Class of 2003 must follow Norman's Sandwich course

We know the days get short when we reach September, but who could have believed they were closing in on Greg Norman as the cutting edge golfer 10 years ago when the Open was last played at Sandwich?

He was 38 - and had reached down into the depths of unaccountable failure at the highest level to get his hands on the Claret Jug for a second time.

It was more than a triumph of his golf game. It was an act of supreme will because not only did he win, he borrowed a game off the Gods to do it.

His final 64 might just stand for ever as the lowest last round of an Open winner. His golf, of course, had always entertained the idea of such performance but his nerve hadn't.

Except for his one previous major success - at Turnberry in 1986 - the story of the White Shark was one of wrenching under achievement. And it was a fact which hugely encouraged his heavyweight challengers in the light airs of that last day - Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and Corey Pavin, a still young American threatening to annexe a large slice of big-time golf's ever expanding rewards. But all three of them might as well have tried to catch a zephyr riffling the sand. Norman, for once, was untouchable, unanswerable, unhindered. Every shot was an opportunity rather than a trial. He inhaled the challenge. The game that had always seemed custom made for untrammelled glory would have been utterly unflawed but for a missed two-footer on the 17th, but by then Norman had put all of his demons to the sword.

Gene Sarazen, who was 91 and had won his own Open 61 years earlier, was on the spot to apply the imprint of history. He said: "I've just seen the greatest championship in all my 70 years in golf."

Norman, who had put his game in the hands of Tiger Woods' future coach Butch Harmon, could scarcely contain his excitement. This was more than a stunning victory. It was a potential change of life.

He said: "My golf was the best I've ever played. I didn't mis-hit a shot. Every one of them went where I wanted it to go [except for that putt]. I was playing a game of chess."

Faldo, Langer, Pavin and a late-charging Fred Couples had to make do, relatively speaking, with noughts and crosses.

Norman, still eight years younger than when Jack Nicklaus won his last major - the Masters of 1986 - was going to fill the emptiness of the lost years. "I've always believed I had the game to win consistently at this level - and now maybe I'll have the confidence."

Three years later he was throwing away the Masters at Amen Corner with Faldo as his predatory playing partner. He has spent much of the last seven years trying to explain the spectre of collapse that shut out the Georgian sun - when not fighting to regain his game and sailing his superb yacht around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. He returns to Sandwich this week as a time-expired giant of the game, but then, if anywhere can move his spirit, it is surely this stretch of Channel shoreline where the winners include Harry Vardon (twice), Walter Hagen (twice), Henry Cotton, Bobby Locke and Sandy Lyle in 1985.

Lyle - another poignancy of Sandwich. An Open win, a Masters green jacket - and a slow ride to oblivion.

Seve Ballesteros might also remember Sandwich with some angst. As Norman was playing the tournament of his life - and beating by one stroke Tom Watson's previous record Open low aggregate of 268 at Turnberry in 1986 - the great Spaniard was having to consider the possibility that the last of his glory had flown with his third Open win at Lytham five years earlier. His state of denial was reinforced by a first-round 68, when the crowd roared and his smile was like a sunrise as he crested the fairways. Then, he said: "I feel young again. It was like being on the golf course 15 years ago. It's a sensation I have missed a great deal because I like to enjoy this game. But I'm happier now than I have been for a couple of years and if things like this continue over the next three rounds I have a great chance. When the red figures came against my name I found I could breathe again. When you are playing badly, that sometimes can be difficult to do."

Three days later he was snapping angrily at the bold interrogator who suggested he might benefit from a short break from the game. "Do you think I need to go on holiday? Do you think I can no longer play golf?" Seve snarled.

The questioner shuffled his feet in embarrassment. He had intruded into the wounded heart of a great but fading sportsman, and golf has, sadly, been doing so ever since. This week the burden of inquiry is, inevitably, on Tiger Woods. Without a major title to call his own for the first time in four years, Woods must deal with the instant doubts of a game which some time ago elected him to the deity. He must do so in a place famous for granting glory - without guarantees.