The Open / Bill Elliott / 19 July 2008 /

Bill Elliott on a brilliant Open so far, where his pal Greg Norman leads the field going into the fourth and final round

Well, those of us who wondered what an Open Championship would be like without Tiger Woods now know that, actually, it is actually quite brilliant. Okay, Tiger's presence at Birkdale today would add even further interest but how good is what we've got anyway? Answer: brilliant.

No-one, not any of you lot out there, not me, and certainly not the man himself, laid a penny on Greg Norman winning or even performing exceptionally well at this Open. The man is 53 for goodness sake, he plays pro golf as a hobby now and then, his main interest is a global network of companies that make him the second richest sportsman in the world, second, of course, to Tiger.

Yet here the old boy is, all dressed up and ready to go. Will he actually end up going anywhere? No, probably not but I hope, oh boy I really hope, that he proves me wrong. If he does then this will have been the greatest Open I've ever attended and I've been coming to them since 1969. If he does he will be the greatest Open champion ever. No question. For me, anyway.

Of course he has to hold off the challenge of a resurgent defending champion. Padraig Harrington has plotted and fretted his way into this Open. Once here, however, he is performing brilliantly. He will play alongside Norman today. Behind them a battalion of golfers are in contention across a links that has done more than enough to confirm the suspicion in this quarter that it is England's finest. There is surprise 2003 Open champ Ben Curtis, new young sensation Anthony Kim, smiley KJ Choi and about 25 others who have some sort of chance of lifting this glittering prize.

Yet I keep coming back to Norman. I'll tell you why. He is a pal. Grab it, live it, enjoy, move on and grab it again has been the Australian's mantra ever since I first met him in the car-park at Sunningdale Golf Club in Surrey's hinterland.

That was nearly 30 years ago and at the time he was a hopeful golfer who had made the big trip over from Oz and who was not sure where the next quid was coming from. Mind you, it was difficult to tell this bleak fact because this first meeting occurred when he parked his black Roller next to my Cortina that morning. The Rolls Royce was borrowed but even back then the image suited a man who soon gained the soubriquet 'Hollywood' because of his desire to project a sharp image and his love of the more expensive toys available to a man.

Having plundered Europe, he attacked America. His impact was huge, so big that half that country's population still think he is some sort of blonde ex-surfer boy who took up golf because the waves weren't big enough in southern Florida. For several years he led the way as world No.1. Tiger now holds the record for the number of weeks in top spot but Greg set the early record when these rankings started in the mid-eighties and is still second only to the absent champ when it comes to time spent looking down on everyone else.

He won the Open at Turnberry in 1986 and again at Royal St George's in 1993. In between he played great, could and should but didn't win a bunch of other majors when either opponents tripped him up or he wounded himself.

In '86 he led every major going into the final round and won just the one. Someone branded it the Saturday Slam, others suggested he had everything except enough bottle. None of these critics had the nerve to suggest this to his face. One punter who did during a tournament in upstate New York was invited to see him privately after his round. Greg wasn't suggesting a chat. The punter, wisely, didn't take him up on the offer.

In the early nineties his game slid away from him for a while and he almost gave it up entirely to become a cattle rancher. He had the contract in his hand to sign when his then wife Laura asked him if he really, really, really was ready to give up the adrenalin kick of big-time golf. He wasn't.

Instead of signing the contract he signed up with a new and little known coach, Butch Harmon, and a year later won his second Open down on the Kent coast.

He was back on top. Four years later he was off it again, losing the Masters to Nick Faldo despite cruising into the Sunday with a six shot lead at Augusta. The disappointment crushed him as a major competitor.

Bizarrely, the effort of unexpected victory also removed Faldo from future frames. By then his business was established and since then it has grown spectacularly. His big break was a small turf company he bought and that then developed a strain of heavy duty grass tailored for sports stadia use.

The patent turned out to be several gold mines in one.

His clothing range is still a top seller, his course design business has 60 projects completed and another 40 on the go. He does wine, private jets and, for all I know, street entertainment. You get the picture.

He says he gets as much of a kick out of sealing a deal on Wall Street as he does in holing a tricky five footer for a title worth hanging on the wall. He is, of course, fooling himself and this week he found out by how much. He found it out when he walked up the 18th fairway on Friday his name back on top of a leaderboard for the first time since that Masters and the stands roared their approval. And he hit his first putt so hard it screamed past the hole and crashed 20ft past and off the green. It was, he admitted later, the emotion of it all.

The old adrenalin buzz had him in its grasp once more. He has spent his life chasing He has spent his life chasing this buzz. It's why he wanted to be a fighter pilot, why he has dived with sharks, why he has floored helicopters, why he once raced his pal Nigel Mansell, the then world F1 champ in a chopper, Greg in his Ferrari. He loves Ferraris, picked me up in one of them 22 years ago when I flew in to stay with him for a few days in Florida a couple of months after that first Open win.

I fancied a beer and a long sleep. I got the beer but he wanted to play golf so we ended up at Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill course where his best pal, the late, great golf photographer Laurence Levy was waiting for us. The course seemed empty but by the sixth hole we had crashed up against a fourball so slow they seemed to be walking backwards. Laurence and I got irritated, Greg got angry. We ended up waiting forever at a short hole, a 180 yard par three over water. The guys in front seemed to be playing at statues rather than golf.

Finally the last of them holed out and as one bloke replaced the flag Greg let rip with a four iron. The flag chap had only taken three steps away when the ball landed 10ft past the hole and zipped back to a few inches.

They all turned to remonstrate, noticed at last who it was behind and called us through. Even so, I remonstrated with my playing partner, pointing out it was a reckless thing to have done, that he could have hit, perhaps even mortally wounded one of the slow guys. He just laughed and said: "Don't be silly mate, I wasn't aiming for any of them "

That's Greg. His first company mission statement was two words 'Attack Life'. He has and he does. This Open may be the last great trumpet call of a once great beast but it is, for a lot of us who have been around the block a few times, a terrific sound to hear.

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