SHARK ATTACK
Greg Norman, 62, is dangerous as ever
Greg Norman, 62, is as dangerous as ever.
He doesn’t play much competitive golf anymore, but don’t get the idea Greg Norman is slowing down. The winner of two majors and 91 tournaments worldwide recently met with Golf Digest Editorial Director Max Adler to share his current thinking on naked workouts, playing shirtless, music on the course, and more. i work out in the dark,
often naked. It feels good to me. I have a better sense of my body’s alignment, the relationship of my muscles to the machines and weights, and I tend to just let myself go a bit more.
i like a broad range
of music genres, but in the gym I’ll maybe put on some electronic dance to kick me up a bit. On the golf course, maybe some light jazz.
i was possibly
the first tour pro to hire a trainer. It was 1991, and Pete Draovitch was a prominent sports therapist in Palm Beach. He wasn’t a golfer – I had to teach him what golf muscles were – but Pete understood how to help a person achieve his or her ideal balance of strength and flexibility. Our anatomies are as unique as fingerprints. The exercises that are right for you aren’t necessarily right for me. I’m wary of trainers that look like Mr Universe and think that’s how everyone ought to look. There’s golf-fit and ego-fit, and caring about the latter is how players get injured. Pete kept me healthy during the heart of my career. I still alternate among the programmes he designed for me, and I never get bored.
i have some friends
who give me stick about my Instagram posts. My kids think nothing of it – they know that’s who I am. The one of me naked in the mountain spring that went viral? That was my wife’s doing. When your wife says you look hot and wants to snap a photo, that’s a good thing.
i’ve been
to resorts where the guys play in bathing suits, and even some of the gals, too. I used to practice shirtless in my back yard. Obviously, it won’t work at all courses, but there’s nothing wrong with giving the option.
for the past
four years I’ve been working on something called the Shark Experience, and it’s finally here. Club Car is building 50 000 carts with Bluetooth-enabled screens that can stream music, sports, news – whatever applications the world can imagine – through speakers designed, by the shape of the cone and its angle of mounting, to keep the sound within the cart. To grow golf in these times you need to give people the choice of staying connected.
i enjoy hiking,
horseback riding, scuba diving, hunting and more, but one thing I never got the hang of was kiteboarding. My son, Gregory, tried to teach me in Cape Hatteras (North Carolina). I face-planted so many times I had saltwater coming out every orifice. Not doing that again.
the closest
I’ve ever come to death was probably when I was a teen. A friend and I went hunting in the Australian outback. There are certain times of year when black snakes will be very aggressive if you enter their territory. One came after us. We ran and jumped onto the bonnet of our car. We shot and shot, missing, as it came at us. We don’t know who hit it, but we got it at the last possible second.
the fastest
I’ve driven a car on a freeway is 312 kilometres per hour. It was in the Middle East, and this guy let me get behind the wheel of his new Lamborghini. I said, “How fast have you pushed this thing?” He said, “Not much.” The torque was incredible, how the car kept pulling and pulling. I glanced down at 308, and the engine still hadn’t backed off. Time to stop.The guy had turned white.
still on my
bucket list is to go diving under the Antarctic ice pack. I’ve seen documentaries about this that look amazing. It’s all about understanding the weather system.You cut a hole and go down on a tethered line, and if that hole freezes over, you’re done.