Death in the Cathedral

Nick Faldo and Rory McIlroy

Dan Jenkins famously described him in Golf Digest as looking "like the guy you send out to kill James Bond."

Greg Norman, the blonde, swashbuckling Australian powerhouse with the body of an Olympic swimmer and the hawkish features of someone who wouldn't look out of place at the foot of a Parisian guillotine in 1793, was nowhere to be seen at Augusta on Thursday.

Jack Nicklaus was there alongside Gary Player and Tom Watson to act as one of the honorary starters, 40 years after he defied the odds and claimed his sixth green jacket with a back nine for the ages.

Watching it all unfold was Nick Faldo, whose brutal slaying of Norman in the 1996 Masters remains the perfect example of what makes Augusta National such an unpredictable, terrible beauty.

The Press Building that squats at the end of the $140 million Tournament Practice Area is bursting with memorabilia of past Masters.

There are framed pictures of Seve hugging Nick DePaul after his four-stroke win in 1983, a beaming Hideki Matsuyama on the face of a Japanese newspaper in 2021, the Watsons (Bubba and Tom) resplendent in green and of course, Tiger in Sunday red, fist pumping his way to immortality with a 12-shot win in '97.

But no Faldo. No shots of him embracing the crestfallen Norman in '96 and whispering, "Don't let the bastards get you down over this" after he'd erased the Great White Shark's six-shot lead in that final round and gone on to win by five.

It's a painful memory and remains one of the most dramatic, stomach-churning yet irresistible four-and-a-half fours in the history of the game, and a reminder that at Augusta National, no lead is safe.

For all his brilliance, even Seve succumbed to the pressure in '86, just as amateur Ken Venturi did in 1956, blowing a four-shot lead to lose to Jack Burke Jnr when on the cusp of making history.

Scott Hoch missed a tiddler to beat Faldo in 1989, but nothing compares to Norman's death by a thousand cuts at the hands of the Englishman 30 years ago.

Rory McIlroy's 2011 collapse resonated last year when he finally won, but Jordan Spieth watchers still wonder what might have been in 2016, when he was defending champion and led by five strokes heading into the final day, only to take seven at the par-three 12th and finish three behind Danny Willett.

Spieth hasn't been the same since, just as 1996 scarred Norman forever.

The Australian never forgot his chance encounter with scribe Peter Dobereiner on the eve of the final round.

"Not even you can f—k this up," Dobereiner quipped.

Augusta National and the golfing gods begged to differ.