Three cheers for the old guy

I loved having the chance to cheer for the old guy -- Greg Norman -- during recent weekend coverage of the British Open golf tournament.

Frankly, he isn't that old -- 53, a middle ager -- but in the competitive world of mainstream professional sports that's old. Yet there he was, leading the four-day Open at Royal Birkdale in England on day one, leading on day two, and leading again after day three going into the Sunday final round. Ultimately, he lost it but he carried with him a bunch of wannabes like me with gray hair and bad backs and creaky knees. Win one for the geezers, we told him.

Greg Norman has been a professional golfer for 34 years. He was the Shark long before there was a Tiger. Norman was winning golf tournaments before Tiger Woods was showing his stuff on the Mike Douglas Show as a 2-year-old in 1978. Norman was the world's No. 1 ranked golfer for more years than anyone, eclipsed only by the recent No. 1 record of Tiger Woods.

What I liked about the golf at Royal Birkdale was that it was miserable -- it was cold, it was rainy, and on Saturday and Sunday it was windy ... very, very windy. It made the professional golfers very human. They missed fairways. They missed greens. They missed putts. It was just like the down-to-earth golf that most of us very amateur amateurs play.

But Norman's experience -- the been here, done this experience -- was evident. He's played in countless miserable conditions in Great Britain over the years. He had the same 30 mile an hour cross winds to contend with as anyone else, but he found better ways, better shots to deal with it and as a result he was a two stroke leader going into the Sunday final round.

I've always considered golf as a metaphor for life. It has its ups and downs. Like good days and bad days, you have good holes and bad holes. On one hole you can breeze along as if the game was as easy as riding a bike. Then the next hole it becomes a disaster, every shot a painful stroke of futility. Learning how to cope with the twists and turns of the game is the real challenge. And the experience that comes with age helps some cope better than others.

That's what I was thinking as I watched Norman's first three rounds on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Norman used his wisdom of years to cope.

On Sunday, however, the magic of the moment, the possibility that Norman would become the oldest man to ever win a championship tournament poofed. It seemed a previous incarnation of Norman showed up to play on Sunday, the one who in his prime coughed up leads during the final round. His most spectacular was the 1996 Masters when he had a six stroke lead on Sunday, only to squander the round and lose by five strokes to Nick Faldo. Old tendencies die hard, I guess.

As it was, he finished the British Open tied for third, six strokes behind winner Padraig Harrington.

Even in losing, you have to admire Norman: Owner of a successful vineyard, married to former tennis superstar Chris Evert, architect of golf courses all over the world. He's a part-time golfer who almost wrote history. We should all be so lucky in retirement to have the wisdom of experience account for something great.