Greg Norman: the Shark as architect

Who he is

Gregory John Norman was born on 10 February 1955 in Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia. As a youth he played rugby and cricket and hoped to become a professional surfer. His mother, Toini, who played off a single-figure handicap, taught him golf at fifteen and let him caddie for her at Virginia Golf Club in Brisbane.

Within about eighteen months he had gone from a handicap of 27 to scratch. By March 1975 he had turned professional, working first as an assistant at Beverley Park in Sydney and then in the pro shop at Royal Queensland.

The player

Nicknamed “the Great White Shark” for his blond hair, size, aggressive style and the coastal animal of his birthplace, Norman won 88 professional tournaments, including two majors: The Open Championship in 1986 and 1993. He was also runner-up eight times in majors.

The breakthrough came early. In 1980 he won the French Open by ten shots and took the first of his five Australian Open titles. Away from tournaments, the Greg Norman Golf Foundation, formed in 1987 with his father Merv, supports students and junior golfers in Queensland.

The nickname became a brand. His business interests began during his playing career, and the Greg Norman Company, founded in 1993, covers fields from apparel and wine to real estate and golf course design.

How he came to design

Greg Norman Golf Course Design was established in 1987, in the middle of his playing career, and has been responsible for over 100 courses across the world. The firm’s own site describes recent work as far afield as São Paulo, Brazil, where its team inspected the grounds of a future 18-hole course.

In 2008 the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America gave him its highest honour, the Old Tom Morris Award. He is also a trustee of the Environmental Institute for Golf, the association’s philanthropic arm, a role he took up in 2004.

His design ideas

The clearest evidence of his approach is in the work. At Tiburón in Naples, Florida, his two 18-hole courses feature stacked sod wall and coquina shell waste bunkers and no conventional rough, in grounds certified as an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary.

At Cap Estate in St Lucia the brief was different: a redesign of the greens and tees of an existing resort-style course.

On ULTIMATE Golf

Tiburón Golf Club, at The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, has the Gold and Black courses. The resort offers personalised instruction and caddie concierge services, and the courses have hosted PGA and LPGA events. Norman’s own QBE Shootout, a PGA Tour team event that benefited the CureSearch children’s cancer fund, was played here.

Jumeirah Golf Estates is a residential golf community in Dubai of over 1,500 villas, townhouses and apartments, laid out alongside two Greg Norman-designed 18-hole courses, Fire and Earth, each named for an element. The Earth Course is the host venue for the DP World Tour Championship, the season-ending event of the European Tour.

Sandals Saint Lucia’s Cap Estate Golf & Country Club is an 18-hole, par-71 course dotted with ponds and lush foliage, with an all-new greens and tees redesign by Greg Norman Golf Course Design.

Our advice: the Tiburón pair share a clubhouse and a landscape, so play the Gold and the Black on consecutive days and you will learn what the architect thought about bunkers and rough.