No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 1223: Butch Harmon

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

We’re delighted to welcome Butch Harmon to the pod to discuss his legendary teaching career. Butch has worked with multiple world number ones and numerous other top ranked touring pros, not to mention the occasional pupil who also happened to be a monarch. We also cover his family, TV broadcasting work, and his take on the state of the modern professional game as well.  Support our Sponsors: Titleist Rhoback The Stack Whoop If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Nest⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠nolayingup.com/join⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club today. That's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the No Laying Up podcast. Sali here, me and DJ sat down.

DJ and I, did I mess that up? I think I did. DJ and I sat down with Butch Harmon yesterday. I guess we've been wanting to have on the podcast for quite some time. He did not disappoint. He told all the stories. We got it all.

I say we got it all. You cannot get that guy's career in an hour and 24 minutes, but that's how much time he spent with us and we greatly, greatly, greatly appreciated. This podcast is going to be started ad-free by our friends at Titleist. We are going to get right into it. Titles.com find a fitter near you. Here's our chat with Butch Harmon.

All right. First question for you, Butch, is there anyone you could think of that has lived a more interesting golf life than you have off the top of your head? Because I truly don't know where to start with this. your career and your experience spans generations, but anyone you could think of it as a more interesting golf life.

I'm sure there may be somebody out there as, for me, you know, I've been a golf pro for 60 years. I grew up in a golf family. My dad won a master's in 1948. My brothers are all of a golf pros. So, I mean, the golf has been our life. This is all we know. I teach you all the time.

I said, if they made golf illegal, I'd be in trouble. I'd have to rob the seven or less. 11 or something to make a living because I don't know how to do anything else. I've been very lucky. Everything that I have monetarily wise or things like that has become because of golf, it's just everything to me. It's all I need, at 83, I'm still teaching. All my buddies are retiring and they say, why you keep working?

I said, well, I love what I do. And, you know, what else do I sit around the house all day long? I'm in perfect health. Everything is good. So I like to say, I'm 83, but I'm 15 mentally. And my lovely wife, Christy says, oh, you had a birthday. You're 15 now. Bush, I'm curious.

We'll have a lot, a lot of golf questions, I know. But you mentioned your family. You mentioned kind of the lineage. Is there ever any point in your life where golf was not going to be the path? I mean, was there ever a young, you know, 12, 13 year old Bush? Maybe I'll become a lawyer. Maybe I'll become an architect. Anything like that?

Or was it just golf no matter what all the time? Well, as a kid, I was a good high school football player, All-County half-backed to the nurse show. I played one year junior college ball, but at, you know, at 5-8, 160 pounds, even though I was fast and crazy, I'd decided I got my ass kick when I went to boot up while I went to golf. But I had a bad period of my life, 80, 81, where I was out of work. I was divorced.

I didn't, I owed a lot of money. I mean, I was really, really down and out. It was the worst part of it. All brought on by myself, not anybody else, drinking too much, gambling too much. And I finally, my brother Dick kicked up the phone one day in Houston. And he said, let's get in your car, drive to Houston. I'm going to get your head out of your ass. We're going to get you back to be it.

I didn't have a job. I went to work for Dave Marr and Jay Revere, building golf courses for about three or four years. And really enjoy that and realize how much I missed golf. And then after that, I got back into golf. golf again and started running a municipal golf course down in Texas City, Texas called a bio golf club and moved on from there. And the rest is history.

But it really, if it hadn't been, for one, my brother's Dickie and my dad and my brother bailing me out financially, who knows where I would have been. I'm not damn sure wouldn't have been where I am today. And so I owe them a tremendous amount of credit. And yeah, so that was an area of my life.

I didn't know what the heck I wanted to do. I was lost. I was not a good person, not living a good life. I think the one thing that saved me is I've always been a workaholic. And when I went to work for really golf courses of shaping greens and teas and working on construction crews, it made me realize how much I really missed being in the golf business. And then I got back into it.

And here we are today. What do you think you missed? I just missed people. I'm a people cursor. And I love people. I love meeting people that do things different in life. You know, I've played golf for, I don't know, four or five, presidents. I used to work for a king of Morocco for 10 years. I've just met all kinds of people

all over the world, and it's all because of golf. And I think I miss that. It's funny people say to me now, because I don't travel anymore on the tour. I stopped traveling the tour in 2019. I still teach a lot of prior time to sleepboard, Ricky Fowler, all those guys. I still work with them. They'll come out and see me here. But we can do it all just through video. They can send me video or wherever they are in the world. who've done Sky Television for over 30 years for golf. I now only, I used to do all the majors. Now I just do the master's.

I was asked the guy, asked me something the other day. He was, we missed the most about not being on the tour. And I said, look, I don't miss not being on a tour. I don't miss the travel, the restaurants, the hotels. I said, I don't miss it all. I said, what I do miss is in major championships because for 30-plus years, I've always had somebody I was coaching that could win one.

and I miss the rush of that. I mean, obviously, I've been fortunate enough to have been involved in a lot of major championship wins with my players that I've coached. But I miss the rush of that. You know, if somebody plays Corleone on a Sunday, did I miss something that week? The joy of watching them go out and winning.

So I missed that part of it. But other than that, you know, I think I'm just here because this is where I'm supposed to be in life and I'm still hanging on at 83. Speaking to the interest of goal, life you've lived. I literally in the preparation was like, hmm, I wonder if we'll have time to get into him working for the king of Morocco. Like, I'm not sure if we'll have, we'll have time for that part. It's just, there's some interesting stories there. I'll say it that. I mean, you just keep going.

You know, I'm learning, I'm already learning, despite all the research, I'm learning more about kind of your path there. But what would you, a lot of people obviously know you for your work with some of the top players in the game? But what was your your, your path back into teaching and your, your your path straight towards the top players in the world. We obviously know you from a lot of your time working with Tiger Woods, but prior to that, that was not your only experience working with a top player in the world. Yeah, I mean, I really started, oh, way back in the,

oh, middle to late 80s, working with Steve Elkinson. He was the first tour pro I really started working with. I went from that. He introduced Greg Norman to me. Then I went to work for Greg Norman. and uh rau let's see way back in the early 90s uh took him to number one in the world people people think tiger woods is young christian i've ever taught but i was great took gregg the number one in the world i had davis love in that period too one davis won't davis went a lot when we were together

uh then tiger came along i worked with tiger starting when he was about 17 year old way back in 93 uh you know so that that was a real joy but i've had such a great career i've had such a great career I've had so many guys that I've worked with 35 or 40 tour players through the years. People say to me, how did you pick your players your work with? I never picked anybody. They picked me. It's not my job to go. I've never solicited any word from anybody.

I think your record speaks for itself after a while and people want to come to you. I, to this day, spend a lot of time with some of the best players in the well that nobody knows about because they just want to get a different opinion and they'll call me and come out. And I don't publicize that or show that on Instagram or anything. and just get an opinion. So I enjoy the fact that they want to hear what I have to say. It's just, it's been a joy for me. I get a great satisfaction about helping people.

I'm like a college professor, high school teacher. People that I work with, whether it be normal people or tour players, I get a great satisfaction out of watching them get better. And I think the thing I am most proud of, it's not so much all the wins that I've been involved in with guys or all the major championships that I've been involved in, the guys has won,

is nobody's going to stay with you forever. That's just the way it is. And I always say that everybody who came to me, even when they left, they were better off than when they showed up. And that's always been something that I'm proud of it. It's funny because I tell people

when I give them a lesson, I say, now the best thing about this is from now on, every time you play bad, you can just play me. They were but trauma and told me to do that. And I don't, I said, don't feel bad, because I think I took five guys,

five people are number one in the world and they all fired me so you're not going to buy I'm curious I think you know I'm not a student of the golf swing by any means but I think what everybody knows about you is kind of the the refined versus rebuild sort of philosophy I'm curious did that does that go all the way back to those Elkington and Norman days and and when you have that philosophy what is I mean what's that first meeting look like what are you looking for what are you listening for how do you how do you start working with these these players well for me the The two biggest influence in my teacher were obviously my father and the great John Jacobs. They were my two biggest influences.

