Golf: The greatest walk spoiled

Sport, like fishing, is littered with tales of the ones that got away.

The game that should have been won but for the dropped pass, the brilliant catch by an opponent, the lucky let shot at 30-40 in the deciding set.

It's all relative. One person's clanger is another's bad luck.

What is more intriguing, and certainly more gripping as you are watching it unfold, is the sporting choke. You won't find this term in the Oxford Dictionary, but it applies to those occasions when mind and method simply don't mesh.

You have victory within your grasp only to let it slip as the pressure of the occasion, weight of expectation and technique conspire to produce an unexpected tumble.

Sports players understandably dislike being referred to as "chokers," as it implies a degree of mental disintegration.

First a personal favourite. Remember Glenn Trimble? I didn't think so. He played the first of his two ODIs for Australia against New Zealand at Perth in January, 1986.

A burly medium pacer, he had a dreadful case of the bowling yips and could barely bounce the ball in the other half of the pitch. As Wisden put it, Jeff Crowe was fed "an extraordinary mixture of full tosses and long hops from Trimble." Stage fright come to life. Trimble's bowling figures: 4-0-32-0.

But my greatest choke, made more so because it came on one of sport's grandest stages, was at Augusta in the 1996 Masters. It was compelling viewing in its sheer awfulness.

You could not simply turn off the television and go about your business as one of the biggest names in sport folded on the final afternoon with the green jacket all but cut to fit and sitting in the famous log cabin with G. Norman sewn on the name tag. It was, and remains, the greatest stumble in major golf history.

The bare facts are these: Norman, already twice a British Open champion and yearning for the Masters title for which he had twice been runner-up, blazed a course record-equalling 63 in the opening round.

He followed with rounds of 69 and 71, and going into the final round he led Nick Faldo by six shots, Phil Mickelson by seven, and three others were nine shots back.

On the Saturday night, Norman said: "I'm going to enjoy tomorrow. Irrespective of what happens, I'm going to enjoy every step I take."

Had Norman shot an even-par 72 he would have won. In major championship play, going back 136 years until that Sunday, five players had blown a five-shot lead after 54 holes. No one had squandered a six-shot edge.

Turning for home, Norman was sinking, two over on the front nine. From the eighth to 12th holes, Faldo picked up six shots. Four down became two up.

The back nine was slow torture. Twice Norman found the drink. Drip, drip, drip. Faldo, on his way to his sixth major, was rock solid. You just knew how it would end.

In the last 20 minutes, wrote celebrated Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly, Norman "became a kind of dead man walking ... all his dreams drowning in Augusta National ponds behind him. Spectators actually looked down, hoping not to make eye contact, as Norman passed among them on his way to the 18th tee."

Norman finished with a 78 and a four-round total of 281; Faldo's 67 got him home in 276.

After it was over, Faldo hugged Norman.

"I genuinely feel for the guy. I feel so sad for him. I said, 'I don't know what to say. I just want to give you a hug'."

Norman did not rush away after it was all over, no mad dash to the car park to escape thousands of eyes. He fronted up.

"I screwed up," he said with a smile. "It's all on me. But losing this Masters is not the end of the world. I'll wake up tomorrow, still breathing I hope."

A final note: Faldo's two other Masters wins had come when he trailed by five shots going into the last round in 1989, and by three a year later.