AUSTRALIAN golf great Greg Norman says he came perilously close to losing his left hand in a shocking chainsaw accident over the weekend.

Norman, 59, posted a photo to Instagram, in which he was laying in a hospital bed with his left arm heavily bandaged.

The former world No. 1 issued a warning alongside the photo and suggested he’d gone close to severing one of his hands.

“Working with a chainsaw ALWAYS be respectful of the unexpected. I was one lucky man today. Damaged, but not down & out. Still have left hand,” he wrote.

Norman, Australia’s Hall of Fame golfer and entrepreneur, was cutting back trees in his South Florida home when the weight of a branch pulled his left hand toward the chainsaw. He said the blade hit him just below where a person would be wearing a wrist watch. He said doctors told him it missed his artery by a fraction of an inch.

“Thank God the blade wasn’t running full speed or it would have taken my hand off,” Norman said.

On Monday he posted another photo at home in front of the tree and was sporting heavy bandaging and padding on his injured arm.

Oddly enough, Norman had posted another Instagram a week earlier in which he was standing next to the same tree and holding the chainsaw.

“Time to trim the sea grapes today. Never ask someone to do something that you can do yourself. Love to work!” he wrote.

Norman said he would continue to use his power tools.

“When I’m on a ranch, I love to run the bulldozer, the grader, whatever. I like doing stuff. I never ask anybody to do that for me if I can do it myself,” he said.