Gone With The Wind

He doffed his white baseball cap about 100 yards from the 18th green, the 54-hole milepost, another finish line before the finish line. The roar from the west grandstand seemed to grow with each stride, a salutation of admiration no four-club breeze dared to muffle. At 7:30 on a sanguine Saturday evening, the sun could not sink any slower, even if tomorrow couldn't come any faster, leaving the 137th British Open conflicted by a message sent loud and clear.

Twenty-three hours later, Greg Norman made the same walk amid the same thunder of approval. This time, the winner was five strokes and six or seven steps ahead of him, the big yellow ball in the sky a bit higher, the transgressions of his little white ball a lot more costly. Another cap was removed in the fairway, this one blue, owned by a man for whom nothing but a smile seems to come easily.

At golf's ultimate grin-and-bear-it showdown, Padraig Harrington has mastered the art of both. Three swings into his final tuneup at Royal Birkdale, the Irishman walked off the 10th hole a discouraged question mark, his aching right wrist preventing him from playing any shots out of the rough. As Harrington spent the better part of last Wednesday afternoon chipping and putting, speculation that his British Open title defense would end before it started had become the lead log on the speculation bonfire.

A day earlier Paddy had assessed his chances of finishing the tournament at 50 percent. Finish he did: Two birdies and a decisive eagle on the last six holes of an error-free back nine propelled him past a struggling Norman, four strokes clear of runner-up Ian Poulter and at least a couple of exclamation points as to the identity of the world's third-best golfer, not to mention one wry smirk.

"A little shinier than I remember," Harrington said of the claret jug he had brought to England's northwest coast. "They obviously cleaned it up very nicely."

We can also say the same of the golf gods, who have rebounded from that snoozer of a Masters with two of the most lively and entertaining majors in recent years. Worries that the pro game would take an extended leave of relevance until Tiger Woods returned with two healthy legs and his leash might not prove totally unfounded, but in the here and now, nothing has gone foul. You can put away that silly asterisk.

Harrington did what great players do, something that couldn't be said of his playoff victory over Sergio Garcia at Carnoustie last July. Trailing Norman by one on the 10th tee last Sunday, Paddy played the best golf of his life with everything on the line, and thus, left behind a 53-year-old man who supposedly had nothing to lose. "Very impressive," said the Shark, whose one-stroke lead turned into a three-shot deficit in a four-hole span. "He hit everything solid, played the way a true champion is supposed to play down the stretch."

The Norman who met with a small group of reporters at his locker afterward wasn't the same cleverly disguised overachiever everyone fell in love with over the first three rounds. You would have instantly recognized this Norman. Disappointed but hardly distraught, he blamed his demise on four putts that either lipped out or spent too much time snuggling the edge of the cup. An excuse? Probably, but no one was more entitled, and no one with a chronic case of competitive heartbreak could have been more gracious and candid.

This was the eighth time Norman had held the 54-hole lead at a major, only one of which has resulted in a victory (1986 British). You could build a life-size statue with that quarter-century of scar tissue, and though he didn't need a Kleenex to dry his eyes last Sunday night, it was obvious this one hurt. Norman had resided at or near the top of the leader board the entire week. He had gone to great lengths not to annoy fate and say all the right things, never looking forward and looking back only when prodded, at which point he would speak about his past in very general terms.