Lynch: If only the Masters awarded green jackets to trolls, Greg Norman would finally win at Augusta National

AUGUSTA, Ga. — For nigh on 40 years, numbers have had a painful way of exposing Greg Norman’s shortcomings at Augusta National. Some have been small, like the 5 he carded on the last hole in 1986 to finish runner-up. Or the six bogeys he made in the final round a year later on his way to finishing runner-up. Or the 11-shot swing he authored in ’96 that turned a six-stroke lead into a five-shot defeat as he finished … well, you know.

Norman largely ceased competing here more than two decades ago, and yet the 88th Masters has produced another number — one that is undetermined, but high — that reveals a great deal about him.

Each competitor in the field at the Masters gets eight passes to be used for family, friends and hangers-on, though Augusta National sets some parameters on who they may be used for. Players also have the option to purchase four additional badges. With 13 LIV golfers competing this week, that represents dozens of opportunities for one of them to bring their boss to the tournament as thanks for allowing them to grow the game.

And yet Norman ended up buying a ticket on the secondary market.

According to his son, Greg Jr., Norman was again denied a tournament pass through official channels, just as he was in 2023. “I want the focus this week to be on the Masters competition,” club chairman Fred Ridley said back then. “I would also add that, in the last 10 years, Greg Norman has only been here twice, and I believe one of those was as a commentator for Sirius Radio. It really was to keep the focus on the competition.”

Ridley knew that Norman couldn’t be trusted if admitted, that a man prone to grandstanding and grievances would likely use the Masters to platform his pettiness. This year has proved those fears justified.

The Great White Pilot Fish told the Washington Post that he’s here to support his guys. “I’m here because we have 13 players that won 10 Masters between them,” he said. “I’m here just to support them, do the best I can to show them, ‘Hey, you know, the boss is here rooting for you.’”

Except that’s not really what he’s doing.

For three straight days, Norman has appeared at Augusta National wearing his trademark straw hat, doing all he can to ensure he is noticed. And he wants to be noticed by one man in particular. On Wednesday and Thursday, he rode the rope line in view of Rory McIlroy, one of his more vocal and consistent critics. Even if McIlroy wasn’t in pursuit of the career grand slam, Norman would be about as welcome in his field of vision as glaucoma. Norman knows this, yet has opted to act as the unofficial troll of the Masters.

His targets extend beyond McIlroy to Augusta National itself. The club has stiff-armed him at the gate for two years, with cause. Claims of a conspiracy to stymie LIV have been leveled both in litigation and in public comments by its apparatchiks, yet Norman chooses to crash a party to which he wasn’t invited — in fact, to which he was expressly denied an invitation. It’s trolling in the vein of what was witnessed by Phil Mickelson at the first LIV tournament in England almost two years ago, when he showed up wearing a Masters logo on his sweater.

It’s likely that Norman’s reception on the grounds was at least polite since no one misbehaves at the Masters for fear of ejection. But in his comments to the Post, he sounded eerily similar to another flaxen-haired fabulist. “Walking around here today, there’s not one person who said to me, ‘Why did you do LIV?’” he said. “There’s been hundreds of people, even security guys, stopping me, saying, ‘Hey, what you’re doing is fantastic.’ To me, that tells you that what we have and the platform fits within the ecosystem, and it’s good for the game of golf.”

Those hundreds of people were unavailable for comment.

Norman’s son, Greg Jr., also insisted that the patrons were borderline rapturous to see his old man. “We have received a lot of hate over the years, but this stems from financially incentivized opposing parties or bottom-of-the-barrel sociopathic online trolls,” he wrote in a social media screed that echoed the addled ramblings of Li’l Donny.

While it must have been pleasant for Norman to again experience crowds at a golf tournament, his appearance had nothing to do with Bryson DeChambeau or Brooks Koepka or any other LIV golfer. Norman’s focus is never calibrated on anyone but himself, and this week at the Masters is no different. Grandstanding and grievances, the defining traits of his life and career.

Sixty-nine years of age is too old to be trolling, at least outside the anonymous sewer of social media. It’s certainly too old to be imposing one’s pettiness on people and organizations who’ve made clear their lack of interest, if not outright disdain. At every opportunity, Greg Norman continues to prove himself the epitome of Freud’s observation that the first indication of stupidity is a complete lack of shame.