed softly six feet from the flag. He hit the other ball. Four feet away.

On the second hole, an uphill par-three, his three-iron streaked toward the flag but inexplicably fell about thirty feet short. He needs glasses, but I can’t get him to go get his eyes checked, Evershed said to me in a whisper.

This is amazing! I exclaimed to Evershed.

Incredible, huh? he said.

At the 220-yard fifth hole, another par-three, he lashed a four-wood. From the clubface, the ball was locked onto the flag and lanced into the green within two inches of the hole. Oh, missed again, missed again, Norman said. Tap-in two, tap-in two. Almost unplayable lie on the green, he said in a light, singsongy voice, like Pooh Bear.

As we walked to the green, he spread his arms and lamented: I hit it close every time, and I get nothing. Freddie Couples can’t hit it this good, and he gets $200,000.

The joy I’d felt for the last hour was gone, popped like a balloon pricked by a pin. I was suddenly melancholy, watching him walk up to his ball, stoop over, and pick it up. As we walked to the next tee in silence, Moe bounced the ball off the putter. This time, no one laughed. It seemed like a compulsion, something to keep his mind occupied—perhaps to keep sad thoughts away.

***

It’s been more than twenty years since I wrote the first edition of The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story. It came out originally in 1995, when Moe was sixty-five years old. He died in 2004, so as I write this updated version, he’s been gone for about eleven years.

When I first met him in the early ’90s, I was captivated by the pursuit of the golf swing and what was required to hit a golf ball solidly and consistently. To me, the swing was taught by experts, and we learned from them. Mastering the swing was like taming and harnessing a wild horse, rather than letting something unique from deep within free to express itself—to enjoy the visceral thrill of moving a golf ball through space toward its target. I was fascinated—astonished, really—to learn that a strange guy from a working-class family in Kitchener, Ontario, could have become the best ball-striker in the word on his own. He got a few pointers from the pro at Rockway Golf Course, but Moe’s swing and his approach to playing the game were mainly self-taught.

At the time, I gobbled up books on instruction and took lessons; walls and lamps in my house were in constant danger as I searched for clues to golf-swing perfection. In pressrooms at tournaments such as the Masters or the US Open, I’d hear players say that no one mastered the game—not Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus, or Ben Hogan. PGA tour pros could put together a couple of great rounds, but even the best players in the world would suffer from loose shots and periodically lose control of their swing. It seemed like a natural cycle of golf. There’s obviously more to golf than the full swing; if you can’t putt, you can’t score. But like most of the golf world, I was consumed by the mystery of the golf swing.

I thought that Moe was the only man in the history of the game to truly master it. I was so sure of it that I lay on the ground in front of him to photograph him hitting balls over my head. I had just settled down about fifty feet directly in front of him when I thought, Holy crap—if he sculled one, he could kill me. Then I thought, Hell, this is Moe. He never misses. Thankfully, he didn’t.

For over eighteen years, Moe’s friend Mike Martz would always be on the lookout for Moe to miss a shot during their Long and Straight Clinics. I always had to wait a long time. He just didn’t miss.

Tiger Woods was a believer. He told Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz, Only two players have ever owned their swings: Moe Norman and Ben Hogan. In an ESPN documentary on Moe, Woods said, He woke up every day knowing he was going to hit it well. Every day. It’s frightening how straight he hit it. It’s like Iron Byron. The ball doesn’t move.

During the same documentary, Gary McCord, a CBS-TV golf analyst and former PGA tour player, said, His swing was very unorthodox, but he produced unbelievable results. Every ball came out the same window, same trajectory, same curvature every time.

Possibly as a result of his own humble beginnings, Lee Trevino had a soft spot for Moe, but he was dead serious about Moe’s abilities. He said many times, Moe Norman is the best ball-striker I ever saw.

A respected shot maker in his own right, the late Ken Venturi played often with Ben Hogan and shared a few rounds with Moe on the PGA tour. I asked Venturi, the 1964 US Open winner, if Moe was the best ball-striker who ever lived. It would be pretty hard to dispute that. A lot of people might dispute that, but I don’t think they’ve seen Moe at work.

Such an assertion could be debated forever because many people could argue that Jones, Hogan, and Nicklaus won major championships. They placed the ball in the hole in golf’s biggest events. Arguing who’s the best is beside the point. The key is that Moe is ranked in the same league. Moe was never a player like those legends. His putting could be spotty in tournaments, he didn’t feel comfortable around people he didn’t know, and, among great players, he felt inferior. Yet in 1994, as I started writing the book, it just didn’t seem right to me that Moe was not acknowledged by the wider golf world as the best ever at hitting a golf ball.

I wrote:

It seems cruel. A shame. That Moe Norman—a man as gifted as Wayne Gretzky or Michael Jordan—couldn’t take full advantage of his extraordinary skill and talent. That golfers with far less skill have made millions, and he’s lived largely hand-to-mouth. That he’s so misunderstood, so unappreciated—perennially outside the ropes in the game of life. That as Moe gets older, he might end up poverty stricken, alone, and forgotten. That his vast knowledge of golf is untapped and he may never receive the official recognition that he richly deserves.

