The Beaches of Norman…

Our longest post…. for a reason…

Murray (Moe) Irwin Norman (1929-2004)

His Legacy

America’s sports pages barely acknowledged the fatal heart attack Sept. 4, at age 75, of eccentric Canadian golfer Moe Norman — a supernaturally gifted yet cruelly misunderstood athlete. Norman was a stocky cartoon character with thick Popeye arms and wispy Einstein hair who generations of golf superstars — from Sam Snead to Lee Trevino to Vijay Singh — have said was the purest striker of a golf ball they had ever seen.

Completely self-taught, Murray “Moe” Norman, raised in Kitchener, Ontario, swung the club like a sledgehammer, with his legs wide apart, using his sturdy forearms and wrists for clubhead speed, not the classic swing of the cookie-cutter dandies on tour. Once a physicist declared that Norman had the most scientifically sound swing in golf.



His Handicap

Norman was so deathly afraid of strangers and stress that after winning a tournament in Canada he once hid on the banks of a nearby river rather than accept his trophy in public and perhaps have to speak.

He did play in America, briefly, but it was a disaster. After twice winning the Canadian Amateur Championship, he qualified to play in The Masters but twice fell apart in the strange surroundings, overwhelmed by the Augusta aura and the sight of his heroes.

In school Norman was ostracized for being goofy and overbearing. He would pinch kids or give them brutal bearhugs, thinking it was great fun. He called himself “Moe the Schmoe” and was known as a slow student except in math, where he amazed everyone by multiplying two-digit numbers instantly in his head. If he were counting pennies scattered on the floor, he wouldn’t count one by one but in groups or pictures, finding the total in seconds.

His photographic memory made him nearly unbeatable at cards, and he could remember the distance and layout of virtually every golf hole he played.

Norman would speak in a repetitive, high-pitched, Pooh-like voice. “Oooooh, I’m Moe from Canada. It’s cold in Canada. Cold in Canada. Oooooh.” He gave free golf balls to little children but often angrily snapped at adults who just wanted an autograph. He remained estranged from his parents and siblings for decades, wrongly convincing himself that they hated his only passion in life — golf.

Today’s greatest golfers count their career holes in one on a few fingers. Norman had 17. He also had nine double eagles and three sanctioned scores of 59, won more than 50 tournaments and set more than 30 course records.

Nothing could prepare you for a visit to Planet Moe. He routinely drank 24 Cokes a day — and had the missing teeth to prove it — never had a phone, credit card or date in his life. He hid rolled-up wads of hundred-dollar bills in his old Cadillac’s trunk and wore three watches on his left arm, all set to the same time. Obsessed with routine, he went to the same restaurant every day for months and insisted on being served by the same waitress.
Friends and physicians felt certain Norman was probably an autistic savant, a term coined in 1978 for autistics who often have exceptional math, memory or music skills, but he was never tested and refused to see doctors until his life depended on it. (A small network of loyal friends literally saved him from homelessness, bankruptcy or worse many times.)

Lee Trevino once said that if Norman had simply come along 30 years later and had had a full-time handler to insulate him from the anxiety of public life, we might be speaking his name with Hogan’s and Snead’s.

I never heard Norman speak about autism, but I know that he understood its cruelties. In his car, which was filled with old newspaper clippings and the motivational tapes that helped rescue his life, he once had a well-worn article about autism sitting on the front seat.


Words to live by…. click the image

His Own Words

“My childhood was very difficult. We were poor. Me and my brothers used bobby pins to hold our pants up, and we taped our shoes to hold them together. Our father was very strict. When I got a set of clubs together, he wouldn’t let me bring them in the house. I knew if he got his hands on them he’d throw them out, so I kept them under the back porch, through a little hole where he couldn’t get at them because he was fat. He was pleased when I started getting my name in the newspaper, but he never saw me hit a golf ball, even in our hometown when I became well known”

“Even in my late teens and early 20s, when I got good enough to play in tournaments, I slept in bunkers and hitchhiked to get from one place to the next. Some of the golfers laughed like hell at me and teased me constantly—”Where you sleeping tonight, Moe?” Nobody came to my rescue until I was 26. I really resented that.”



“I never got married. In fact, I went on only three dates. If I’d gotten married, it wouldn’t have been fair to a wife because of my life as a golfer. I’d wind up divorced, and then she’d get everything. I think that’s how it works, judging by what’s happened to some friends of mine. I’m very happy being alone.“