For LIV Golf's Greg Norman, Brooks Koepka's Masters loss had to hit home | KEN WILLIS

There he was, overpowering and outclassing the field at another major championship.

His tee shots, compared to those on the outskirts of his orbit, were more howitzer than Srixon. Iron play was equally piercing and precise, and the touch around the greens belied his muscular athleticism.

It was the ultimate combination that seems to come around once each generation for men’s professional golf: Strength, touch and a dose of sex appeal.

Two golfing generations ago, especially at Augusta and the Masters, we’d be talking about Greg Norman. This past week, it was Brooks Koepka. And how hard it was to ignore the linkage of those two great golfers as Sunday morning bled into Sunday afternoon, just as Koepka’s hold on the 2023 Masters was bleeding out with the lengthening shadows.

RORY FALLS SHORT Grand Slam club still off-limits to Rory McIlroy as Masters cuts him loose | KEN WILLIS

A LIV REVIEW New tour doesn't exactly prepare you for Masters week | KEN WILLIS

Though he knows better than anyone not to indulge such intrusions, it’s hard to imagine Norman wasn’t entertaining some passing thoughts. How could he and his Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour capitalize on Koepka’s surgical takedown of that demanding golf course and every highly ranked international star the golfing establishment threw his way?

By day’s end, it was all gone, and though it was an indirect blow to Norman, you have to count it — at minimum — as a footnote to his Sunday woes at golf’s biggest events.

By 1986, Norman was already dubbed golf’s “Great White Shark,” already a winner of two PGA Tour tournaments and nine others in Europe. He took a one-shot lead into the year’s first Sunday at a major, the Masters, lost it as Jack Nicklaus charged to the clubhouse in historic fashion, then birdied four straight holes — 14 through 17 — to tie Nicklaus before misfiring his approach on 18 and falling one shot short.

It became the Norman calling card: Brilliance and breakdown.

We didn’t know it at the time, but it signaled the start of golf’s longest-running Shakespearean play. Norman would lead all four of that year’s majors through 54 holes, and win one — the British Open.

His near-misses, horrible breaks and ill-timed sluggish play doomed him time and again at the majors, but his 1996 Sunday collapse at Augusta — losing a six-shot lead — came to symbolize his unfortunate place in many of our internal history books. And it’s a shame, because he was a brilliant golfer and until Tiger Woods came along, he basically owned the top spot of golf’s official world rankings.

As Norman’s career marched along, he would develop a dislike for the PGA Tour leaders, whom he saw as undercutting his push for a “world tour” and then developing something similar and calling it their own.

Now, at 68, he’s taken his long-awaited best shot at the Tour, partnering with Saudi financiers to introduce LIV’s 54-hole, no-cut, 48-man tournaments with shotgun starts and $25 million purses (on top of contractually guaranteed millions for the bigger stars lured away from the U.S. and European tours).

Sunday morning must’ve dawned as a day of onrushing potential glory for a man familiar with such Sundays, but also a day of some justification, vindication and a dollop of redemption.

Remember, Augusta National had declined to offer Norman an invitation to attend this year’s Masters as a guest, though such invites are the norm for all past major champions. Norman called it “petty,” though it was smart of Augusta National to eliminate the sideshow it would’ve created. Also, ongoing lawsuits create hard feelings — go figure.

In the very end, Norman and his LIV marketing team got a miraculous Sunday charge from Phil Mickelson, whose image has taken a beating in the past 18 months, but whose golf game can still deliver heroics when you’re absolutely certain it no longer can.

Patrick Reed, another LIV lure, also played his way to the north end of the leaderboard before falling short.

But it was Brooks Koepka, golf’s brooding bomber, who was back in top physical form and now back in the unique form he delightedly employed a few years back — a golfer largely unmotivated until the bell rings at the four biggest tournaments.

No doubt, Norman and his less-than-subtle LIV promotional team would’ve put together a plan to show off their newly green-coated Masters champ. They would’ve gladly and loudly told the world, “if you want to see the best, you need to watch the LIV tour.”

And there’s little doubt, given human nature’s occasional predictability, with 30 holes left to complete on Sunday, Norman again was imagining one arm already tucked into the sleeve of a green jacket.

Before rain halted Saturday’s third round, with the leaders through six holes and on the seventh green, Koepka was facing an 11-foot par putt while four shots up on the closest pursuer, John Rahm, who would come back the next day to eyeball an 8-foot putt for birdie.

Twenty-seven years earlier, leading by six on Sunday, Norman hooked his opening tee shot toward the giant pines left of No. 1 and would make bogey. Signs of trouble had arrived early.

This past Sunday morning, Koepka returned to the course and missed his putt for par on No. 7, then watched Rahm make his birdie putt. The four-shot lead was halved, and would soon disappear as Koepka kept searching for his brilliant Thursday-through-Saturday form.

When it was over, Koepka talked of a bad break or two — shots that were an inch from becoming tap-in birdies but instead led to bogeys — but to his credit, he lamented a lost opportunity and simply blamed it on not playing well enough when it mattered most.

You picture Greg Norman, some nine hours south of Augusta in Palm Beach Gardens, watching it all play out, from his den, surrounded by all the modern spoils, but suddenly reacquainting himself with those ever-haunting feelings of discomfort.

And opportunity lost.

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Brooks Koepka, the Masters, and a LIV letdown for Greg Norman (again)