My dad had a philosophy to never change what somebody does normally, just make it better. Because their swing is their swing. I'm not one that goes in and revamp somebody to swing completely. Very seldom when you watch some teachers where they have success with somebody, they try and make everybody do that. If you look at all the players I've been with, only two of them look the same. and that's Tiger Woods and Adam Scott. And when Adam Scott came to me when he was an 18-year-old freshman at UNLB,

that's how he swung because his father helped him and he admired Adam Scott. But all the others, you can see, they just have different golf swings. I think the biggest change, you might see if you go back and look at Greg Norman before I had him, and then after I had him, because I got rid of the right foot slide and the block and the overswing, swing got wider and shorter and more control. and then he became number one of the world and that was fun there. But I just try and take what you do naturally

and just try and make it better. So what does that, where does that usually manifest itself? Like what are the things that you're usually, you know, the top three things that kind of pop up that are like we really have to get this right? Believe it or not,

basic fundamentals are always basic fundamentals. It doesn't matter whether you're a tour player, 18 handicap. It takes no athletic ability at all to have good basic fundamentals. that's clear posture, alignment, ball position, aimed. And even working with the best players in the world, sometimes they get out of whack in their setups.

And their timing is so good that even if they're coming from a wrong position, they can square the club because they have so much talent. And they'll go along and play pretty good. And then all of a sudden, boom, they, the shoot 75, if they can't make it cut. Well, it's because they, something was wrong. I'll give you a great example. Years ago when I worked with Ernie Ellis, he came to me and we were hitting balls on our range here

in Vegas. And I said to him, where are you, he was into seven hours. Where he aimed? He said, Ron, I made with that pin over there. I said, Ernie, you're aimed 15 yards to the right of that target. He goes, no, I'm not. I said, okay. Well, I've cut him down. I stood in his stance and I said, go behind me. He went, oh, my God, I'm 20 yards to the right of my target. No wonder I can't get it. And so once again, it goes back to basic fundamentals. You put him in a better position there. Set up could be different. Alignment is different. Um, it's different. Uh, uh, Sometimes they get a little open, right arm gets a little higher. That means the left shoulder opens a little.

You have to square that up, soften the right elbow, the shoulders square up. The club gets going back on playing better. So there's a lot of little idiosyncrasies that you do. If you look at all the players I've had success with, a lot of times you'll say, I don't see a lot of difference in their swing. But if I put it on film and showed it to you, very small fixes create consistent swings. we learned at an early age, don't try and fix five things to fix the fault. Fix the fault first and four or five other things just fall into place.

And I've always used that with tour players and with the average players that I teach. I'm curious on this. And I'm sure you have some examples that'll help bridge this question. And we'll get kind of into one very famous major swing change you made with a particular player. But you work on timelines in professional golf. There's tournaments upcoming or there's tournaments. that are far away. There's swing changes that you think might take three months to pound in. There's some that are Saturday night before the final round of a major championship.

I'm curious if you could kind of give me some examples of how your advice, how your guidance to these players would vary in those situations. And I'm sure you have some specific situations you can pull on there. Let's talk about major championships, for example. The Masters is the easiest one to get ready for because it's always at the same courts. It's the got the national. So if you have a player that needs to hit the ball a little higher to make it come down into greens better

or to draw the ball a little more than they normally do, you will work on that going into Augusto. Once the Masters is over with, it used to be the US Open, and now it's the PGA. You'll look at that golf course, and for each one of the individuals that I work with it are playing, at what do we need to change for you to play better on this golf course

than that golf course? The beauty of it, I've either played all of these golf courses that majors are on. I've been there with my players, so I know the golf course is pretty good. I know the people's way they swing and what they need to do. And then you just start working on that. You get them ready. I'll say, interesting story about Pagerberg.

We would always start the year with a master's invite. What do we need to change during this compared to what we're doing now? Do we want to hit the ball a little higher? Do we want to draw the ball a little more? Do we want to take the ball flight out of the air on certain shots? He won tournaments. in January, February, March, before the Masters, playing shots that weren't the shots for that tournament in that golf course.

But he was playing him to get ready for Augusta because he wanted to make it work in tournament conditions. He literally would win tournaments, hitting the wrong shots at times for that pin or that T, but he was just trying to get ready for Augusta. And that was one of the beauties of Tiger Woods. He just always thought he could get better. He always worked hard at it. I will tell you this,

The two guys I took the number one first, Greg Norman Tiger Woods outworked everybody. They worked harder than anyone because they liked being number one. They both stayed there a long time. You look at some guys, they get there, and I can't handle the pressure. But that was how I would do it. We would look at the majors, the courses that they are. Do we need to change something in your swing to create this type of shot?

Historically, the pins and the pet, always we have the pin sheets and stuff. I can tell of pretty much where it would be every round. I've been going there my whole life. And you started looking, okay, for this hole, you're going to have to take the ball out of the air, let it come in, turn it a little right to the left so it can skip down to this bend. This one, you've got to hit a little higher coming in because the green runs away, and we have to do this or that. So we really start to prepare for what the golf course is in a major.

And it's been fun doing that. I mean, I enjoy doing it, and the guys really like doing it. And so, you know, I've been going to majors my whole life, I've played in majors before. that part of it is kind of how I addressed the big tournaments and what do we need to change in the swing. So take us to 1996. You have out all the success with Greg Norman. He shoots 63 in the opening round. But the game is, you know, slowly, it's kind of maybe getting away from him that week.

And obviously, we remember what happens on that Sunday. But what was your work with him week of in that moment when you can kind of watch this potential car crash coming here? what's it like to kind of communicate with somebody in that moment? And how conscious are you of like what the exact thoughts you are putting into somebody's head in a major pressure moment? That was the longest day I've ever had walking the golf course watching the guy to play. I can tell you that, I was a six-shot league. He was so prepared to play there.

As you know, Greg, I think he's one of the greatest players that ever lived. He only won two majors. And he had a chance to win five bastards. He either blew it or somebody did something. and like Larry Meis pitching in on a playoff ball and he couldn't do that one in a thousand times. But for that one, the Great Norman, I'm not going to elaborate on what I think was the reason.

The Greg Norman had showed up on Sunday was not the Greg Norman that left on Saturday. He was uptight. He was, he wasn't himself. And I kept telling him, like, just relaxed. And he, what do you mean just relax? I'm not, no, you're not relaxed. Just relax and go play.

I don't know what the reason was. you know there's been a lot of speculation on that I'm not going to go into that but he just wasn't the same guy that showed up on Sunday but if you think of that round it started on number eight he went for the green and two on eight

hooked it to the left but did get up and down and made par now and he drove it all the way down to the bottom the only thing you can't do is hit a wedge and there were too much spin because it'll come back off the green all he had to do is carry a pass and he still got to leave he's still in the lead

with no problem. Carrey passed the pin, let it go down there to eat and make a putt and move on. It's fun, if you remember, spun it all the way back down, made boat. Ten, he hits a perfect drive. Pretty good little second shot. Just missed the green to the left. Didn't hit a good pitch shot, made boat. We go to 11, this is where he's right in the ship. Perfect drive. He hit to about six feet. They had a different pin on Sunday in 96. Instead of the back left over there, it was in the one in the front and up against the lake. there on the left. He hit it to six feet. This is going to make this pod make birdie. It's going to change everything. He power lifts it out, goes by about three feet, and misses it. And all of a sudden

the wheels came off, hit in the water on 12, hit into water on 16. I mean, the wheels just came off. He wasn't, in his head, he wasn't the same guy that he was the first three rounds. And it was, I think I have an idea of why, but I'm not going to go into that. And it just wasn't the same guy. But for me, being his coach and walking those 18 holes because I wasn't doing TV in those days, this guy, it's the longest day I've ever spent on a golf course of my like just watching it. How you can see it happen? I mean, like, what in the world is going on?

What is in your head? You know, your swing was fine when we left Saturday night. But that's golf. You know, so it's not over until it's over. And I'll say this, whether you're a Nick Faldo fan or not, if it's immaterial, you got to give him a lot of credit because he shot 60-Center. Yeah. Just in case something were happened, and it did.

But if he doesn't shoot a good round, it probably doesn't, pressure wouldn't have been on Greg so much, and who knows what would have been, what else would have happened. So Faldo gets a lot of credit for how well he played that day. But that was, of all, everything I've ever done with tour players, good and the bad. That was the longest thing I've ever seen, man. That was a train wreck or train wrecked.

