Norman Visits Parkland Golf & Country Club

Greg Norman stares down a long stretch of black dirt carved through an old tomato farm in Parkland, and you can tell he is seeing something nobody else in the small party hiking through the dust with him can see.

He stands gazing there for the longest time, the wind tussling his golden locks under a spectacular blue sky, and it reminds you what Jack Nicklaus used to say about making so many clutch putts.

Nicklaus wouldn't pull the putter back until in his mind he could see the ball going into the hole.

Norman isn't budging until he visualizes what he wants the first hole at the new Parkland Golf and Country Club in northwest Broward County to look like when he's finished with it.

Huddled with his architectural design staff last Thursday afternoon, Norman points to the rough shaping of the first green and sweeps a hand in an arc to the left. You can almost see the bare earth heaving and rolling at his command. As a golf course architect, there must be a giddy feeling of power in this.

You imagine what you want a golf hole to look like, and then you command it into existence.

It's like getting to play God.

"There is joy being able to express what you visualize," Norman said.

Golf is still Norman's passion, but more and more the joy is about creating shots for other people to play. He wasn't extended an invitation to The Masters this April, which means the only way he can get into his favorite tournament is to win The Players Championship next month or to climb into the top 10 on the PGA Tour's money list by March 31.

That Norman will miss his first Masters in 23 years seems a sad certainty. He celebrated his 48th birthday on Monday, and he hasn't teed it up in a PGA Tour event yet this year. That he isn't even sure that he will play the Ford Championship at Doral Golf Resort and Spa March 6-9 tells you just how drastically Norman is altering his priorities. A three-time champion at Doral, Norman says his son's and daughter's spring vacations overlap with the Miami PGA Tour stop and he wants to spend time with them on their break.

"Pretty soon, they'll be grown up and gone," Norman said.

Come Masters week, Norman isn't sure what he will be doing if he doesn't qualify, but he'll keep an eye on The Masters.

"Hopefully I can play my way in, but if I don't, my life will go on," Norman said. "I'll be disappointed come Thursday of that week thinking the Masters has started and I'm not there. ... But I respect the decision [not to extend an invitation]. Quite honestly, there are probably players who deserve an invitation more than me, considering I haven't played that much and my performance hasn't been that great."

Norman loves Augusta National, though it will be remembered for denying him one of his greatest athletic ambitions. The different ways that place broke his heart are well documented, but he lives with his failures there nobly.

"I've probably got more out of Augusta since '81 than maybe one or two other people have," Norman said. "I've learned it's not just the victories life's all about. Yes, I would love to have won, no question. But I've learned so much about myself, about people and life because of what happened, how people respect you for how you handle yourself in defeat. I have great feelings about that."

Norman isn't looking back much these days. There's too much ahead, too many courses to build.

With more than 80 victories worldwide, including two British Opens, the Australian-born Norman's run as a champion golfer may be ending, but his quest to establish himself as the world's best golf course architect seems to be quickening.

As Norman surveyed the Parkland site Thursday afternoon, a small entourage of WCI employees could barely keep up as the Shark romped over a small mountain of fill, making his following hop crevices to get to the seventh hole.

"Hiking with Greg Norman in the outback," cracked Dave Salerno, the club's new director of golf.

Parkland Golf and Country Club is Norman's 54th project worldwide. It's the centerpiece of WCI's new country club community off Trail's End Road just up the street from the TPC at Heron Bay. More than 700 homes ranging from $500,000 to $3 million are planned around the new course. A private club, equity memberships start at $80,000. The course is expected to open for play in December.

While Father Time may be stealing Norman's game, he is reveling in his prime as a golf course designer with 17 current projects in some phase of construction or planning.

Parkland will remember Norman's rise as an architectural force with his giant fingerprints on its soil.