Greg Norman: Showing Us That A Choke Is A Choke At Any Age

I like Greg Norman, I really do. He has nice blond hair, and he's Australian, and he's got a cool nickname: The Shark, he even usually wears ridiculous hats (like the one pictured at right) which is nice. He seems like an affable and all around nice guy -- not too hard to cheer for right?

This weekend I found myself strangely intrigued by The Open Championship, even without Tiger Woods casting his shadow of awesomeness across the field of hacks. The reason was simple: Greg Norman's old, and recently married, ass was clinging to the lead like a sucker fish to the belly of a Great White. He seemed like a fungus. Now granted, it was a very happy, feel-good story type fungus, but fungus nonetheless.

The 53-year-old had the lead after 54 holes, a two stroke lead at that. The whole sports world watched on to see if The Shark could seal the deal, do the impossible and become the oldest major winner of all time. He could not. And for the seventh time in his career, Greg Norman blew the lead in a major after holding it through three rounds -- an impressive feat in it's own right.

When he bogeyed one you thought "it's OK he'll settle down." When he bogeyed two it was "alright, it's a long round Greg, you're still sniffing the lead." But after a bogey on three, it was "you idiot, what the hell are you doing, man? what are you insane? this could be historic, stop choking!" But alas, no matter what, no matter how rosily colored by the media, no matter how fawned over for his perseverance over our greatest of adversaries, age -- this was still Greg Norman -- an older choker, but a choker just the same.

I applaud him for being there, but he could have taken the damn thing down and made himself one of the sports stories of the year.