Do you, when you, the next year is a very different story for you around Augustine Nationals. But did you have, I guess, kind of that carryover from the past year as Tiger's got a bigger lead heading into Sunday? Was there any of that same kind of, you know, feeling in your head at any point? I'd tell you interesting story about that. The one thing I loved about a young Tiger Woods is he wanted to know about the guys that came before him. He was very intrigued with the fact that my father won the masters that I knew all the greats. I had, probably when I was a teenager, play with Ben Hope. So I had seen all the great players play. And he always asked a lot of questions about the great players and how they did

this and why did it do that? And I told him, I said, you know, my dad said, the greatest feeling he's ever had of walking up the 70 second hole in Augusta with a five-shot lead, knowing he couldn't lose the master because he had it won. And I said, you know, someday that's going to happen to you. well, I can remember standing behind the 18th 3th on Sunday. Him's coming up the 18th, I think he had a 12 shot late at the time, and it was a little overcast, and I was standing behind his mom and dad, and I still had my sunglasses on because I was crying. I had tears in my ears thinking, God, I told this kid this is going to happen to him Sunday.

Well, it's not five with a 12 shot at me. So that was the time I'll never forget. I'll say that. And, you know, this part was always so hard for all of us in the public, especially me as I would have been, what, 10 years old when he won in 1997. But, you know, a lot of people don't know the full story of kind of when you started working with Tiger Woods and how we can say, all right, well, under Butch Harmon, since 93, when they started working together all the way up to he wins the Masters by 12. And now we're going to go redo everything was always, and I think I understand it now, but it's taken me a lot of years to fully understand that. We obviously know what follows there.

But take me back to the origin of how you started working with Tiger Woods and the evolution from a junior golf swing. into the more senior levels of amateur golf into being a 21-year-old professional and just the life cycle of the swing and how your guys' working relationship started. Well, the U.S. amateur was the champions in Houston and I was at a club called Lockenbar in Houston. I was a director of golf there.

And I think Tiger lost his third round match. I'd never seen him play. I knew who he was. I knew he'd won three junior amateurs and stuff. And so his dad called me, because Greg had won the open that year and played so great. And his dad called me, asked if they could bring him over to Lockwood Bar.

So, yeah, he run them over on Saturday and Sunday. I still have the film that I show people that's in my computer that we took that day. You could see the kid had a tremendous national talent. I mean, he was giving great talent. And he was a competitor. I tell you a funny story. First day I saw him, he's hitting balls. And he had kind of a long across the line.

Skinny kids stuck behind, a lot of flip in the hands. hit the ball and mile. And so I said to him, I said, well, you're in competition, all great players coming down and stretch, have a shot off the tee. They can just get it in a fair way. A little tight draw, a little freight.

I said, what do you do when you do that? Because I just teed up, hit as far as I can and go fine and I'm thinking, well, that's a cocky as okay with that. But the more I got to know, and that's how he felt. The interesting thing, if you think about this, and I'll get to what we changed in 97 in a minute,

if you go back and look at it for six great years, won a national championship. He won three juniors and he won three amateurs. No one had ever done that. No one had ever won three amateurs in a row. Bobby Jones didn't do her, Nicholas didn't do it. They all didn't do it. What you don't know in every one of those six final matches and all six of those USGA events, he went to the last hole either tied or won down and he won every single one of those there. Because he had it right here. He had it right in his heart as a kid. You could see it. you're not going to beat me. I'm going to figure it out what's going to happen.

And then he was able to do that. So now you pass forward to 97. At the end of 97, we always look at stats. We always look at what do we need to work on. And he and I talked about it. The club was a little bit across the line. He would get the club a little behind him coming down. And he said, I don't like that position.

I said, I don't either. I said, we can change that. I said, it's going to take time. And I want to change it all right now. I call him TIG. I said, well, T, you're going to have to Clay in 1980s. I don't care. So we're going to change it.

Well, think about 1990. You won one time. One. It's all they won in 1990. It's been a whole year working on changes in the swing. Then came 99, 2000, 01, 2002. I mean, you know, the rest is history. And I tell people that I give a lesson to all the time, and you guys can relate to this.

You can take a lesson from your local PGA pro. And it's going to take time. Change takes time. And you go out, you don't play good. You just throw that out. Well, that's not what. But here's a great. player that ever lived. Working harder than anybody ever lived. And it took them about seven months to feel

comfortable. I got a call from one day on the range. I think it was around maybe been September, August September. And he said, okay, I bet you I got. I really got it. I got it now right where I wanted. Everything looks good. The film looks good. I'm sending you the film. She's everything is perfect. And he was right. But he worked so hard on that. And he wanted to do it all. I wanted to do it a little bit of time. No, I want to do it all right now. A lot of you who are watching the show who take lessons. I'm going to tell you something he did that I think would help you when you take a lesson. He

must have hit balls with a slow motion swing a thousand times. Just making a full swing in slow motion to put the hands and arms and body rotation in the same position every time where he could feel where he was trying to go. And sometimes we just take

a six and tee it up a little and he would just make full swings in slow motion. Full swings and slow motion. Just feeling it. If you go back and and look at the stuff you see on the golf channel all the time with Peter Kessler and golf's life. When he was on, he talked about the drill I made him do where he had to stop at the top. He said, God, I hated that drill. I hated doing that, which he made me do it, and I knew I had to do it.

And, you know, to stop here and to let his arms get down here versus the club getting behind him. So he worked his tail off, doing all these little different drills to get it. And the average person, those of you are watches, you can learn from that. You can, slow motion swings are a fabulous way for a player to feel what they're trying to do. Because in slow motion, you can literally get your hands and arms and body in the right place. You can feel yourself coming down and how you get through the shot and film it. You know, and I used to film practice swings all the time. So, look at my guy, make a practice swing.

But here's the best part in the world. It's like I'm one year to feel comfortable with it. And you and I take a lesson when we say, hell, that didn't work. I'm going to try something else. It just shows you, and I tell people all the time, whether it be a tour player or really with the average players, look, change takes time. It's not easy to change. You get a guy who's a 1415 handicap, but he swung the same way a long time. It's hard to get him to change.

And yet when they make a cracker swing, they can do it. And then when they get up there and make the swing, their nerves take over. And I show them the film of the practice swing and put it side by side of the real swing. And then they get an idea of what we're doing. But it's not easy to change. What you got to realize for guys like myself in the small group of stuff, a category of players that we work with and the coaches that they have is we're dealing with great talent. So they can do anything you tell them to do.

So you better be sure when you're making a change that this is what really needs to happen. You don't want to make a change just because you taught somebody else to do this and maybe they should swing like that. So they're going to be able to do whatever you tell them. And that's why I said the thing I was most proud of that everybody that has come to me, they were better off when they left than they were when they came. And I'm proud of that. Of course, by now you know Taurus, Season 10 Islands and Highlands is sponsored by our friends at Roebuck. Roebuck, of course, all about bringing people together.

They crave activity just like us and to kick off season 10. You can use code sauce at roback.com. I got some great stuff in there. Roeback, Best Fit, Best Feel, Tora Sauce Season. New episode comes out here on Wednesday evening. Also want to give a shout to our friends at the stack. I'm back into it. I took about 42 days off, according to my app.

I just did a stack session this morning. I still absolutely love doing this as a just a normal golf activity. I would rather do a stack session than I would go to the range in terms of keeping my golf muscles moving. It's easier to do. You can do it in your driveway. 35 minute workout helps you swing the club faster, freer, helps keep your golf muscles active. I cannot say enough great things about the program. I'm going on my fifth or sixth time, probably all the way through it.

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You can do it on the range. You can do it in a net. You can do anything. It's, I mean, does that sound like a better way to practice some wedges than just randomly hitting firing balls at random pins on the range? Probably does. It's a great activity for your distance control. I'm behind on doing that, but I'm going to get back into that this fall. For more information, go to the stack system.

dot com slash NLU. You can use code no laying up on that website as well for a discount. Again, the stack system. Dot com slash NLU code no laying up. Let's get back to But Charmin. I think I have this right from the Gulf Academy Live episode that you're referencing, which has made the left-hand. grip weaker, narrowed the stance a bit, club up a little earlier, clubhead ahead of my hands, my hands longer going back, higher right arm, round off the left arm, make it flatter at the top

from there, get the club down in front of me, arc it off from there with a little bow in the left hand, nice short follow-through. And don't do the O-Lay swing. No, no O-Lay swing. You got it. Well, that's just fascinating to me, you know, to go through it all at once. You're like, well, how did it take him so long to get through all? Okay, well, all of those in sequence. and working on all that together. Well, sequence is the most important part of gosh swing. The function of the back swing is just to get into position. You see guys with a lot of different positions at the top of their swing.

