It's been an interesting few weeks for one of the most interesting golfers of all time. Two-time major winner Greg Norman was recently hospitalized with COVID-19 just after hosting his tournament, the QBE Shootout, and playing in the PNC Championship with his son and alongside Tiger Woods and his son, Charlie.
Norman said he checked himself into the emergency room on Christmas Day with what he suspected was COVID-19 symptoms. After waiting a few days for his PCR test, he said he was positive on Sunday. This after testing negative multiple times to play in the PNC Championship.
Norman said he has been in quarantine for several days at home, but it has been a pretty harrowing Christmas week nonetheless.
"I am fit and strong and have a high tolerance for pain but this virus kicked the crap out of me like nothing I have ever experienced before," he said. "Muscle and joint pain on another level. Headaches that feel like a chisel going through your head scrapping little bits off each time, fever, muscles that just did not want to work ... Then my taste failed where beer tastes bad and wine the same. And finally at times struggling with memory of names and things."
Norman and his son Greg Norman Jr. finished T9 at the event after shooting 61-65. They lost to Justin Thomas and his father, Mike, by seven strokes. The two-time Open Championship winner doesn't play as much golf as most in the later stages of his life, but a lot of that is because he's so active in other areas -- the list of businesses he's involved in on his website is lengthy.
And Norman has always been a proponent of healthiness and fitness (mostly his own) over the years. So his response to contracting the virus is both expected as well as powerful.
"So I ask, do what is right, not just for you, but your family, friends co-workers and other people around," he said. "I am luckier than most, and for that I am thankful and blessed. Also the world is blessed science has acted and performed like never before in getting vaccines for all to eventually receive. Thank you to those people. We need to [get] our world back in healthy harmony so we can get healthy economically and prosperously with millions and millions people getting their lives back."
