This year’s Open Championship at Royal Birkdale will be the first in more than three decades to not involve either Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods.
July 1993 saw Mexico beat the USMNT 4-0 in the final of the CONCACAF Gold Cup in front of 120,000 people in Mexico City.
It was also the month that saw the Spieth family welcome baby Jordan.
On the other side of the Atlantic, The Open Championship was being contested at Royal St George’s.
It was Greg Norman‘s name which ended up at the top of one of the most impressive leaderboards the game had seen.
The story of how Greg Norman won his second Open Championship in 1993
Norman had lifted the Claret Jug seven years earlier. Remarkably, however, that remained the Shark’s only major victory as he arrived in Kent.
He had won at Doral earlier in the year. However, he finished outside the top 30 at The Masters and missed the cut at the US Open.
It turns out that his coach Butch Harmon had spotted some things in Norman’s swing that he did not like. As Harmon once told Golf Monthly, he came up with a unique plan to help address the issues.
“Greg was getting into some old habits, like a bit of a slide into the ball,” he said.
“I used to make him practise off a sidehill lie with the ball above his feet, which would flatten out his plane a little and make him rotate more. On the other side of the equipment vans, I found a little slope and Greg could hit the balls over the vans and back onto the range.”
The plan worked. Norman was tied for the lead with three other players after the opening day, with the Australian posting a four under par round of 66.
Friday belonged to Nick Faldo, however, with the Englishman moving himself to the top of the leaderboard with a stunning 63.
Bernhard Langer was in second position, while Fred Couples and Corey Pavin were tied with Norman, two shots back of Faldo.
Both Faldo and Langer posted rounds of 70 on Saturday. That meant that Norman’s 69 left him one shot back of the lead with 18 holes to play.
As noted in the Golf Monthly story, it dawned on Norman during the final round that he was battling with a number of the greatest players of the era.
Thankfully the advice of one of the most iconic basketball players of all-time inspired him.
“Larry Bird and I have played a lot of golf together,” he said. “I always remember he said that if the Celtics were one point down with one second left, he always wanted the ball. I thought about that as I walked to the 10th tee: here we are, Larry Bird. Let’s take it to the house now.”
Norman posted a round of 64 to finish two shots clear of Faldo. He did not miss a single fairway during the final round.
Of course, the most famous duel between the pair was still to come a couple of years later.
When Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods made their Open Championship debuts
The 1994 Open Championship would see Phil Mickelson make his second appearance at the event, following his debut three years earlier. He would subsequently miss the event just once more, in 2009.
Tiger Woods’ bow in The Open would come in 1995. Between the two players, they would go on to lift the Claret Jug four times.
So it is going to be slightly surreal at Royal Birkdale in July with neither player involved.
