WHY BUTCH HARMON REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER LEGEND

I look at butch harmon, I see his dad. I listen to Butch Harmon, I hear his dad. Claude was my friend and the smartest man I ever knew about the golf swing. Small wonder, then, that Butch learned enough from his father and applied it to his own teachings to once again be voted the No. 1 golf instructor west of Vladivostok, which is still in Russia, and north of Goose Green, which is still in the Falklands.

It’s impossible to talk about Butch without talking about Claude, the 1948 Masters champion—last club pro to win a major. Claude didn’t tell golf jokes, he told opinions. He had plenty of them, and most of them were on target. Nobody understands this better than Butch, of course.

I used to rush to a seat next to Claude at a table in the Augusta National clubhouse during the Masters, or in a restaurant on 52nd Street in Manhattan, and happily soak up an hour or so of his tales and opinions, often expressed with a wave of the hand.
We had Ben Hogan in common as a friend and idol.

Claude would say, “Ben Hogan would rather let a black- widow spider crawl around inside his shirt than hit a hook! He used to say it’s not the hook that kills you, it’s the fear of hitting it.”

Today if you hear Butch say, “You don’t practice a golf swing, you practice golf shots,” you know it came from Claude. And he’d add, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

I can still hear Claude say- ing, “If a man tells me he knew President Eisenhower, I’d ask him how Ike liked his steak cooked. I know how Ike liked his steak cooked: with a layer of salt on both sides. He also liked sliced-onion-and-mustard sandwiches. Good for the heart. I knew Ike. I taught Ike.”

Claude also taught Kennedy, Nixon and Ford, not to mention Howard Hughes, Bob Hope, the Duke of Windsor, Henry Ford, Bing Crosby and King Hassan II of Morocco, just to drop a few more names.

I was with Claude on one of his trips to Morocco, doing a magazine piece, and although
I was never permitted to meet the king I was allowed to follow him as he played his nine-hole course inside the palace walls in Rabat, where pheasants wob- bled around on the fairways.

King Hassan II might have been Claude’s toughest student. Over dinner of barbecued goat one evening, Claude, with a sweep of his hand, said, “It’s not easy to tell His Majesty that the golf club don’t know he’s a king!”

Butch can drop his own names. He's helped win majors for Tiger Woods, Greg Norman and Phil Mickelson, among others. As a matter of fact, Tiger won his first eight majors with Butch Harmon. Butch didn't try to change Tiger's swing. He mainly spoke to him about course management and how to conduct himself around all the people he was going to have to deal with.

How to tip was one thing. Butch learned about tipping from Claude, who always carried US$1,000 cash in his pocket.
“A man needs to keep cash on him,” Claude would say. “You need it in case somebody you know needs help, or in case somebody says he’s ‘got it’—he’s figured out the game of golf—you want to play that man for everything he owns.”

While Butch was at it, he had to instruct Tiger on how to ac- tivate his credit cards. He also tried to advise Tiger on how to be nice to the press, but IMG apparently told him something different.

When Butch was a little
kid running around trying to learn the game, Claude was the head coach at Harmon Tech, otherwise known as Winged Foot Golf Club, a charming, choked-with-history venue in Westchester County that has Winged Foot West and Winged Foot East—36 of the strongest and sportiest golf holes that God, man or A.W. Tillinghast ever put on one patch of exqui- site American real estate.

If you wanted to play a medley of Claude’s hits—the assistants who passed through Harmon Tech in the glory days—you’d have to start with Jackie Burke Jr., Dave Marr, Mike Souchak and DickMayer, and then add a shag bag of Rod Funseths and Al Mengerts.

Butch and his three golf-instructor brothers- Craig, Billy and Dick, who shockingly passed away in 2006 - were all exposed to that along with an overwhelming membership.

It was at one time a membership that included Tommy Armour, the Silver Scott; Fred Corcoran, who ran the PGA Tour once upon a time and was the agent/manager for Sam Snead and Ted Williams; and Dick Chapman, who won the U.S. and British Amateurs. Maybe I should include my old friend Frank Gifford so football fans won’t feel left out, and fi- nally Craig Wood, the 1941 Mas- ters and U.S. Open champion, the former head pro at Winged Foot who hired Claude as an as- sistant and put him in place to succeed him.

Butch argues that in those days Winged Foot was probably the greatest club in America,
a true sportsman’s club, but being Butch—and Claude’s son—he says there’s a new breed of member today. The guy who goes from Choate to Yale to the first tee at Winged Foot West.

If I have a favorite Butch story, it’s the one of how Claude tried to curb his anger on the course. After watching Butch throw a tantrum because he’d shot a 79, Claude said, “I can see Arnold Palmer get- ting mad, but what have you got to be mad about? You’re no good, anyhow.”

Somehow I can hear Butch Harmon passing that along to a student somewhere. It’s in his DNA. ♣