1994 PLAYERS Championship, March 24-27
This is the fifth of a five-part series on THE PLAYERS Championship featuring milestone anniversaries involving members of the World Golf Hall of Fame.
By Travis Puterbaugh, Curator of World Golf Hall of Fame & Museum
Winner: Greg Norman (14th career victory on the PGA TOUR)
Purse: $2,500,000
This Week in 1994 Trivia:
Swedish pop group Ace of Base held the top of the music charts with “The Sign,” and Wayne Gretzky scored the 802nd goal of his career to break Gordie Howe’s National Hockey League record for most goals scored in a career.
Introduction:
At THE PLAYERS Championship in 1993, Nick Price set a Stadium Course record by finishing 18-under par, surpassing the previous record of 15-under shared by Mark McCumber and Davis Love III. In the years since Tom Kite’s 9-under finish to win THE PLAYERS in 1989, each year from 1990-1993 featured lower and lower scores by the winners (-10, -12, -15, -18). A trend had begun to emerge, shaped in no small part to a softer course and conditions which favored low scoring opportunities. Several players were predicting prior to the start of the 1994 championship that another record score seemed possible, if not entirely probable.
Enter the “Great White Shark,” Greg Norman. Few players in golf were hotter than Norman since the start of the 1993 season. In 31 worldwide starts, Norman finished in the Top 10 an impressive 26 times, capturing six titles, including The Open Championship, and raking in more than $3 million in earnings. In February, he captured the Johnnie Walker Asian Classic and unseated Nick Faldo at the top of the Sony Rankings.
Still, Norman had a hard time making people forget all the close-calls which seemed to define his career. Rather than acknowledging the two Majors he owned (1986 and 1993 Open Championships), it was far easier to talk about how many he could have or should have won. With four losses in the playoffs of Majors, coupled with several forgettable Sundays when he couldn’t finish off a tournament, the knock on Norman was that he couldn’t close. Instead, all along Norman was the guy who clearly had the game to have won at least six Majors and was a threat to win anywhere at any time. Under the most ideal of circumstances, it would all come together for Norman at the Stadium Course in 1994.
Memorable Quote:
“I’m going to shoot 22-under on your golf course. You’ve got to come up with some harder courses, mate.” Greg Norman to TPC Sawgrass architect Pete Dye prior to THE PLAYERS Championship in 1994. Norman would go on to shoot 24-under.
Turning Point:
In essence, THE PLAYERS Championship was over Thursday even though the competition continued on for three additional days. Norman saw to it that the field would be chasing him from start to finish. With his record-tying assault of 63 (9-under-par) in the first round, Norman all but dared the rest of the field to keep up with him. On a day with little to no wind and soft greens, 38 golfers shot in the 60s and the average score was 71.4. Colin Montgomerie, Tom Kite, Lee Janzen, and Jeff Maggert all shot 65. Turns out there was something to the prediction of low scores. Kite, for one, despite taking full advantage of the conditions, was not amused.
“Yeah, this is a real shocker, isn’t it,” Kite said with a touch of sarcasm. “I think most of the players would agree that if you have a 63, you would like to be able to separate yourself away from the field a little bit, not just be tied or have a one or two-shot lead.”
Norman seemed not to mind, particularly during a scalding stretch in which he birdied eight times in his first 11 holes, including five-consecutive from the 13th-17th holes (Norman opened his day on the back nine). He made it look too easy during a round in which he missed only one green and a single fairway in regulation, and scarier still it could have been even better had two birdie putts not lipped out.
“This one seemed just very much under control,” Norman said in reference to his 63. “Some of them seem like you work for it, but today it seemed like it was an under-control 63.”
Result:
The next three days featured more of the same – literally – as Norman fired 67s in each of his three subsequent rounds. Well, they were a little different as Norman had to finish his second round on Saturday due to a rain delay that halted play early on Friday. So instead of 18 holes, Norman played an additional eight, and remarkably without a single bogey through three rounds of golf. Despite three days of sustained excellence, he still only held just a four-shot lead over Fuzzy Zoeller heading into Sunday on a course where fortunes can turn around in an instant.
Any hopes Zoeller had of catching Norman were dashed quickly, however, as Norman birdied the first two holes and a bogey by Zoeller left him in an early seven-hole deficit. Through the first 12 holes, Norman had still failed to register a bogey the entire tournament. On the par-3 13th, it took a butterfly fluttering across his putting line to distract him just enough to finally miss. Norman finished his round with four more pars and a birdie on the 17th – the hole where final round leads go to die – hitting his shot to two feet of the hole, ensuring there would be no unnecessary drama on this day. He just missed adding a birdie on 18 for good measure, his 15-foot putt just lipping out. Norman said his effort at THE PLAYERS was in his “top three or four weeks of golf ever.”
“In my 20 years,” Zoeller said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player play as consistently well over 72 holes as Greg did.”
While Norman coasted to a four-stroke victory, it wasn’t for a lack of effort on Zoeller’s part. He was able to make history of his own, and if not for Norman’s incredible four rounds of golf, he would have won the tournament by three strokes. In fact, Zoeller’s 20-under effort would have been enough to win the tournament in any other year. It is still good enough to have won any of the 24 THE PLAYERS Championships which have followed. A tough pill to swallow, but Zoeller took it all in stride, saying “I lost to the best player in the world.”
