In a week in which the status of Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been enhanced once more, it is worth contemplating what profile would be afforded the first Swedish champion of the Masters. “When you have a guy like Ibra, he is higher than the king,” says Alex Norén. “He is bigger than everybody.” Is that fair? “The king is born into being a king. Zlatan has trained pretty hard.”
The LA Galaxy striker was afforded conditions unavailable to golfers in a country where winter bites long and hard. The journey of Norén is therefore worthy of attention. From a young age, dedication to the sport was absolutely necessary.
“We played inside,” Norén recalls of his teenage years. “There was a huge tent really close to where I lived; 50 yards long to a net but three storeys high. We could chip in there, you could putt, there was a gym. I was in there every day. It meant people paid attention to our swings a lot from an early age because we couldn’t do anything else. I would come back out on to grass for the first time in April or May and would be a bit wayward.
“There was something about golf being really hard. Team sports were really nice and I don’t want to say they were easy but in golf you had this thing where you show your own result every time. There are so many obstacles. I like it and I dislike it … it is so easy to get hooked. If you don’t prove to yourself that you can do it, you want to get back out there and try again. That’s the golf bug. I have always loved a challenge and always loved watching the best players. When you see them do something that you can’t, I think: ‘I want to be able to do that. Why can’t I do that?’”
There is no reason Norén cannot prevail at a major. As No 15 in the world his path is not dissimilar, for example, to the 2016 Masters champion Danny Willett. This year, Norén has placed heavy emphasis on this side of the Atlantic. “I wanted to be more used to it over here. When I came to the US for majors before, I was so unused to things. Mentally I wasn’t prepared.”
That he flies under the radar does not seem to bother him at all; this shy golfer remains happy for his clubs to do the talking. When in a play-off alongside Jason Day at this year’s Farmers Insurance Open, the Swede was unperturbed at American questioning of “Alex who?”
He explains: “You have to earn it if you want everybody to know your name and that’s not why I am playing anyway. If you brought a guy who had won nine times in the US to China, would anyone know who he is? I know how my game is, all I want to do is play as well as I can and to improve as a player. If somebody knows me or not? I don’t really care.”
The nine wins to which Norén refers were on the European Tour, including a stunning run of five trophies claimed from the summer of 2016. Norén got to that stage the hard way, having by his own assertion “not been good enough” to cut short a four-year stint at Oklahoma State University where marketing was his degree.
“Oklahoma was the best thing that happened to me golf-wise. The national team in Sweden at the time was good but I needed a bigger challenge. We had a tough college golf course, a tough coach and I had great players around me. I really needed that.”
Trouble was to follow, which explains why it has taken until now, at 35, for Norén to deliver on promise. Wrist surgery, which necessitated a swing rebuild, preceded a rib injury. Norén’s alliance with his coach, Matt Belsham, has worked wonders, with the pupil’s approach to progress a novel one. “I can ask him: ‘How does Rory hit this shot?’, and he can tell me,” says Norén. “That’s the biggest thing, if I bring a player up he knows a lot about what they do.
“I still think that’s the easiest way to improve; you see a guy who does something, especially if you are playing with them – it’s harder if you were trying to copy Ben Hogan – you can think: ‘That’s a good shot, I want to hit a shot like that.’”
Norén’s dedication is emphasised by a now infamous photo of calluses on his hands, more akin to a gravedigger than a golfer. Partly through bashfulness, he refuses to accept any sense of being a workaholic. “I have always loved it,” he says of concerted practice.
That application continues to bear fruit. Norén will relish his Augusta platform.
