In the annals of gut-wrenching final rounds at majors, little compares to the horror of Greg Norman’s closing 78 at the 1996 Masters, which condemned him to a five-shot loss to Nick Faldo in a tournament he had led by six. And yet amid all the grisly, gripping theatre of that day – the two detours to Rae’s Creek, the defining image of the Australian on his back in despair on the 15th green – one detail sometimes overlooked was his grace in defeat. He embraced his conqueror, he stayed to speak to reporters, and he owned his frailties under pressure.

“I screwed up,” Norman said. “It’s all on me. I know that, but losing the Masters is not the end of the world. I let this one get away, but I still have a pretty good life. I’ll wake up tomorrow still breathing, I hope. All these hiccups, they must be for a reason. It’s a test – I just don’t know what the test is yet.”

For a figure perceived both before and since as irredeemably brash, it was a beautiful capturing of what it meant to let the most coveted prize slip away. It conveyed an admirable sense of perspective, too, a reminder that beyond the narrative of one man’s world caving in, he could console himself the next morning with his yachts, his fortune and his........

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