Lorne Rubenstein - Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golfs Mysterious Genius

(Courtesty PGA of Canada Archives)

Praise for Moe & Me

For as great a golfer and legendary a personality as Moe Norman was, very few writers came to know the eccentric ball striker well. One person to truly call him a friend was Lorne Rubenstein and through a series of personal and poignant experiences in Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golfs Mysterious Genius, he finally shines the light on one of the games best and most misunderstood figures.

Bob Weeks, editor, SCOREGolf

For the last three decades, the only swings that PGA Tour players talked about with respect were Ben Hogans and Moe Normans. Lorne Rubensteins sad and joyous book now guarantees that the pros will be talking about Moe for another thirty years.

Bradley S. Klein, architecture editor, Golfweek, and author of Discovering Donald Ross

The strangest and most intriguing athlete I ever dealt with was golfing great Moe Norman. No one knew him better, or understood him more, than Lorne Rubenstein. Moe & Me is a compelling story that is part psychoanalysis, part tragedy, part comedy, part journey and in all parts love. This is a unique and beautifully told story of a man who played the game like no golfer before or since. No one who ever met Moe ever forgot him. Those who meet him now through his friend Lorne will finally get to know the sporting worlds most unforgettable character.

Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail columnist and author of Wayne Gretzkys Ghost

For Dick Grimm.
Hes made Canadian golf better for years,
and Im better for his long friendship.

What is real but compassion as we move from birth to death?
Greg Brown, Rexroths Daughter

Im just a different type of golfer, the fastest player in the world, one look and whack. It doesnt look like Im trying.
Moe, 1987

THERE WAS A STRANGE FEELING in the air at the 2004 Canadian Open. Something was missing. I was caddying for Richard Zokol, but his golf bag wasnt the heaviest thing I was carrying around with me.

Moe Norman was gone.

He died of congestive heart failure the Saturday before the tournament started at the Glen Abbey Golf Club. His voice was weak when we last spoke a few days earlier, but he was still playing six or seven holes a few times a week with his long-time pal, and four-time Canadian Amateur champion, Nick Weslock. Moe would hit a couple of balls down the fairway always in the middle and then knock them onto the green. He would get into a golf cart and drive to the green, but he wouldnt putt out. He would be out of breath after a few steps. His life was winding down. He spoke with his friend, the golf pro Mike Martz, the Thursday before he died. Everybody has to die sometime, and its been nice knowing you, pal, he told Martz.

The Canadian flag flew at half-mast at courses in and around his hometown of Kitchener over the weekend that Moe died and at Glen Abbey during the Canadian Open. The electronic leaderboards said, simply, In memory of Moe Norman, 1929 2004 . It had been a custom on the Tuesday of the tournament for Moe to saunter onto the practice tee, always at the request of players. Somebody, maybe Nick Price or Fred Couples or Vijay Singh, would invite Moe to hit balls. Hed say that he didnt have his clubs and that he was wearing street shoes. Inevitably, Moe would take a club from a players bag, look at it, pronounce it a matchstick rather than something he could use, something he could feel, that had weight. Then he would start to hit a few balls, and soon hed be in his own world. Players would watch, but they might as well not have been there. Moe was now himself; a golf club provided security for him. Hed been a ball-hitting wizard since he was a teenager.