THE European Tour has changed a bit since its first official season 50 years ago. For a start, it’s now called the DP World Tour. And as for the prize money? Well, the current campaigners are now playing for the kind of vast sums that Warren Buffett's accountant used to pore over.
“I got £2,300 for winning the Italian Open,” reflected Scotsman Norman Wood of his one and only victory on the circuit back in 1972. “It wasn’t quite a life-changing amount.”
Along with the late Brian Barnes, Wood was one of two Scottish champions during that inaugural campaign. While the current circuit birls about 27 different countries throughout the globe, the fledgling tour was largely billeted on these shores with a few excursions onto continental soil. It was more Bognor Regis and Downfield than Ras Al Kaimah and Dubai.
There were still plenty of opportunities to spread the golfing wings, though. With the ingrained wanderlust of Ernest Hemingway, the intrepid Wood would take off here, there and everywhere in search of playing opportunity and financial rewards.
“I would go off to the Far East and Australia,” said the 75-year-old, who would often daydream of golfing globetrotting while working in a bank in Alloa before turning professional. “The airfare then for a round trip was £900. You can get it now for £600. It was a huge chunk out of your expenses but I was fortunate that I had some good finishes. You had to, just to keep playing. Lots of people lost all their money and had to give up.
“When I was starting off as an assistant pro at Turnberry I would head off in the winter to Florida, win a few bob there, then go off to the Bahamas, Panama and Venezuela and win enough to keep going week to week. I loved the travelling and I loved the heat. I was playing in Maracaibo and had an umbrella to keep the sun off me. I walked into a bunker and the heat coming up off the sand melted the plastic of the umbrella. That was maybe too hot. When I ran out of money I would come home and go back to work at Turnberry.”
Wood’s Italian Open win in 1972 was the start of a period of pomp and relative prosperity for the Scot. He finished second to Gary Player in the 1974 Australian Open despite a farcical palaver on the opening day.
“I got all mixed up with the time change and nearly missed my tee-time,” he recalled. “I raced through the streets in a taxi. My caddie was waiting for me on the tee and my partners were up the fairway. In those days, the rule was if they hadn’t hit their second shots you could still go. You got a two-shot penalty but not disqualified. So, I just ran on to the tee with my normal shoes on, grabbed a ball and driver, shouted to my partners that I was playing and hit it. I ended up finishing second.”
By 1975, Wood had earned a place on the GB&I Ryder Cup team for a tussle with Arnold Palmer’s star-studded Americans at Laurel Valley. The visitors suffered a hefty defeat but Wood did beat Lee Trevino in the singles. “People seem to be amazed when they find out and say, ‘what, you played in a Ryder Cup?’,” said Wood with a chuckle.
It would prove to be the peak of Wood’s career as those ruthless golfing gods started to meddle. “Between 1972 and 1975, I was at the top of my game,” he said. “It was a lovely feeling. And then I got the yips. It happened, funnily enough, in Italy.
“I had a putt of two-feet and missed it an inch left. I then had another two-footer and missed it an inch right. It got worse and worse. I was playing in a Ryder Cup in 1975 and just two years later I gave up the tour. I was hitting 18 greens in regulation and walking off with a 75. It was terrible.
"I was only 30 and should’ve been moving into my peak years. Instead, I was finished. The game was changing with more money coming into it. I often wonder what might have been. But I won on tour and played in a Ryder Cup. And I have some great memories.”
You can’t put a price on those.
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