Most men, if their wife is out of the room, will tell you that their sporting ambitions died on their wedding day. Those unlucky enough to get married for a second time, will even openly laugh in your face if you invite them out for a casual round of weekend golf.

It’s not really their wife’s fault; there is an ingredient in wedding cake that apparently triggers the nesting gene and means that every weekend will now be taken up with home maintenance, searching haberdashery stores and “antiquing”. It’s not the end of the world – just the end of sporting participation.

While there may be just a hint of exaggeration in the above statements, a man has emerged who is poised to become a hero to all of us for whom these sentiments at least feel true. The hero? Greg Norman.

Norman – or the Shark, as he is now universally referred to – has come back from the dead to take a firm grip on the British Open golf championship. At 53, this seems like a remarkable feat. When combined with the fact that he only remarried three weeks ago, it sounds like someone is in line for beatification!

It probably helps that the new woman in Sharky’s life is Chris Evert, herself an athlete of some note but, whatever the reason, things are looking up for the Shark. After an indifferent decade where he played less and less golf, he’s suddenly back with a vengeance.

Norman has taken the 2008 British Open by storm playing solid, consistent golf, while those around him have stumbled. He takes a two-shot lead into the final round and is on the verge of rewriting the record books. If he takes out the tournament, he will become the oldest man ever to win a major title. But that’s a big “if”.

Throughout his career, Norman has been a mystery – an enigma, wrapped in a riddle and tied off with a conundrum. He dominated golf for a decade without actually dominating it. He only won two majors, coincidentally both British Opens, but was runner up a staggering eight times.

No-one who regularly watches golf will forget the last time that Norman led a major championship. He held a six stroke lead going into the final round at Augusta in the 1996 Masters. His subsequent implosion and eventual five-stroke loss led to hime being labelled with the definitive “choker” tag; a tag that he owned until the South African cricket side eventually took the crown.

Whatever happens in the final round at Royal Birkdale, Norman has given this year’s British Open some relevance again. Many had written it off as being meaningless without the presence of Tiger Woods.

Now it is guaranteed to lead sports bulletins. This is a good thing. If nothing else, Norman has given hope to all of us ageing married men – but please don’t tell my wife.