By Dennis Pollock
Moe Norman was and is considered by many to be the greatest golf ball hitter of all time. You probably will think this is an astonishing claim, given the names of those most people consider the greatest of all golfers: Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Sam Snead. In fact, Moe Norman never won a single PGA tournament in his life! So how can he be the greatest golfer?
Moe Norman was far from the world’s greatest golfer, but he may well be the greatest golf striker. Golf is made up of two different games: the strike of the ball from the tee or the fairway, which sends it zinging through the air at high speed, and putting the ball, which sends it slowly across a green at a very slow speed. Moe was fantastic at striking the ball. He could hit golf balls as straight as an arrow and rarely missed the fairways. But when it came to putting the ball, Moe wasn’t especially good. His nervous temperament often caused him to melt down and fail on the greens, just when victory seemed in his grasp.
To understand Moe, you must first know that he was different – different from nearly every other golfer and different from 99 percent of the people you have ever known. Although he was never officially diagnosed, many people thought he was autistic. One doctor said he had Asperger’s syndrome. His family believed that his strange ways were the result of a time when he was run over by a car at five years of age. But whatever the cause, everyone, including Moe himself, saw him as different, you might even say abnormal.
Biographer Tim O’Connor described Moe as a child: “He was an anxious bundle of nerves, exceeding self-conscious, timid, distrustful, cautious, and afraid… On top of that he had a brutal inferiority complex.”
From his childhood through the 75 years of his life, Moe had a hard time relating to people. He was intensely shy and introverted. In his childhood, he came to believe that he was unintelligent and unable to relate to other people or even converse with them. He was bullied mercilessly by his peers. In his teens, he turned away from his family, and even though he lived with them, he found reasons to come home late and leave the house early, to have as little interaction with his parents and siblings as possible. His differences soon became obvious even to him, and he began to call himself stupid or refer to himself as “Moe the Schmo.”
He excelled in exactly two areas. First, numbers and math came easily to him, and he could solve complex problems in a second, whereas other students might take minutes to come up with the wrong answer. And then there was golf. At an early age, Moe started caddying to earn some money, and he became obsessed with the game. Caddies who came to love golf were not unusual, but the lengths to which Moe took his love for golf were. From about the age of 14, Moe began hitting golf balls at the driving range by the hundreds every day, spending hours hitting drivers, three-woods, and irons off the tee. He soon worked his way up to a goal of 600 balls struck each day, spending untold hours at this, his only real love.
Developing “The Swing”
Over the next five years, Moe Norman developed a swing unlike any other golfer’s, but it surely worked for him. His constant practicing left him with muscular forearms resembling Popeye, and his errant shots became less and less. Eventually, he developed the ability to do what every golfer dreams of, but nobody achieves – he became able to hit golf balls perfectly straight and long, and to do so every time he swung the club. He never missed, and he almost never sliced or hooked. Every shot went straight and far. Moe Norman hit the golf ball much straighter than Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus ever did, and that never stopped, even in his fifties and sixties. Moe never hit balls into the rough, never went into the trees, and rarely went into the sand traps. He was always in the fairways and on the greens. Once he got on the green, putting the ball into the hole was a different matter, but getting on the green was no problem.
You might suppose that with Moe’s golfing ability, he would have turned pro early, won big money, and been able to retire in ease and comfort once he reached middle age. It never happened. First, with Moe’s insecurities, he was extremely reticent to make changes. He began playing as an amateur and stayed with it much longer than he should have or needed to. The problem with this was that Moe, who was dirt-poor in those days, never won any prize money. The most amateur golfers could do was win prizes like televisions and watches. Moe was so poor that he rarely kept his prizes. He would sell them almost as soon as he won them, and sometimes he would sell them before he ever played.
During Moe’s years of playing amateur golf, receiving nothing but small prizes for his wins, he was forced to make money however he could and to live as sparingly as possible. In the winters, he worked at a bowling alley as a pinsetter. In those days before automatic pin setting machines, he would sit at the end of a couple of alleys and reset the pins after the bowling ball was thrown. He made very little money at this, but saved most of what he made so he could finance himself during the golfing season.
Moe didn’t own a car in those days and would hitchhike to tournaments with his golf bag and clubs in tow. He wore old clothes and sometimes slept outdoors at night – anything to save a few dollars and be able to play in his beloved golf tournaments. Occasionally, he even slept in the sand traps on the golf courses. He often didn’t or couldn’t take baths regularly and would show up wearing clothes that looked and smelled of sweat and dirt. Sometimes he would come to a tournament without having eaten that morning, win the tournament, sell the prize he won, and then go to a restaurant and have a nice meal. And he rarely used a caddy, preferring to carry his own golf bag to save money.
Beyond his poverty, Moe Norman was just a different sort of person. He was painfully shy and could barely talk to people he did not know. When he did talk, he spoke in a kind of sing-song voice and finished his sentences in a high voice that made it sound like he was asking a question. He had the strange habit of repeating sentences at least twice when he said something he felt was important. Due to a fear of getting a sunburn, he wore long-sleeved shirts, usually turtlenecks, even on blazingly hot summer days. And when he won a tournament, he would immediately leave for home or go and hide out somewhere near, so he did not have to talk to the press or be interviewed on television. A trusted friend would pick up his trophy for him. These tournaments Moe was playing in, and often winning, were in Canada, where he was born and grew up. For a long time, the idea of playing in the larger and much more profitable PGA pro tournaments in the U. S. seemed daunting and scary.
