“Quitters never win” – Greg Norman says the 96 Masters failure had a positive impact on him

Retired Australian golfer Greg Norman is easily one of the greatest golfers of all time. In his illustrious career, he has experienced some magnificent highs and some devastating lows.

One of his debacles that will likely always be etched in the memory of every golf fan is his 1996 Masters collapse. Entering the final day with an enormous six-shot lead over English golfer Nick Faldo, Greg Norman couldn't maintain it until the finish.

Faldo, on his part, mounted an incredible comeback to win his third Masters trophy.

Greg Norman appeared on Graham Bensinger's YouTube channel in 2017 and spoke about the 1996 Masters loss.

He talked about how the game unfolded.

"Look, I didn't think I never gave up right to the 15th. So, when that's chip shot and 15 for eagle didn't go in that was that was a tough one," Norman said.

"Because I was still believing that I could and it was at that position where if I made 3 and Nick made 5 it was a totally different ballgame."

He added that a player always fights with intensity even if the game is slowly slipping away.

"At the end of the day, you're fighting with every bit of intensity you've got in. You're fighting for it. You're fighting. For you, you've got a dare admit that things are slipping away to yourself. You keep grinding. You keep focusing."

Norman further said that he would do "stupid little things" to stay in the present and focus on the game instead of the overwhelming thoughts.

"You keep doing stupid little things yourself. I used to stick my thumb up and use my ribcage here and just give myself so much pain to focus on the moment instead of not saying all this other stuff."

When Graham Bensinger asked him if it worked, Greg Norman told him that used to do it all the time.

"I just do that all the time. All the time. Little things like that would trigger you to think about staying in the present and to get all the crap that's going through your head.

"Because winners never quit and quitters never win, right? So that was one of the great sayings that I always said to myself walking down a fairway."

This dramatic finish can be looked at from two perspectives: a great collapse or a great return. While there were elements of the former, Greg Norman has always maintained that the loss at Augusta National has had a positive impact on him.

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"You did win; you won in life" - Greg Norman on the positive impact of the 1996 Master collapse

Greg Norman at the 1996 Masters (Image via Stephen Munday/ALLSPORT)

Graham Bensinger asked Greg Norman about the positive impact that the 1996 Masters collapse had on him. Norman responded that people respected the way he handled the failure and said:

"Well, first of all people totally respected the way I dealt with the failure. I still have boxes and boxes of fan mails that people wrote me in my house."

However, something more profound made him realize the positive side of the loss. It was when a parent approached him and thanked him for teaching them an important lesson:

"But I went to Benjamin school the next day. And, like, one of my kids was playing soccer," Norman continued.

"And this another parent came up to me and said 'I want to tell you, you taught me the greatest lesson in life about how you handle that. Now I can teach my son and how I should conduct myself going forward.'"

That moment made Norman think that he had won in life even though he may not have won the Masters.

"And you go, you sit back and whoa that's pretty powerful! That I've affected another human being is powerfully as that," he said.

"But I said 'Okay, you did win. You won in life.' And the people had more respect for me and the consumers who will got to buy my products looked up to me and say you know what this guy's pretty classy guy. You know he took it on the chin."

Greg Norman added that he willingly took the loss "on the chin" when he could have easily skipped the press conference:

"I could have not gone into that press conference and walked away in the locker and said 'Forget everybody. I'm gonna go home and cry.'. No, I gotta take it on the chin."

Norman further talked about the importance of taking responsibility for one's defeats. He said that athletes need to accept lows just as they accept highs:

"That's the responsibility you put yourself in if you want to be in the arena ... You've got to accept the accolades just much as ... you know, the punch in the stomach or the face or whatever it is that you self conflict.

"So, you got to step up to it. You're going to be man enough to do it and if you don't shame on you."

Greg Norman certainly seems to have managed to turn a loss into a gain by learning from it.