Moe Norman Story
Moe would de-mystify a lot of the stories that went around about him and I think it made him feel good to get certain things off his chest. I like to think that may be Moe appreciated that someone listened to what he had to say. Later that winter Moe gave me his old J.C. Higgins driver as a gift, a club he played with for over 15 years and won multiple tournaments with.
Moe Norman re-defined the word commitment. No one I ever knew had ever been more dedicated to being good at what he did than Moe Norman. When Moe asked me to teach him how to hit the ball far, I told him he had to do three things, one of those things was a special exercise I felt would help him develop more power. I asked Moe to go easy at first and do 25 repetitions at first and slowly work up to 3 or four sets of 12 repetitions.The next day I show up to the golf course, Moe comes out of the clubhouse holding his legs and lifting his feet off the ground as if he was stepping over a log or something. I asked him “what happened, did you get hurt?”, he replied “I just did 600, just did 600”. That was Moe for you, never enough.
One of the pros playing at Royal Oak that winter was a Canadian Tour player, he came to me and said “what did you do to Moe, he used to be 15 yards behind me and now he is 20 yards ahead of me”. Sure enough Moe did gain 35 yards, he could now hit it 280 and 290 instead of his usual 255. He was thrilled to tell people I was going to make him hit it 300 one day. He was very positive when it came to golf. He made himself believe he could do anything, and he did.
Moe told me I was the first one to give him a golf lesson other than his childhood teacher LLoyd Tucker back in Kitchener and the late great Sam Snead at the ‘56 or ‘57 Masters. Every body else he said, would learn from him, by watching, no one dared tell him what to do. Ironically enough, Moe was always eager to learn and get better, even if most people thought he was the best.
We talked about golf and the golf swing all the time even though Moe was very intuitive and knowledgeable about every day issues relating to family, people and other matters of the world. There is nothing I did not ask him about his swing and the swing in general, I got quite an education in the process. Even though Moe never felt he could explain his swing very well, and preferred to show it instead, he was very capable of answering the thousands of questions I would ask. After our time together Moe told me I knew his swing better than anyone. Probably because no one had ever spent so much time with him, day in and day out hounding him with all sorts of questions as I did.
Moe and I went to Bay Hill for the tour event that was held there. We went on the Tuesday for the practice round and of course Moe loved to hit balls for the tour players on the Tuesday, something he had done for years. When Moe was asked by one of the prominent tour players of the time to hit some balls for him, Moe grabbed me by the arm and said “come on, you’re coming with me”. We went on to the driving range, Moe grabbed a 6 iron, his favorite club, and started hitting balls. He would say to the tour players, “ask Mike he knows what I do, ask Mike”. This was huge for me at the time, explaining to the top players in the world what I knew about Moe’s swing. Even though Moe would do a lot of his own talking, players asked me questions about what Moe meant by some of the terms he would use like “imagination, orientation, Ki energy, your manual dexterities, centrifugal force”.
I remember people would laugh at me back then, when I started emulating Moe’s swing, wide stance, high hands, stiff arms, the whole thing, even down to the quirky waggle. As an impressionable 23 year old, it was clear what I wanted was Moe’s success and not necessarily his swing, but I certainly was going to see if his method would work for me. I played that way through part of the winter. Moe would always say to me however, “you gotta be yourself man, gotta be yourself, don’t do what I do, I’m different, you gotta find your way”.
Using Moe’s technique, I was able to play par golf, but not much better. It became apparent that my body type did not warrant the positions and approach that Moe took to his swing. He and I were built very differently and the dynamics of our swings were very different. He was right in saying I should try to find my own way.
When people saw Moe hit balls with such great consistency, they would always say, “he is like a machine”, as every shot was identical to the previous one. I once asked Moe what it was he thought he did better than anyone else. I asked him “if I could build a machine like people compare you to, if I could build a machine that did what you do, what would that machine do”, I asked.
Ten years later almost to the day, after digesting all that I had learned from Moe and all that I had learned about the golf swing, I developed a “swing machine” that would allow the player to feel and develop those positions and movements of the swing that Moe would refer to as the “key” to his method. It is not to say that the machine strictly allows players to re-produce Moe’s swing, but it helps the player feel and master some of those “key” positions and movements that Moe would often talk about. Because of the features of the machine, the machine is adaptable to players of all shapes, sizes and all swing dynamics. This would be the beginning of the search for a program that would train and develop the swings of any player despite their physical features. A program that would allow any player to understand and produce the conditions at impact that players like Moe Norman were able to produce. That program is now completed, and much like Moe Norman had developed his own incredibly efficient golf swing, other players also have the opportunity to develop their own unique swing and enjoy some success at golf.
A few years after the creation of the machine, I was scheduled to have Moe finally try the machine on the Tuesday of the Canadian Open in Toronto. Moe and I had arranged to meet near the range and he would come with me to my van where he could try the machine. Since Moe stayed on the range longer than predicted as he was hitting balls for the tour players, it was impossible for him to come and try the machine because he was being indicted into the Canadian Golf Hall of fame that same afternoon right there on the site of the Canadian Open. Moe apologized to me and said he would certainly do it the next day if I could be around for that. Unfortunately I had commitments at work the next day and could not be there for him to finally try my machine. I ended up having a prominent tour player who later became number one in the world, to come and try my machine. After we met in the parking lot of his hotel a bit later in the day. He told me he could give me 5 minutes of his time to try this machine. He ended up spending 45 minutes in the machine. We worked on some positions and sequence of motion. He was all for it, just too bad it was too big to take with him.
Moe never got to try my machine, in Florida he would often ask other pros form my area if I was going down to see him and show him the machine. I never had the opportunity to go back down in the winter because of family and work commitments.
Moe and I had developed a mutual respect that would last until the day he died. Even though we did not communicate much after our winter together except for a few visits and a few clinics I had set-up for him in my area, Moe would always ask the guys in Titusville “where’s Mike, where’s Mike”. When I saw Moe at the Canadian open in Hamilton just a couple years ago we hadn’t seen each other for a few years and it was like we had never parted. When Moe saw me by the range, he came up to me and said, “what are you doing here, you should be out there playing”. We moved away from the people and into the shade and talked for some time. That was the last time I saw him.