NORMAN DOGGED ABOUT GREAT FALL.

Byline: Boston Globe

Greg Norman has fielded all the questions he wants to hear about how he lost the Masters a year ago, so he emerged from the relative seclusion of his home in Hobe Sound this week to confront the new topic of the moment. The Fall. The attention shifted overnight from the Masters to President Clinton and his visit to play golf in a celebrity tournament.

The president was at Norman's sprawling compound when he tripped and fell in the early morning hours earlier this month and ended with torn ligaments, his knee in a cast and a wheelchair to transport him to a summit meeting with Russian president Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki. It's no longer have golf clubs, will travel out of the White House.

Instead of ESPN, it's Larry King Live and the morning TV shows calling. Instead of the Masters, it's photographers hiding in the bushes into the gates of the Hobe Sound sanctuary. They were hectic days in the immediate aftermath of the March 14 incident, but Norman has surfaced to play in the 24th Players Championship that begins today at The Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass.

They've talked since, the last time just before Clinton's summit conference in Helsinki. They plan to meet on the golf course again, and Norman said the president told him he had fallen in love with Australia on his visit there where they played a round of golf last fall and where the Presidents Cup will be staged in December 1998 at the Royal Melbourne course.

``I'm sure he'll return again,'' said Norman. ``We've discussed that. It was just one of those unfortunate accidents. He's just not going to be able to do the things he'd like to do for awhile, but then again it might have been good for him to slow him down a little bit. I'm not saying ... but every dark cloud has a silver lining come where and may slowing him down a little bit in that regard might have been good for him.''

Norman found out the global news media can be more persistent than the golf media. Players talked about a locker room ban at their annual meeting Tuesday night. ``It was difficult all of last week,'' he said. ``You were there all the time. I played an extremely low profile on the whole thing. I didn't want to get involved with getting on talk shows.

``I turned down every single one of them. I didn't think it my position to do that. I'm not that type of a person anyway. From my point of view and my wife's point of view we're looking forward to having a friend over for a couple of days. It just turned out that friend hurt himself. You feel bad if anybody has a fall at your house. It compounds the problem when it's the president of the United States. It's one of those unfortunate things. We're over it. We talk about it a little bit more and some of the players have asked me about it. I won't go into the nitty-gritty details of it.''

The media blitz followed. ``It was ridiculous,'' Norman said. ``There were people hiding in the bushes on our property. They've got a photograph of my wife and two of my attorneys sitting there. I wasn't in it, thank God. How the hell they ever got this photograph I'll never know. There's a bunch of sea grapes outside the house. They must have been camped out in there with camouflage.

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Photo: Greg Norman has been dogged by the international media since President Clinton fell at his home.

Daily News File Photo