Success on the
European Tour and later the
PGA Tour followed. Norman won
The Open Championship twice, in 1986 and 1993, and also won
The Players Championship in 1994 in record-setting fashion (averaging 68.81
per round for the year). Despite his huge success on the U.S.
PGA Tour and his many wins around the world, Norman will be forever regarded as an underachiever (given his talents), a characterization fueled by his myriad near-misses in
The Masters, the
U.S. Open, and the
PGA Championship. He was equally a victim of his own bad luck and good luck on the part of his fellow golfers in
major championships. He infamously lost a near-certain PGA Championship in 1986 after
Bob Tway holed a greenside bunker shot (though Norman himself shot a 76 that day), and lost The Masters the following year in a playoff on an even more miraculous 45-yard chip shot by
Larry Mize on the second play-off hole.</p>
But not all of Norman's Major woes have been at the hands of others. Many times he has failed to perform in the final round of a tournament, whether it be a final-round 78 in the 1996 Masters (see below), a 73 in the 1995 US Open where even-par 70 would have won the tournament, or the 76 in the '86 PGA that set him up to be defeated by Bob Tway's bunker shot. Several of Norman's infamous "chokes" occurred when his wobble-prone putting got the better of him. In 1986, he led all four majors after the third round but won only the British Open. (This is jokingly referred to as the "Norman Slam" or the "Saturday Slam," as in he was leading after the third round on Saturday but lost in the final round on Sunday). He is one of only two players to have competed in - and, like
Craig Wood, to have lost - play-offs in all four of the major championships. But perhaps the most embarrassing Norman meltdown of all occurred at The Masters in 1996, where he blew a six-stroke lead in the final round and lost the tournament to
Nick Faldo by five strokes, shooting a Sunday 78 to Faldo's 67.
ESPN, as part of their "
ESPN25" 25th-anniversary celebration, ranked Norman's 1996 Masters mishap as the third-biggest sports choke of the last 25 years. Despite the losses, though, Norman still has 29 top-ten finishes in the majors.</p>