More Oddities
When he finally turned professional and could win real money, he would never put his money in the bank. He did not trust banks and kept much of his money in hundred-dollar bills in his pants pockets. Sometimes he hid money in special secret spots on the golf courses he regularly played.
Moe never went to a doctor until he had a heart attack in his sixties; he was deathly afraid of doctors. He drank over twenty Cokes every day, and his teeth soon eroded. To save money, he ate snacks for breakfast and lunch, and then had a big meal at dinner, which was often paid for by admiring golfing friends.
Some supposed that Moe was mentally retarded, but the truth was, he was smart in many ways, especially when it came to golf. But Moe was socially retarded; he simply had no ability or desire to relate to people; he distrusted and feared almost everybody he did not know, as though they would turn out to be bullies like those cruel children who had made his life miserable in his early days. Moe could easily relate to teenaged golfers, feeling they posed no threat to him, but adults were shunned unless he had come to know them and allowed them into his inner circle.
As straight and solidly as Moe could hit a golf ball, he was never able to win a PGA tournament. He tried playing on the PGA tour for one year while still in his prime. He didn’t play especially well. Part of the problem was his intimidation with these famous golfers he had to play against: Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, and the others. Moe felt entirely out of his league, and it affected his putting, which had never been that great. He had hit so many thousands of practice balls that he could always hit the ball straight off the tee, but once on the greens, he fell apart. And this was never truer than when he made his short-lived attempt to play the PGA tour.
Still, he might have made it eventually, had he given himself enough time to overcome his fears and insecurities. But his efforts were cut short when a few PGA officials and at least one professional golfer decided they needed to have a talk with him. Due to Moe’s outlandish way of dress, his carrying his own golf bag to save money, his goofy habits such as hitting golf balls off huge, extra-long tees, and other abnormal habits, many of the professional golfers and officials felt he was an embarrassment to American golf. They gave him a dressing down and told him to straighten up and act maturely while on the golf course. Moe refused to say much about that experience, but he left the meeting deeply humiliated, and that was the end of his PGA tour golf. He headed back to Canada to play in Canadian tournaments where he was more accepted and understood, by some, but by no means all.
No Millionaire
Moe Norman died at the age of 75 in 2004. In a time when the best golfers were becoming millionaires, Moe never came close. In some seasons of his life, he lived comfortably, but in other, leaner times, he went deeply into debt. In the last decade of his life, the president of the Titleist golf ball company felt pity on him and promised him a $5,000 per month stipend, which was fulfilled. When Moe asked what he had to do for this payment, the president told him, “Just be you.” He clearly felt compassion for this misunderstood golf genius.
Moe Norman never married, had no children, and never owned a house. He lived in motels and rooms throughout his life. But he ended up with more than a few friends who were drawn to him, amazed at his ability to hit a golf ball straight and long every single time he swung a club. Additionally, once Moe got to know someone and allowed them into his circle of friends, he could be a funny and very likable guy.
Had he not been a golfer, Moe’s life would have been incredibly lonely and poverty-stricken. He would not have starved, but he almost certainly would have worked at low-paying jobs, forgotten by the world. And here’s the moral of the story: There are Moe Normans everywhere in this world. You probably know one or two, and maybe even have one in your family. But unlike Moe, they are not world-class athletes. They cannot hit a golf ball 270 yards down the center of the fairway or play any sport very well. Nobody writes a book about them or does a YouTube talk about them.
But like Moe, they are socially awkward and socially retarded. Making and keeping friends is nearly impossible for them. They are unimpressive to look at and unimpressive when they speak. They possess zero charisma, and they know it. They learn to avoid social contact as much as possible. They live quiet, lonely, sad lives, minding their own business and ignored by the world around them. Often, they barely make enough income to scrape by.
The Love of God
To know Jesus Christ and be filled with His Spirit is to experience God’s love for people. And this goes beyond the popular, good-looking, charismatic people who are in our lives. The apostle Paul tells us:
“You yourselves know that these hands have provided for my necessities, and for those who were with me. I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak.”
He was talking about financial support for those who could not take care of themselves, but this is true in the case of the Moe Normans of our world. Strong people, who make good money and are doing very well in life, need to be looking out for the weak. They need to show support and interest in those that everyone else is happy to forget.
In another place, Paul writes: “Comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all.” (1 Thess 5:14). Fainthearted and weak people need comfort and upholding. Moe Norman found friends who did this for him. One woman showed him in his latter years how to open and use a bank account. Another friend had a special benefit dinner for him when he was deeply in debt and drowning financially. The money raised wiped out all his debts and gave him the funds for a new start. Other friends would take him out to dinner and make him feel special and loved.
In Christ, we need to be like those friends, even if our particular “Moe” has no special skills. If God has made you strong, if God has given you friends and a nice home, money in the bank, and a loving family, don’t keep all that to yourself. Use your strength and your assets to bless those who have little. It is the way of our Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ; it is the way of love. Because in truth, we are all Moe Normans. We are all stained by sin and at enmity with our holy Creator. Jesus came into this world, the strong coming to bless the weak, so that by His cross and resurrection we might be forgiven and accepted by God. And since He did that for us all, we ought to show a little compassion and interest in those who feel rejected and hurt by life’s cruelties and injustice. A little love goes a long way.
