Bill Gates and Nick Faldo. Not much in common, you would think, really ... But oh wait, think again. They both make Greg Norman look positively ordinary in both of the Great White Shark's two favourite pursuits: golf, and making loads of money.
    Now, we've got nothing against Greg Norman at IGWT Towers. If you were prone to negativity, you could resent him for being good looking, a great golfer, sleeping with Chrissy Evert, flying planes, and driving boats bigger than most people's homes, including ours. And he's worth about $500 million, give or take a few bucks. But we're not jealous a bit, no no no. We don't begrudge the Shark any of those things one iota, really. After all, he bought us a couple rounds of beers at La Costa once. Nice one, Greg.
    But Norman v Faldo in golf is no contest. Forget who wins the personality stakes - Norman has two majors, Faldo six, including the 1996 Masters, in which Norman's collapse and Faldo's victory was like watching a burning-at-the-stake. And as for birthday-boy Bill Gates - well the Microsoft magnate's pile of cash has recently been estimated at $56 billion. Greg Norman is fabulously rich and successful, but his estimated $500 mil just doesn't quite cut it in Gates' league.
    If Greg Norman's fortune were a single golf hole, then Bill Gates' fortune is a 54-hole luxury golf resort with a hotel, spa and casino attached. Just for the fun of it (enjoy it, Nick Faldo) here's what Bill Gates can buy that Greg Norman can't:
10
Boeing Business Jets ($32 million apiece), one of which Norman owns.
10
Composite-fibre 228-foot custom-built yachts, like Aussie Rules, the one Norman bought for $70 million.
10
Private islands.There's a 2000-acre beauty, Ile de Caille, currently on the market off the coast of Grenada for $100 million. Norman would struggle to afford it, but Gates could say: "I'll have 10 of those please", and still have $4.5 billion left.
100
Greg Norman-designed golf courses, at the Shark's oh-so-reasonable fee of $1.5 million per.
10 pints a day ...
For each member of the IGWT team, for the next 100 years. Which would set Gates back another $18.25 million or so, and he'd still have lots of spare change. And jeez, we're responsible adults here at IGWT. We're not 20 years old anymore, how could we possibly drink that much beer ... ?

139,000

 

The total crowd for Tiger Woods's inaugural AT&T tournament at Congressional CC last week.

This makes it one of the top four stops on the PGA Tour in terms of attendance.