"Actually, things have been happening so fast, we needed a name in a hurry and that's what I came up with."
From an invitation by David Murdock, the Dole owner, to help Ted Robinson design the course at Murdock's Lodge at Koele on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, Norman finds himself with over 20 golf course design and construction projects around the world.
"We have offices in Hong Kong and Sydney as well as Florida," Norman continues over breakfast at the Lodge. "The operation in the Far East has two shapers working full-time. I've just gotten some computers to link us up."
His work on Lanai and subsequent career as a designer was not a planned career move for the man who is known as the Great White Shark and is perhaps the game's most exciting player. He owns two and a half major championships -- two British Opens and this year's Tournament Players Championship, which he won by slashing six strokes off Nick Price's tournament record -- and will be remembered as one of the dominant players of his generation.
"I never really intended to get into the design business," Norman says. "But David Murdock came to me and gave me a chance. Ted was the teacher who took me by the hand and showed me the way. I'm not the type who is going to spend hours studying the intricacies and technical aspects. I told Ted that I know nothing about it. But my best subjects in school were geophysics and engineering, and I can read a topo map, and I've heard those things are helpful in golf course design."
Robinson say Norman was "an eager learner and a quick learner. He really contributed."
"My favorite part of doing a course is when you first see the land," Norman says. "When I came over here, there was nothing but vegetation, jungle really, and Ted and I got out there and just started walking."
For the front nine, they needed a machete to walk very far. The first nine holes wind over mountain ridges 2,500 feet above the sea. You can see Molokai andf Maui on one side of Lanai, the Big Island on the other. The mountain air is cool and often misty, and bent grass thrives on putting greens. Robinson and Norman were the first golf course designers to use bent grass in Hawaii. Their Koele experiment proved successful and has since been copied by Dick Nugent at Ko`olau and Makalei.
The eighth hole plunges dramatically out of the mountains and the par-3 ninth hole leads gracefully over a lake out to a more wide open back side. The last nine holes feature several of Robinson's trademark "water features," a fancy word for ponds, fountains and waterfalls. He also uses several water features on the adjacent 18-hole putting course.
Norman was both proud and apprehensive to show off his first course to Jack Nicklaus, his boyhood hero. It was from reading Nicklaus' classic book, "Golf My Way," that Norman learned to play.
"All of us want the respect of our peers," Norman said. "But Jack is special. He's the greatest player ever and he's built a lot of wonderful courses. And if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be playing golf for a living."
"I'll use their word, it really is an experience," Nicklaus said after his first look at the course. "It's a beautiful course."
(Nicklaus, incidentally, has left his mark on Lanai with the Challenge at Manele, a links-style course that opened on Christmas day `93.)
Amateurs can take heart from the way that Nicklaus played Koele's "signature" hole, the par-4 eighth, during his challenge match with Norman, which was billed as the Shark vs. the Bear.
The eighth plays off of a 250-foot cliff with the green set at the base of a narrow V-shaped valley. Nicklaus lost eight Titleists -- most of them in the fountaining pond on the right -- before finally putting a Maxfli borrowed from Norman in the fairway. It's a great place to be laying 18.
"Is that what they mean by `experience?'" Jack muttered.
Although the eighth hole gets all of the attention and most of the photos, Norman says: "My favorite hole is the 17th."
The 17th is his signature hole at Koele. Norman insisted on at least one "driveable par-4" at Koele. The 17th is the one. It plays downhill and downwind, 307-280-220 yards to an island green.
Nicklaus drove the green during their match.
"Nice shot, Jack, for a driver. I'll try a 3-wood," Norman said, grinning like a pool player calling his shot. He ripped the 3-wood and hit the green.
"The eighth isn't that hard," says Norman. "Amateurs have birdied it. What I like about the 17th is you can play it safe with two irons if you want. Or you can take a risk and go for it. You have an option.
"My idea is not to create a really hard course. The easiest thing in the world is to design a course that is so difficult nobody can play it. The hardest thing is to is create a course that everybody can play and be challenged and have fun."
The Shark says he's made a point of not criticizing the work of other course designers and archiects over the years. But he did take exception to some of his own work during the match against Nicklaus. On the par-4 sixth hole, Norman's tee shot found a bunker 185 hards from the green. His 5-iron into the wind hit the lip of the bunker and stopped well short of the green. "Who's the guy who made that bloody lip so high?" he said.
"Oh, I am."
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