Reading back over that now, I can see how my compassion for the man ran away with me, and I probably projected a lot of my own insecurities onto him and onto the big mean old golf world. There’s far more to golf—and life—than the ability to do something exceptional or even to be the best in the world. It didn’t seem fair—but, as anyone with some miles on him will tell you, life ain’t always fair.

At the time, I was also indignant that he was not enshrined in the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame, which I considered a travesty—a sentiment shared by a number of writers, players, and people around Canadian golf. After my initial story on Moe for the Toronto Board of Trade magazine, I became what Lorne Rubenstein described as the Moe maven, writing stories on him for magazines and newspaper columns and even a documentary for CBC Radio.

Jim Walker called me to ask whether I was interested in writing a book on Moe. At the time, Walker’s company, Eyelevel Video, was the largest distributor of golf books and VHS tapes in Canada. I had never thought of writing a book on Moe. I assumed that if there had been a market for one, Rubenstein would have written it. But Walker had faith in me and engaged me to write my first book. Frankly, Walker had faith in me that I didn’t have in myself. It’s a cliché, but sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns and just do it.

I threw myself into the project, partly out of fascination for Moe’s mastery and the opportunity to write a book telling his incredible story. But I was also driven by compassion, for it appeared that Moe was heading into his older years in poverty—a concern shared by his closest friends. I also thought that many of the rumors about him were not true and diminished him as a person who was indeed a legend worthy of respect and recognition.

I wanted to share happy stories about Moe. Importantly, I wanted to share some of that fascination that my father and I had for Moe—our shared fascination about his unpredictability, eccentricity, the different way he looked at things, and his spirit. He made you sad one second and laugh the next. It’s all part of what I call the beauty of Moe. Moe did wearily acknowledge that he often felt like golf’s buffoon. If you want a laugh in golf, you talk about Moe Norman. I asked him whether the stories that painted him as an oddball made him mad. No, if it bothered me, I’d be dead long ago.

While I wrote the book, many of his friends were eager to help me. They genuinely loved him. After I talked with Moe at Royal Oak one afternoon, a young professional came up to me looking very serious and mildly threatening. I can’t recall what he said, but his message was basically, Treat Moe with respect.

The book came out and was well received. Quickly thereafter, Moe was enshrined in the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame, and then Acushnet chair Wally Uihlein committed the company to paying Moe $5,000 a month for the rest of his life. On top of this, Moe had a deal with Natural Golf and many other financial opportunities. I was gratified that my book might have played a small part in the respect and recognition that came to Moe.

But as the years went by, it occurred to me that I had missed something. I had gone into writing the book as though I were on a crusade, shouting to the world to take a look at this misunderstood genius. Have compassion for this man! See him! Salute his brilliance! Reward him! Respect him!

That was important. He had been scorned and treated shabbily, and it hurt him deeply. He had faced poverty and felt screwed over. But I hadn’t seen a key piece—and the clue was right there in the title of the book. I had taken the title from a conversation Moe and I had in the parking lot at Royal Oak Golf Club. I had spent most of the afternoon with him, and we had been talking about his invitation to speak at a PGA of America teaching summit in New Orleans. Talking to a large group was out of the question. Moe wanted to hit balls, but that wasn’t feasible at the summit. He was upset. It was yet another frustrating moment. He liked being recognized, but this was not the way he wanted it. He couldn’t do what he wanted. That was constant theme throughout his life.

As we stood behind his Cadillac with the trunk open, revealing about ten to fifteen drivers, twenty pairs of shoes, and more, I asked him whether he felt a special bond with Lee Trevino, who had also had his share of struggles. Sure, sure I did. As he spoke, he seemed to lighten and become more at peace. I asked him what he loved about hitting a golf ball. The thrill of feeling it, he said. Ah, that felt great. Now I did what I wanted to do. Every muscle enjoyed that shot. Oh, that was nice. That’s what I get a kick out of. The feeling of greatness.

At the time, I don’t think I really knew what he meant by that. I believe I interpreted it as a mainly physical sensation, possibly as a feeling of superiority over other people. But I hadn’t thought that he could have been referring also to emotional feelings. I didn’t think much about feelings twenty years ago; I was a rational person, even about golf. Like many men, I was emotionally illiterate. I didn’t know what the hell I was feeling most of the time, and I didn’t want to know.

Just as there was a side to golf I didn’t get at the time, there was a side to Moe I didn’t see: a connection to something greater than the recognition a Hall of Fame could ever give or even the security of finally having money in the bank. It went deeper than that. And I believe it is this side of Moe Norman that helps us more fully appreciate his brilliance and his deep love for his friends and for the game. I used to think that golf was mainly a comfort for him—the only thing that didn’t hurt him. There was truth in that. But I now believe that Moe felt a connection to something far greater than himself.