The sequencing on how you get back to impact and edge it is the key. And you can come from the wrong place, but if you can sequence it back down, you're going to be able to fly it. The higher handicaps can't do that. And that's why here's the two different things. And I said it a minute ago. When I'm working with a tour player,

I have to realize that I'm working with how he makes a living. And I better be 100% sure in what I'm seeing and what I'm telling him that he needs to do. If I'm working with a 15 handicapped, I'm experimenting my butt off. I said, well, that didn't work. Let's try this. I'm just trying to get the guy to get the club on the ball. And so it's a different animal when you go to how a guy makes a living. I don't know where I heard this, and I don't know if no idea if this is true,

that episode of Golf Academy Live, were you just scheduled to be on, and did Tiger kind of crash it? Or were you guys both scheduled to be on? I was scheduled to be on and I said to Peter Kessera. I said, I think I ain't, Tiger's in town. I think I can get him to come home. He said, he came over here on a white t-shirt. Yeah.

You didn't even wear a white shirt on TV because it doesn't be, you know, and so he says, I said, look, I'm doing a golf academy live. We're going to talk about your swing. Why don't you come on? He goes, okay, yeah, I'll come over there. So that'll be fun. So he came over and it was all, you know, I just put the idea in his head. It was his idea.

He goes, yeah, let's do that. We can tell people what we. it and you had it found perfect all the things he talked about you know he used it well i had to arc off this how to do that you know and the average guy didn't know what the hell he was talking about and then i tried to clean it up a little and put it that look he's your language but he was very a vibes to do it and he was great doing it because he because i said i think if you remember i started to say something i said heck why don't you explain what we did and that's when he went to that that whole scenario everything the way you just described it i've forgotten how much

It was I'm thinking people at, oh, probably going, what in the world is this guy talking about? Bush, this is maybe a stupid question, but I don't know when else I'm going to be able to ask this. There's a, there's an anecdote in, I think it's the Jeff Benedict, Armand Cotein book about Tiger. And they're talking about the 95 USM. I think it, I think it is. And there's a specific shot that they're talking about. And Tiger pulls it off down the stretch. I think it's like this sawed off kind of nine iron sort of thing.

Who is on the last on the last hole. And he finishes it. And at least in the book, there's this big reaction. I remember Sally and I were driving. We're listening to the audiobook. And they're quoting Tiger in this audio book. He's like, I did it, budge. I hit the shot.

I hit the shot. And we say it to each other all the time. We work on that all week, a little three quarter, an eight iron. It was probably a hard nine, but if it's a hard night and the green is a little back to front, it was going to spin back too much. And so he was going down to staff. And we work on it all week long. This is a little three quarter.

So it's funny, Tommy Cleetwood hits that shot a lot. And Tommy calls it his shoulder. the shoulder swinging. In essence, that's what we do with Tiger. Just a little motion here and a little motion there or everything's staying together. Blow comes out of the air a little bit. We practiced it every day that week on the rain.

Every day. And as it came down at the 36th hole, you know, and you got to hand it to Buddy Marucci because nobody caught Marucci could have had a chance to beat Tiger Woods. He took him to the last hole. But that was the shot. And that's what he said.

I mean, he just, after that, I was walking in the gallery, and he saw me over there, he goes, I get it. It worked. That's when he was a kid, when he was fun to be around. I think that's why I love that story so much. You know, it's just this totally disarmed, you know, the guy that everybody knows. He did that again in one of the masters that he won.

I don't remember if it was 97. I think it was 97 on the 11th hole with a little three-quarter nine iron, 140 was the exact same swing. Yeah, it was just the most beautiful flighted baby draw to my three. four feet. I know exactly the shot you're talking about. I've seen that highlight. He was up to the right. Remember, he drove to the right just past the trees up there. Yeah. That T shot rides along. There's a cable on the ground. I remember this. That T shot rides along this cable and he hits that. Actually, where the Pate gives have been walking him. Exactly. He hit that exact same swing. Yeah. And he had perfected it a little

bit at that. So we, you know, we had the the clicking moment. It comes right before Byron Nelson, I believe, in 99 of the swing. Uh, it all clicking there. And obviously, if we, if we, fast, you know, we had a great 99 and success there wins the PGA that fall. But what are you, what are you saying to him the week of the U.S. Open in 2000, the week of the Open Championship in 2000? Are you, do you understand in that moment what is going on in terms of how well he's hitting it? And do you just stay out of the way? Do you give him a couple mental? Like, what was it? I'll tell you that go back to what you said about the Nelson in 99. I lived in Houston. and I was at the Rockets basketball game.

And in between it, I was watching, going up and watching the TV, because it was Saturday, and I saw just a little something in a swing. I didn't like, so I called him on the throne that night. I said, hey, I'm going to drive up there tonight, give me a room in the hotel.

I said, I saw a little something we can work on tomorrow before you go play. And so we did, and he had the club just a little in, and the down swing, he was saving it with his hands, and we went on the range of work, and obviously he won easy. Well, 2000, the Sunday before the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. He's here in Rio Saco where my headquarters is.

He's playing with Adam Scott, who was not in the U.S. Open. I played with him that day. He was blowing 30 miles an hour. He had a penalty shot, and shot 63. He never missed a shot. And Adam shot 72, and Adam said, Butch, we got a lot of work to do because I couldn't have played anybody. I played it.

We literally all ran to the casino and made a bet on Tigerwood in the U.S. And I mean, he played so good that whole week. He drove the ball so beautifully. I mean, you know, if you go back and you look at 2000, he was the second longest hitter in the world. I think John Daly was the longest. He was hitting 72% of his fareways. When you're driving it that far,

they're hitting 72% of your fareways. And without a short game, you're pretty hard to be. What people forget on Saturday, the third hole, which is just like three wood and a wedge, he made it triple. He made seven on that hole and still one, but it's a zillion shot. And he laughed about it. That was the crazy part. He was getting there. He knew he was good. He wasn't really happy with Friday. I forget which round it was. There might have been Friday. I can't remember.

I think Friday he had to go back out. I'll finish. Anyway, he says, it's dark out. He said, what, are you up? Yeah, I'm up. Okay. Come on. over the course, let's go to the putting green. I said, I think it's like 4.30, 5 in the morning. Now, let's go to the putting green. So I was thinking in my room, I was cutting some. So we go to the putting green and probably, no lights on. You got a little lights from the stores there.

He's there. I don't know, 5 in the morning or 4.30 in the morning or 430 or 5 o'clock 30. He's cutting on a putting green. Yeah, I think I got it now where you make. But this was the guy's mentality. He was always working. The shots I remember, they played the second hole, which is the firefighter. They played to the part four.

It's a funky drive, because it's a dead straight hole, and the fairway goes this way. He hit four of the best bullet drives I've ever seen him hit off that throwaway, right in the middle of the fairway all four days. And, you know, I mean, the rest is history. And the best thing I will tell you to say what a competitor is, he's got, what, a 15-shot leader, or whatever it was. He was playing a 16-th hole, and he misogreen he had about 15-footed apart. And if you remember it, he made this 15-footer, and he gave it a big fist pump that he made it. I was doing the TV for Sky with you and Murray and I were doing the commentary. He got really excited for making that far.

I said, well, you don't understand. He told Steve Williams and I, on the pact of Steve, but I'm not making a bogey today. I am not going to make a bogey. I'm not giving anybody any chance. I don't give it damn how low they shoot. They're not going to catch me. That was his mentality. He was not going to let that courts beat him.

And I remember people say, why did he get so excited about that? He had a 15-shot lead or 13-shot leave or 13-she-le, whatever. was. And so, here's funny story. He's playing, last round he's playing with Ernie. I come down out of my tower on 18, because I know I've got to do an hour show afterwards. I won't get a chance to congratulate him. I just wanted to give him a hug.

