Quick 9: The incredible life and career of coach Butch Harmon

5. Butch and Greg (and Seve)

Butch and Norman got together after the Aussie lost his World No. 1 ranking to Faldo in 1991 and the pair got to work on Norman’s sliding hips and that big block.

Norman got back his No. 1 spot, won The Open at Sandwich in 1993 and The Players the following year with a winning score of 24 under.

Harmon also spent some time working with Seve in 1995 when he went to his house in Spain for a couple of weeks. Ballesteros had become so bogged down in technical thoughts that Harmon eventually resorted to standing 30 yards ahead of the maestro and called the shots that he wanted Seve to hit.

“I swear the caddie didn’t have to take two steps left or right to retrieve those balls. See it, hit it.”

Butch Harmon

6. His biggest students

His son Claude Harmon tells a good story in Golf Digest of the family keeping ‘The Video’ on a VHS tape, dated August 23 1993. On it is a 17-year-old Tiger having his first lesson with Butch in Texas after he had lost in the quarter-finals of the US Amateur.

With Harmon as his coach, Woods won the U.S. Amateur three times and eight majors as a pro, highlighted by five of six in one stretch in 2000-01.

They parted ways in August 2002 though they continued to work together by phone up until the middle of 2003.

Harmon got together with Mickelson and they teamed up for eight years which coincided with an almost win at The Players followed by a third Green Jacket and the Open triumph at Muirfield. The pair became close friends and parted on better terms than his split with Woods – Mickelson flew to Vegas to do it in person, they had a hug and wished each other all the best for the future.

Butch Harmon

7. It’s all in the eyes

His son Claude explains that Harmon doesn’t rely on Trackman, preferring instead to use his eyes.

“He’s no technophobe; he was one of the very first, along with Carl Welty, to use video. My dad’s eyes perform for him what TrackMan performs for everyone else. Beyond the precision of what he sees with ball flight, club and body movements, he has a genius for addressing the root of any swing problem. It’s especially true at the highest competitive level, where the adjustments are very small. Bottom line, my dad is as great at teaching as Tiger was at playing.

8. How does he relax?

His luxuries are watches, cars and red wine. At the last count he had about 30 watches at home but then he got a deal with Rolex which slowed down his buying.

As for the wine he says ‘I don’t buy wine to keep; I buy to drink. Having said that, I do have around 280 bottles in my cellar at home.’

He has a holiday home up in the mountains in Utah.

9 Where does Butch like to play?

Unsurprisingly Winged Foot, where his dad was the pro for 35 years, would sit top of the pile, followed by Pine Valley, Seminole, San Francisco and Sand Hills in Nebraska.

Away from the States he’s partial to Royal County Down and the Old Course. And finally Walton Heath.