I asked Mark Evershed about this. When Moe hit the ball, it went more than straight, Evershed said in his wonderfully elliptical way. People laugh at this when I say it, but Moe became one with the ball.

It has been about fifty years since my father first told me about Moe Norman, and it has been nearly twenty-five years since I was first introduced to him. But it’s only in the last few years that I have come to this greater understanding of Moe, and I’m sure I’ll keep on learning more about him.

It’s my hope that this book will help you learn more about Moe Norman and spark an appreciation for him. More importantly, I hope you’ll see new qualities within yourself, recognize your own ability to overcome life’s many challenges, and learn to have faith in yourself, your friends, your family, and something far greater.

____________________________

1 In the early ’90s, if you didn’t play in tournaments as a touring pro to put food on the table, you worked mostly at golf clubs.

2 Evershed worked with Ian Leggatt of Cambridge, Ontario, for a number of years, and Leggatt won the PGA tour’s Touchstone Energy Tucson Open in 2002.

3 The club, which closed in 2012, was owned by the PGA of Canada, the association that represents golf professionals in that country.

2

INCUBATOR AVENUE

Growing up a few doors down from the Moe household on Gruhn Street in Kitchener, Ontario, Vivian Girard often saw Moe. I was close friends with his sister, and we’d hang around his house. They had a big front porch, and all the kids would play together in the 1940s, but Moe didn’t involve himself with the kids in the neighborhood, said Girard, whose older brothers Jack and Darcy hung out with Moe.

Later on, Moe became the pinsetter at the local bowling alley. He was really strong, Girard said. I’d come home from bowling with bruises where he had pinched me. I would say, ‘Stop, I’m going to smack you.’ But the next time he saw you, he’d do it again. I think it was his way of showing that he knew who I was.

Later in life, Girard would see Moe at Royal Oak Golf Club in Titusville, Florida, during the winter months. Often, she saw him sitting on a bench by the ninth green, listening to his tapes. One morning, as she walked toward the halfway house, she asked him if he would like something.

I would like some ice cream.

She came out empty handed and explained to Moe that they didn’t have any. I already knew that, Moe said.

"I said, ‘Moe, why did you say ice cream when you knew they didn’t have any?’

He said, ‘Because you asked me.’

—Vivian Girard

Murray Irwin Norman and his twin sister, Marie, were born on July 10, 1929, in Kitchener, Ontario, to Mary and Irwin Norman.

Mary and Irwin’s family was growing quickly. Just ten months earlier, Mary had given birth to their first child, Ron. After the twins, she delivered Doreen a year later—her fourth child in three years. Shirley came along a few years later, and in 1942, Rich became the last of six children for the short, attractive, round-faced woman.

Mary kept a spotless home and loved to sew, cook, and make jam and preserves. As in most big, working-class families, the kids wore hand-me-downs, but their clothes were always clean, neatly patched, and mended. Irwin Oscar Norman was a reserved, stern-looking man who often appeared deep in thought. He had very wavy brown hair that stood straight up. He didn’t much like his hair and would often stick his head under the tap to wet it and try to comb out the waves.

The Norman children were much like their father—a bit shy and quiet. We all have a shy streak. We’re not bold, said Marie. Her brother Rich described Irwin as a great dad who was generally happy and not much of a disciplinarian. He never hit, just hollered.

Irwin was a furniture upholsterer by trade, but with automation, he finished his career as a shipper. The Normans were very fortunate that he kept a job throughout the Depression. Irwin and Mary were devoted Roman Catholics, as were most of their neighbors. Irwin’s heritage was Scottish and Methodist, but he converted to Catholicism before his marriage to Mary, née Bisch. Like the majority of Kitchener residents, Mary was of German ancestry and spoke some German. Her parents, Jacob Bisch and Mary Eisenmenger, were born in Canada. The Bisches were farmers near the town of Linwood, just north of Kitchener.

Kitchener and its twin city, Waterloo, are in the rolling countryside of southern Ontario—about a one-hour drive west of Toronto—and surrounded by some of the province’s richest farmland. In the early 1800s, the area was settled by Mennonites from Pennsylvania, followed by a massive wave of Germans, including furniture makers and farmers. The village of Berlin was the center of commerce and trade in the area, and it grew steadily during the century. In 1916, during the First World War—when Berlin became synonymous with the enemy—it was renamed Kitchener after Lord Horatio Kitchener, an English war hero who died in action in June 1916.

The wide range of skills the Germans brought created a broad economic base. J. M. Schneider started making sausage, the Seagram’s distillery sprang up, and Electrohome set up operations, as did a number of small breweries, furniture manufacturers, and insurance companies. An excellent road and rail system—and proximity to Toronto and to American markets—drew automotive and rubber companies to the area. B. F. Goodrich, Uniroyal, and Dominion Rubber established factories that belched black smoke into the air.