And Miguel and Hell of Menace was going to tie for second with Ernie. So he's standing down there waiting from the printout. I'm talking to Miguel, his English one that's good then. It's his now. And one of the USDA guys there is he says to the USDA, he goes, oh, excuse me, can you tell me away the playoff starts between Ernie and I for the other tournament?

And then he goes to St. Andrews and wins, I think, by seven or eight there. But the amazing thing there, Ed, and you got the ball fight St. St. Andrews, he never hit a ball on the bunker all week. Practice rounds or the tournament. You can drive down the middle of the fairway on St. Andrews and catch one of those knobs and everything bundles to these bunkers that he had so much control of his golf ball through the air. There's a great film that you see a lot on the God's Channel,

whether on the par five come in, what was the par five, 15, I think. 14 to 15. And he and Steve Williams were talking and he said that that church tower

and he said the three word. And he just rips it and gave that little crow and he goes, that's the one you talking about, Steve? That's the one right there, Tiger. Sully says that so much because of that stupid video. Yeah, it's awful. That's the one right there. Yeah. That's the one you're talking about right there.

I, I, I've, a weirdo for history in that time period. I just, I can't believe, you know, how much you've lived all this. You know, we just watched it. You lived it. I don't think I've ever seen anybody. I mean, I grew up with my father was great. As a kid, I went to every major with him. Since I was about this big.

In the old days, there was no ropes. I'm just walking down the ferry. He played all his practice rounds with Mr. Hovind, because they were best of friends. So I've literally seen with my own eyes, I would say everybody except maybe Bobby Jones and Walter Hagan or G. Sarison or something great all time. I've seen them all play. I've played with Mr. Hoban when I was 16, the first time I've played with him. So I've seen the great players play, and I've been around it. I've never seen anybody control a ball like he did in 2000. Through the air, just everything. He had worked so hard

on his wedge play, he got short iron stuff with the three-quarter shots. He hit them all the time. And then, you know, everybody talks about the shot out of the rough on six that, you know, to get up over the hill there that he took that six iron and just nuked it as hard as he could swing and got it up on the green and I think whether Roger Maltby said this isn't a fair fight but this guy but he he was amazing but he had he had a saying he probably not going to like that I'm going to tell him I'm going to tell him I underrated he goes I know that they know that I know they can't be and that's the hell of the day I know that they know they can't be That was the mentality.

He didn't do it. People ask me all the time, what was the difference between Tiger and Jack? Well, Jack and a major, he knew if he had a two or three shot lead. If he made 18 cars, he was probably going to win. So he would dump the ball in the middle of green it. If you made some birdies and came after him, then he'd get more aggressive and he'd make a burden. Well, Tiger didn't want to beat you by five. He wanted to kill your whole family.

He wanted to beat your whole neighborhood. He just, that was his mentality. He just had this mentality. that I just want to destroy you. And he, when he played, he had little tricks when he played. If he played with somebody he liked, he wouldn't do any gamesmanship.

But if he played with someone that he didn't, he wasn't really friendly with, he put out on purpose from 6 or 7 feet because he knew 10,000 people were just going to get it. The great story was at Boston one year. I wasn't working with Tiger. I was working with Phil then. And they were going to play the last round again.

And so I'm talking, I wasn't there. I was talking still on the phone that night. He says, okay, what's going to be like? What I got to say everything he's going to do? Okay. So what do you mean? What he's going to do? I said he's going to, it's getting close.

He's going to slow play you. He'll let you bond your driver out there, and he might hit a three wood off the tee just so he can take time getting to his ball. That way he can hit first, get on a beat. He might even go to the court let him go to the bat with something. He'd got put out on every whole one. Because he puts out. out, even though it's you, the people will scatter.

Bill, and one whole, Mickelson came out of the bunker and said, I'll finish. But he says to me that night, he goes, you think he'd really do that? I said, Phil, we did it for years and it worked every time. So then he goes in the press, and he tells some people that I told them all. So you get people throwing me under the bus like that. This episode is also brought to you by our friends at Woop, the wearable design for lasting progress.

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So go to join.wop.com slash NLU to get started with Woop on a free one-month trial. It includes the hardware, an unlocked app experience. If you don't love it, you can send it right back. No questions asked. If you already got a whoop, join our whoop group with code C-O-M-M-N-L-U. Again, join dot-woop.com slash N-L-U. Let's get back to Butch Harmon. Everything you've said over the last 10 minutes here, that getting up at 4 a.m., the, you know, taking out the whole neighborhood, all that stuff, is such a specific mentality. I'm curious how that jives with your mentality and how you guys attacked things similarly. Do you know what I'm getting out? How much of that do you have in your mind when it comes to instruction. And then I go back to the 96th stuff and what a long day that

was because once the first pegs in the ground, it's kind of out of your hand. So that just makes for a very interesting, interesting relationship. I think my years, my eight or nine years with Greg Norman has probably made me better my job than ever because Greg has so many other businesses, you know, and so if we had three hours, if I was in Florida, and we had three hours to work, we were working. And he could compartmentize all his other stuff he had to do. And it really helped me when I had too many players on how to make sure I could get this, this, and this done. So that part helped me. I've always been a very positive person when I teach a very negative person about my own game. I kick my own ass two times a day when I'm not playing.

And so I've always been positive. I'm never, you'll never hear me use a negative word about to any of my players. It's always a positive, it's positive that. And I think the other thing has helped me that, yeah, I played a few major championships. I played the tour for three years. Not great, but at least I've been out there. So I have some understanding what guys are going through when they're out there. And so I've always been so positive about my ability. I have a tremendous that sounds arrogant, but I don't mean it that way. I have a tremendous amount of belief in myself that I'm making the right decision and we're going down the right path. And I think Christian has proved that. And so I've always been that way. I will always, I don't ever say to my

I think if we do this, because the guys you think, I'm praying you not to think. I mean, I said, what I see, this is what we need to do. I'll show it to you on film, and this is why we're going to do it. And I would explain it, I'm not smart enough to go to the, you know, the Pac-Man, where you're four degrees from the inside and three, you know, tell the guy what are you doing wrong. It's not a math on this. Let's just explain to what you're doing. I'm not smart enough to do up.

People say to me all the time, Mr. Harmon, you're old school and you know, technology. I said, sure we do. I use video. I use Pac-Man and stuff. I was doing a seminar once, and a person asked me, said, we understand you don't use technology. I said, of course I do. I have academies all the world. We have video. We have Track Man. We have all this stuff. They said, I said, when I teach, I use two launch monitors. He said, oh, what are they? I said, these two blue things. That's my launch monitor. I can see if you're spinning the ball too much. We learned to teach. My brothers and I, before there were. cameras before there was all this technology. And the ball literally told you everything you needed to know where the ball started, the trajectory of the shot, the spin on the ball, the curvature of the

ball pretty much told you the path of the club coming down and the club faced impact. The ball's already showed you that. So if you have any knowledge of a golf swing, it would be very easy for you to get in there and correct it. I used to do a deal with my tour players when they were playing well. and I would turn my back to them and just watch the ball and if it was a bad shot, I could tell them what they did because I knew the swing so well. Like a guy would call me up at night and say, I'm really driving the ball, but, okay, well, where's your ball starting?

What's the flight of it? I said, okay, as you know, we've worked on this, and we did X, Y, Z, and we do that. And give you an example of how guys can change. If you're doing your job, you should be able to tell them during the round last year when Tommy Fleetwood won the FedEx Cup. at East Lake. He had to lead and hit a terrible drive on number eight over the right in the concessions. Missed the green on nine, hooked it to the left on 10, and all of a sudden things were starting to go away.

Well, Tommy swing is when he gets bad, he doesn't turn enough and he gets quick from the top. And I always showed him a drill. I said, look, just do, get to make slow motion cracker swings where he go up and stop. And so he's standing on the 12th tree and I could see it. And he's over there doing his drill, and he never missed a shot coming down. I've tried to. If you watch him when he plays today, that's pre-shot warm-up. He does that and he does that. And so you have to not only tell the guys what could

do when they're playing well, explain to them, okay, when you're off and in a tournament, these are little crampless swings you can make to get back on. Or if it's early in the week and you're struggling and you can only hit it one way, go with that. And we'll go to the range afterwards and we'll work that out.

