Norman sees vision arrive

The logo for the World Golf Championships is a sketch of a colorful, spinning globe. Perhaps it should have included a shark.

Greg Norman quietly pulled into La Costa Resort at the stroke of midnight, the last player to arrive for the first $5 million event in the new world of golf that might not be taking place without him this week.

After spending 40 minutes in the fitness trailer -- part of his routine now to loosen his surgically repaired left shoulder -- Norman breezed through the media center and glanced for the first time at the brackets for the Match Play Championship.

"I'm just glad I could make the field," he said.

Behind that crooked, daring smile, Norman must have realized there might not be a field -- at least not this soon -- if he were just another rank-and-file player on the PGA Tour.

Instead, he ruffled the feathers of Tim Finchem, the unflappable PGA Tour commissioner, by proposing a world tour in November 1994 that would bring together the top 40 players in the world eight times a year.

"I think you needed to put a cat amongst the pigeons to flush out what needed to be flushed out," he said Tuesday, looking back more with pride than vindication.

Of course, Norman's proposal crashed and burned like so many of his final rounds in major championships. Finchem forced players to choose between the PGA Tour and the World Tour, threatening to enforce the "conflicting events" rule that requires permission to play in outside events.

And with shocking suddenness, players abandoned Norman's dream.

Two years later, an International Federation of PGA Tours headed by Finchem announced the creation of the World Golf Championships, ultimately four events worth $5 million each that would pull together the best players on the planet.

"I think this is what Greg Norman was hoping for," said Mark O'Meara. "Greg has done so much for the game. The ideas he had for a world tour. I know he was criticized for them, but everyone wants to see the best players in the world competing each other, and that's what we have this week."

Norman and Finchem have since made peace. Norman said he was willing to let Finchem take the idea and run with it, curious to see where it might lead. Finchem is willing to concede Norman's influence on the finished project.

"Greg's effort, his biggest impact on this, was to focus attention on the need to align the sport more in the direction of international play," Finchem said. "We had already formed a federation at that point. We had begun a dialogue. His initiative helped to focus on the possibilities.

"I've given Greg a lot of credit," he said. ``Without his initiative, we wouldn't have been as focused."

Finchem stopped short of saying that the first World Golf Championship event would have been a few years away without Norman. Even Norman was unsure whether the Match Play Championship would have taken place this week without him.

"It's hard to say," he said, pausing to contemplate the past. ``Probably not."

Norman's success on the golf course is always subject to debate. He has lost majors more often than most players even get into contention, eight times a runner-up and the only man to lose all four majors in a playoff.

Outside the ropes, just about everything he puts his hands on turns to gold -- a growing golf course design entity, his own brand of turf, a sharp clothing line with one of the most recognizable logos in golf.

But his plan for a World Tour never had much of a chance, and perhaps that's good.

The top 64 players in the world are gathered this week with $1 million going to the survivor and $25,000 for those who will arrange flights home after the first round today. Norman's plan would have allowed only the top 30 to play, with 10 special exemptions.

And he never considered match play, which is more responsible for the hype this week than the record amount of official money at stake.

Norman didn't want his events to count as official money. He also proposed eight world events, not four.

Still, he saw a semblance of what he was trying to accomplish when he walked across the practice range. There was Colin Montgomerie, Lee Westwood and Jose Maria Olazabal from Europe; Craig Parry from Australia and Shigeki Maruyama from Japan; and Ernie Els, who usually waits until March to come to America.

"Overall," he said, ``it wasn't such a bad idea.''