Jon Super / AP

Greg Norman walks with his wife, tennis great Chris Evert, after shooting an even-par 70 in the first round of the British Open on Thursday. The 53-year-old was tied for fourth heading into the second round.

No, it’s not there for most weeks, but this is not most weeks.

“There’s something about this event that stimulates you,” said Norman.

He first made an appearance in this championship as a 22-year-old, though at Turnberry that summer of 1977 he was a footnote in a heavyweight match in which Tom Watson won a duel in the sun with Jack Nicklaus. What that championship did, however, was ignite in the Aussie a burning love affair with this links golf. When the British Open returned to Turnberry in 1986, Norman authored one of the great rounds in major golf history — a second-round 63 that fueled his stirring five-stroke win.

As he walked amid the dunes of Birkdale and navigated treacherous winds and a biting cold, it was easy for today’s golf fans to wonder how he was surviving such conditions. Just maybe the answer is, he knows how, but even Norman would laugh. He’s aware of this truism: people today too often forget that the game wasn’t invented in 1996 when Woods turned pro and great golfers didn’t coincide with the arrival of courtesy cars.

“When somebody says, ‘What’s the toughest conditions you’ve ever played in?’ and I say, ‘Turnberry, 1986,’ I know some of these kids might not have been born in 1986. That’s an exaggeration, but when you relate back to that, you’ve got a lot of experience under your belt.”

Which is why Norman couldn't have cared less about the moans and groans of golfers who had been beaten up earlier in the day, their scores of 82 and 83 proof positive that the game isn’t fair, that officials are out to get them, that it’s getting more difficult by the week to play golf for millions of dollars. Norman wouldn’t have paid attention, because he knows better than a hundred of these whining golfers put together that the game, like life, isn’t supposed to be fair and that learning to deal with the heartache is a big part to it all.

Sure, he had great practice at it.

The fact that he mastered it is what makes him the legend he is.