But if you haven't trouble, say, in the ball, I haven't trouble. Oh, well, just do the you're going with, then let's get through the round, and we'll go. So there's a lot of little tricks that you do. When you're dealing with tour players, they have big egos. So they like to think it's their idea. And you have to be able to trick him into thinking that this is an idea. A perfect example is your nickname DJ with Dustin Johnson, the real DJ.

No, we swing it very similarly, actually. Yeah. Just in miles per hour probably. Yeah, exactly. When Dustin came to me, it was always a draw of the ball. Never hit a fade. couldn't hit a fade. After about a year and a half, two years working on, I'm showing him how to hit fades. So, DJ, you got to learn how to hit fade because it pins on the right, you can't keep starting

in the right bunker and kind of oaken to the flag. And he would do it in practice and could do it, but he'd never do in the tournament. So about four or five years later, I get this call from here and you know how Dr. Bro, bro, bro, I was on the range today, bro. And, you know, I finished some trade out there, bro, and you know, I said, you know, maybe I just don't play, and bro, I shot 64. What do you think? Maybe I actually just faded. I'm gone, hallelujah. Let's go with the page. But that was fine. It was his idea. I used a trick on Tiger one year that we were playing La Costa. And he was, we were getting ready for Augusta for some high fage with long eggs going into some of the longer holes.

We're working on the range, and the range of La Casa is not very good. It's only like 280 yards long or something there. It's got senses all around. At the end of this range, at about 240 yards, there was a little opening in the fence where the cart would come through, and we're trying to hit it. He's got a three-hour, and he's not really getting it down the way we wanted. So I said, all right, here's the deal. I took a $100 bill out of my pocket.

I put it on the ground. I put five balls on it. So you got five tries. No way you can hit a high fade through that thing. very first ball high fade right to it he's not said 100 up best hundred airst bet he won in turn but you just got a trick him but to do it stop the example you had there about kind of some of the tips you were given phil about how he was going to have some gamesmanship but we're talking about one of the most ruthless players ever what what's the most ruthless you've ever seen tiger be in

some way at least the version that you can tell us well i wasn't working with him when this happened but it was the match play at lecosta I was about to ask if that was the same week. But yeah. And she would have to name, would make him dumb some bitch. He had made this statement and it's pressed that, well,

if I ever have to get Tiger tomorrow's private right because he's not driving the ball breaker. Tiger won the first nine holes in a row. He was nine up to nine. They had the 10th hole. And when he came in, I was standing there and he had a big smile on his face. I said,

you wanted to win 10. Dude, he goes, piss me up, which I wanted to win all 10. I shot him out. You know, what's the old story that don't wake up the sleeping bear.

Just just leave him alone. Don't care. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, speaking of players that had a little bit of a chip, you mentioned Hogan earlier. I know he was very, very close friends with your dad. I'm just curious, you just don't hear a ton of stories of what he was like off the golf course. You know, I've read stuff about you guys hanging out at the house and grilling out together.

I'm just curious if you could color in some of that. What was he like to be around? Sure. Well, Mr. Hogan and my father were best of friends. They literally played every practice round together, every major. Mr. Hogan was a wonderful person, but he was an introvert. And if he didn't know you, he would come off arrogant or aloof. If he didn't know you, he just wasn't going to have any do it because you didn't feel comfortable.

We knew him so well when we were kids, whenever there was an open at Wingfoot or tournament to Westchester that he would play. And he'd always be over at the house, grilling states and my dad and having a good time. We're out there swinging in the backyard, letting him look at our swings and stuff. But he was a wonderful person. When my father was dying of hard problems, he came all the way from Fort Worth down. to Houston to visit him in the hospital and just hang in there with him and stuff. And, you know, he was a person, I think, probably very misunderstood because everybody says that he was this arrogant, no good kind of guy.

No, that's just who he wasn't like that. The best story I can tell you was during a practice round for the 59 Open. They were playing Mr. Hogan, my dad, carrying middle cough. I think Jay Barre was the other one in the group. Anyway, the part three, seventh, all he missed isn't in the right box. It's a very deep bunker in the pin right there. I mean, you got a 15-foot bunker shot, and you can barely see the top. Milikov left it in, like four times.

You couldn't get out. And my dad said to Mr. Hogan, he said, man, I got to help Doc. He's the worst bunker player out of there. He said, leave him alone, Claude. He may never learn. We won't have to worry about him this week. And I can remember days when, because I literally ever said, you know, my mother, there's six of us, and my mother had 10 pregnancies.

So every major championship, since I was about 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, I'd just go with my dad. He and I, and I'm walking down the fairways, watching all this stuff happened. And I can remember one time, I don't remember where it was. There was a PGA somewhere. Dad was playing Mr. Hogan. And they only had three. I think Dave Marr was the other one in the group. And there was this young qualifier standing on the tee by himself.

And he's like, oh, my God, there comes Ben Hover. Hey, there's only three of them. I know he's sinking myself. And I'm standing in a little thinking, go, probably you got no chance here in this group. Mr. Hogan never even knew he was. He wasn't about to invite him in the group. And, you know, so people would think about that,

well, he should have taken this young guy in with him. That just wasn't who he was. He was that big an introvert. But he also was a genius when he played golf. I mean, he was one of the first guys that I ever realized that he knew if he hit a bad shot where the ball was going to go because he had a program. I'll tell you interesting story.

When I was a kid, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17, I'd carry it for my dad in the summer all the time, a wing foot. He would teach in the morning, have lunch, wake off in the afternoon, teach me. Mr. Hogan was in town. I think I was 15, so maybe 16. And they're playing on the 8th hole,

which is a long par, for it. In those days, because of the wooden cloths and saltball, they've had it. Now it's like 525 or something, where you'll see the open when it's there in 28. And he drove it in the right rock, And he had like, I don't know, 205 yards to the flag or something. And I saw him take this forward and he laid it.

And he's in the rough. I mean, he laid this space wide open. He picked it up and he hit down on this thing. And this ball jumped out of there to the left with it fade and hit shorter than rolled up about 15 feet from the hole out. I'm looking down and said, damn, that's the coolest shot I've ever seen. So we got gets done playing and stuff and Mr. Hogan leaves and he's going to go teach. I got my bag.

I went all the way out to the eighth hole and I put about six balls. I found a divot. I put about six balls down. I got my four wood out, boy, and I got that thing right over, and I'm beating down on that saying, this ball's jumping out of here. To this day, I tell people that story, and I show them that shot.

I got a bunch of guys I play with here in my club in Anthem Country Club, and every time they get in the rough, you say, I'm going to hit that hugging shot you showed me. But that's what I say, that I had an education. My brothers and I talked about this all the time. We had an education.

We didn't know we were getting, because we had the ability to see the best players in the world. close and personal and how they did it. Well, on the long list of things you've accomplished in your career and then players that you have coached what they've accomplished, one of the most underrated ones, I would say, while you were working with Phil Mickelson, he won a players championship and even out loud said, how did I ever win here at a later year when he was on his way to missing the cut? But I'm curious, your relationship with Phil, like, I'm sure you've been asked this one before,

but would there have ever been a world where you could have worked for Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at the same time. And when did Phil get on your radar, I guess, as a potential somebody for you to work with? I think it was, when did he win now? Was it, 07 when he won? We had been working together, I think, three weeks, just three weeks. And he had gone third, second, third, I think leading up to there. And he never thought he could win that tournament because the course didn't suit his eye.

and if you remember on 10 when he hit it in the waist bunker to the left and he didn't tell phones that he was going to hit if he treated the trees and he hid up there close and so he was just overjoyed with that and I've told this story before I was doing TV there and I came down to see him afterwards and then I was leaving going to the car

and my phone ringed you go where are you I still I'm just getting in a car come back to the locker room I need to talk to you for minutes okay should I go back to locker he gave me a check for $100,000 he said I never thought I could win his turn I would have never won it without you. That was the first one. It took me maybe five years to teach him how to play an Open Championship because he never thought he could win the Open because he wouldn't take the ball out of the year. He wouldn't put it on the ground, wouldn't put it on the ground. I finally got in his head. It was in Muirfield that year. He went, won the Scottish and then he went to Muirfield. And if you remember the last round, he played just an unbelievable round in a 20 mile an hour win and won. And to this day, he said that was his greatest win of all time. because he said, there's no way I could have ever won this. He said, and there's a funny story that's involved with that tournament.

Ricky Bowers involved with him. Well, Ricky was playing a practice round with Phil, and the gambling deals, and Ricky was playing terrible. And I knew Ricky, but I never worked with him. But he was playing awful. And so he calls, he misses the cut. He calls me on Saturday, and now he goes, is there any way after Phil T's off, you could watch me hit some balls?

I'm terrible. I said, well, yeah, if I can get all the guys out of course, he said, yeah, I'll watch you hit some. So he comes out and he's hitting balls. And, you know, people start watching that aren't making four hours out there. And he's just swinging terrible. I said, hold on. I said, we got to do a drill.

I said, you got the club too late off. You're coming this way. I said, I'll show you a drill that I've used with Tiger before and Adam and all these guys. I was going to have you go up to the top and stop and hit some. Well, he had about five of them. He had ground balls. He couldn't even get the club back to the ball. And he says to me, he said, you're going to make a fool out of me in front of all these people.

I said, no, I think he made a fool out of itself for the first 36 holding plan. So let's just keep doing that. And that's when Ricky and I became friends. And when I quit the tour at 19, he went to someone else because that didn't come to tour. And he's struggling. He came back. And Rick, he's playing much better now. And he's such a wonderful guy.

That was that same week, actually. That's funny. I'm curious that, you know, you've lived this long. golf life, like you said, you're whatever, four or five years old when your dad won the master's all the way through now an era of pretty optimized men's golf on the professional side. I'm just curious your view of kind of the state of men's pro golf. What are you, what are you excited about, what are you concerned about? How do you kind of view the state of play these days? I think we have the best crop of young players we've ever had. They're unbelievable.

That's the plus side. The downside. The downside. side for TV is that nobody knows who these players are. And they'll turn on the TV and if some of the stars aren't up there and they see these guys 20, 23 enter, they go, I don't know that. Isn't it? They've changed the channels. So I don't think the tour does a good enough job

promoting the younger players through special stuff where you can learn about their lives and stuff. Because if you look at young players on our tour, DP World Tour, Asian Tour, they're unbelievable these kids. And there's a lot of them. And there's more of them coming. And so the game is changing

completely to what it used to be. Because the big stars are not there anymore. Tiders gone, Phil's gone, all the other guys are gone. You know, all the ones you grew up with, they're all on a champions tour now. But these kids can really play. And I think equipment has made that easier for them. I don't think there's any way in the world that if you gave a guy a ballad ball and a pursuit driver, if he swung that hard, as hard as these kids swing,

they would spin this ball off the world. You'd never find it. But the ball doesn't spin as much. It gets off the cup faster. You know, this big thing about downing back the ball, I don't get to a bunch of BS. I mean, do you and I want to hit a ball that doesn't go as far as we hit it?

I don't. I mean, I'm age three years old. I'm playing the front T's. It can only hit it about 2.15. You're going to tell me I'm going to lose five or 10 yards. I'm going to say you can kiss something because I'm not going to lose it five or 10 yards. I think if they wanted to do something, they could do it with a driver.

Make the head smaller. change the length of the driver, make a ball can only come off the cup face so fast. Because what happens, the ball gets off the cup face so fast now that it doesn't have as much side spin on it. And that's why players who like to draw the ball, say it's really kind of hard with the driver to hit the little baby draws because the ball, I can hit a big one.

It's easy to hit a little fade with it. But, you know, I think it's too late to change your crib. And my good friend, Jose Muriel Oathabo, and I just saw the old Instagram, day where he said this again. We talked about this four or five years ago, and he said, Bush, Bush, they tell you something, Bush. You don't need to change the ball of the equipment. Tell you what you do, Bush. We go from 14 clubs to eight clubs. We find out who can play. I just think about that. If you had eight clubs, pick any eight you want, if you had a putter,

now you've got seven clubs to choose from. I think it would be great to have a tournament like that. Because then, excuse me, you'd have to hit shots. You couldn't just stand there and bomb it out there and hit one of your 12 wedges you have in your bag and get out of the rough or something, it would take shot, maybe, or more back into the game. And I think it would be awesome that they just tried it stuff like that.

But you're not going to change it. I've heard a pediatric choice, no, we're not changing the ball. This is who we are. Well, we're about to come to a time where you're going to see guys diving a ball 400 yards, because these guys are bigger and stronger. Education of teaching is better and better

on getting mechanics. They're better and better. looking how far these guys on the tour hit the ball. I don't mean just Bryson, who does the stupid, ridiculous, jump off the ground swing. Some of these guys have good swings, and they're hitting at 350 to 360, and they do it with make it look easy. And, you know, you can say, well, it's ruining the game. Look, you can change that. And here's how you change. You narrow the fairways to 25 yards.

You make them hard and fast, and you grow rough, and you make the greens hard. Well, then it's a premium on putting the ball on the fairway and getting it to stop on the green. And the argument would be, well, then they'd never hit a driver. I said, well, the most important thing in Dolphins is the number you put in the box. On a scorecard, I'm going to damn what you hit, Dr. T. You got to put the ball in clay. And if you did that, then there would be more of a quality on hitting quality shots. But the way it is now, on regular tour events, the fair woods are wide, there's not much rough.

These guys can just bomb it out there. And that's why they're shooting 25, 26, 27 under. Because it becomes a putting contest. But if you've firmed up the golf course and narrow those scales, airways. That's the difference. You look at those of us who have been members of Wingfoot our whole life and grew up there when Deschambeau won at Wingfoot, you really irritated us, but he was the only guy under par. Because usually you can't get under par, but he was strong enough to get it out of the rough, but he made everybody look at. And he was the only person that shot under par. And so a great

golf course will dictate the score, depending on how you set the course up. And you can do that on the tour every week. Now, the TV may not like it because they like seeing guys shooting zero. you know, I don't, I'm not a big fan of the USGA that makes it so hard. Well, we want to make sure that it's hard as a barometer. I mean, well, God, at Winkford, we've had, what, guys shoot 7, 8 over and win? Because it's hard. It's a hard golf course. But that's the way the game is today.

I mean, it's the guys are bigger. All sports are the same. But Mr. Hobie used to say whether the people are, they're bigger and stronger and they're running faster and jumping higher, golf is no different. So we're going to get bigger athletes that will play the game now. And these guys are athletes. If you look at the era when I played the tour in the late 60, 070, 70,

we thought Gary Flare were crazy. This guy was working out and doing all this stuff. Nobody's doing that. Now they're all in shape. You're looking at them all. Very few of any old fat guys out there running around, you know. What was it? What was the line?

I think it was. Stadley says, well, you're never hurting, so I can't pull fast. How could I get hurt? And most of the injuries, especially tigers, came in the gym. They weren't with golf swings. It's from working a gym. you see that a lot of these guys.

They get into lifting too much. And I watch Tommy Freewood, one of my guys, and he's a gym all the time, and they don't lift a lot of weight, but boy, he works his butt off doing a lot of other stuff. And so that's where we are. These guys are bigger and stronger. Equipments made it easier,

and they're going to hit it a mile. And if you think equipment hasn't made, guys on the champions tour will tell you that they hit the ball further at 55 than they did when they were 35. And that's equipment. That's not them in better shape. The problem is for you and I, we don't get the advantage that we don't have the club at speed these guys have

I've always said that we the PJ tour professional golf is the only professional sports in the world where they play under amateur rules the NFL football and the college football is not even the same size it's a different science so you think do you think bifurcation could work then he's in a three point line baseball a little bit of bouts we're the only ones playing under amateur rules you could change the rules for professional golf probably not going to happen, but that would change everything. You could change the amount of clubs they use,

the length of the clubs, the type of situations, but we are the only sport in the world that plays on amateur rules, which is interesting when you think about it. Yeah, it makes me, yeah, I've been a proponent for bifurcation in the past, and I definitely think something needs to be done

at the professional level, to your point, it doesn't need necessarily to bleed through all the rest of the game. Well, all these great courses are getting obsolete, how far they hit it, unless you trick them up, you know,

And that's sad too. Well, we flagged this one from earlier. You said there were some great stories about working for the King of Morocco. I feel like I got, I feel like as a journalist, I need to circle back on what that experience was like. Well, people asked me how I ever got to work for the King of Morocco. My dad originally taught the King to play way back around 1969, 1970. The Mexican King Hussein II was taking up golf when he read a book by Tommy Armour. and he wrote Mr. Armour a letter and say that I'd love to have you come to Morocco and help me learn how to play golf.

And Mr. Armour was a member of Wingfoot. I've seen the letter that he wrote to King. He said, I don't travel anymore. I said, but there's one man better than me. I would say, Claude Harmon was the greatest teacher in the game. He's the person. So my dad went over there. And me being the oldest in my family, you know, in the Arab world, if you're the oldest in your family, you're in the same profession.

And so I was fortunate enough in my rookie year on a tour. In 1969, Julius Borlis and I went over and played in a Moroccan open in a place called Mohamedina, which is just between Casablanca and Rabat. And I was fortunate enough to finish second in it. Jean-Gariel, the French player, won it. And Julius Boros and I were asked to stay over and play golf with the king on Monday. So, you know, I said, can you, I could have you stay over? And me being so naive, I said, yeah, I guess I could, but there's any way you could change my ticket on Royal Amaroc.

Well, he owns the whole country. Of course, he owns an airline. Take care of tickets, don't worry about it. So we go out there, and he's hitting both. Then he's a ramped beginner. I mean, you know, he just wasn't hit it very good and warm it up. Jay and I were looking at each other. It's going to be a long nine holes.

And first hole was like $2.90 down there. I mean, we hit three woods right on the front of the green. He made like eight on the hole. Next hole, part three up the hill. 150 yards long he had some kind of funky wood that he hit that made like a fix on that hole. And then the next hole was a car five, but there was only 490 yards long, right along the ocean, beautiful hole. And he actually hit three of the best shots he'd ever hit, and it got in his front bunker. No, he couldn't get out of the bunker.

I mean, he didn't even know how. Well, Jus, Boris, one of the greatest bunker was player in the world. And he looked at me. I said, no, you get your ass in there and help him with his bunker shot. That's it. I'm not going in there. So he goes in there, and he never did get out. So, you know, we go on and we finish.

and King goes back into the summer palace there. Skierat was the name of the place. And the chauffeur is bringing our cars up, and Julius gets in his gun, my girlfriend comes up. I go to get in the car, and the guy comes right out. He goes, Mr. Harmon. Mediastie, we'd like to know if you could stay over two or three days

and help him with his swing. And I said, again, yeah, well, I'm sure you can take care of their arrangement. I said, do you want me to tell Mr. Borough? No, no, he's got to go to France or something. Just as I came out. We hit balls for about 30, 40, 40 minutes, and I had him just doing kind of three-quarter swings, swinging. He's in.

He hit a perfect drive off his first tow. He must have hit it 180 yards down the middle, which he was overjoyed. And he actually made a five or the hole. He made like eight the next day. The little par three up the hill, he kind of hit it fat. He pitched on. He made a dove bogey. Par five, he was on and four.

And I'm leaning on the green. And I'm looking over there. And I'm saying to myself, wasn't there a bunker there yesterday? He was gone. That bunker did not exist. all night long, they filled it in, it was sotted perfectly. I mean, the SOB was gone.

And I'm literally leaning on my putter in his majesty seat, he goes, very bad lesson. I didn't want any members. This is interesting. Another good one in the north he had the most beautiful palace in the Atlas Mountains and says.

And he had built a little nine-hole courts to this orchard. So they had all these little irrigation ditches running through there. I mean, you know, to this day now that has had a second who I work for is dead now and his son, Mohammed V6, was the king. It's the oldest really monarchy in the world. And so they've been around for a thousand years.

And so they had these little irrigation there, and they had nets over the top of it where the king's ball would land, but my ball would land it was a hazard. He could even hit the ball, hit the net ball. And somebody said to me one time, he said, in your 10 years of being with the Kings, I lived there for five years, and I spent my winters there for five years. And they said, was he a pretty good player? I said, you know, he got to where he was pretty good.

At King Golf, you know, he said, what's King Golf? I said, well, King Golf is you never get a bad lie. And, you know, you're not probably any four or five footers. But, yeah, he could play. He hadn't hit it very far, but he got to where he could really play. He was a wonderful man. I learned so much from this man that he took me under his wing for some reason. I was the only American to work for him.

And I went everywhere he went. Everywhere he went, I went. I trained with a secret service. I carried a gun wherever I was. I'm a Vietnam better. I wasn't a big deal with me. But I worked with his secret service and traveled with him. And it was just a great experience.

He couldn't have been nicer to me and my family. And he loved my father. So that was a great experience. I went through a few coup attempts, which was the reason I said, you know, I'm making a lot of money, but I got to be alive to spend it. I might need to go back to the States.

But it was a great time for me and my family, and he was wonderful to me. And it was a great experience. I mean, you know, you don't get, I mean, I've played with numerous presidents before. And, you know, they, the president we have now, I mean, come on, he says that he's a too handicapped. He knows.

I mean, I talked to the guys in Florida. to DJ and Ricky play with him sometimes. They'll say, oh, he's out driving us on hold. I said, we just got a palae for a caddy or something. I'll pick him a ball down. There's no way. It was the thing on Instagram where he's playing in Scotland. You can see the caddy throw the ball down.

You know, and Bill Clinton used to take three or four Mulligans and say he made a par. People say to me, of all the credits you play with, who are your favorite? I said, Bush 41 was my favorite. He was a member at our club in Houston. He was a wonderful man. And I said, I didn't vote from, but I really, I played with Barack Obama three times when he was president. I really enjoyed his company.

He's fun to be around. He got a great sense of humor. He may have been the only president I've ever played with the played completely by the rule. We were playing at a place down part of a third area where I have an academy at him, my son works there. And we're playing, he's left-handed. I was trying to get to teach him how to draw the ball. And our third hole, he slices it out into the, in the woods out there. and he goes, I'm going to take an unplayable live watch.

I said, where do I drop it? I said, well, just bring it out here where you can shoot. No, no, we're playing for a dollar. He said, wow, okay, we've got two club links. You go here, boom. We get around at a six hole, it's a pretty short par four with a leg on the right. You hit the most beautiful driver, pretty little bra for him. It just hit a hill and went down on the water, and it's on a slope like there where he has to drop it. And he says, where do I drop it?

I said, we'll drop it up here on the flat. No, no, it's two club links. So I'm thinking to myself, I'm riding in a cart with him. I'm saying to myself. But you think you're pretty tough guy. And you can say anything. If you could just sell the president, you know, Mr. President, if you could do the federal budget the way you're doing the scorecard,

we've been in a lot better shape. And I said, no, there's too many guys with guns hanging around. I don't think it's going to happen. But I actually think if I've said it to him, he would last. Because he had such a great sense. And I've done. And I just love the guy. But that was a good one.

I said, no, I think I'm going to go there. That's great. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience watching Adam Scott win the Masters in 2013. You've talked a little bit about the relationship. Scottie, as I said, Scottie came to me when he was 18. He's like a member of our family. I mean, he's just a wonderful guy, and he hasn't changed any.

He's 46 now, and he's working as hard as anybody. And I was on the call when he won. And I can remember in the playoff of 10, when he hauled up to win. who was in the rain, and I couldn't talk. I was doing the call as he set up. I'm talking about the putt. I'm explaining the putt and stuff, and he hits it, and it goes in,

and I just lost it. And I just, you and Murray, who is our league announcer, he and I work together all the time. I just had tears in my eyes, and I, I said, you, and you got to take this. I can't talk. I mean, it was emotionally one of the coolest things, because I love that.

He is just a beautiful person. And just that wind meant so much to me for him, because I knew what I meant to him to do that, especially being an nausea that Greg had blown it so many times. And it was just, emotionally, it was just amazing. I've got a flag on the wall in there that he gave me from thanking me for everything I every day before him and stuff. And I love doing TV for Sky.

I did 13 Rider Cups. It's my favorite event to broadcast. and I can remember one at the K Club, which was, oh my God, it would have been 06. And it was on Saturday and Paul Casey and Charles and David Howe were playing, sinking somebody. It's 14th hole. Casey makes a hole in one to win a match. Now, what you don't realize when you're doing TV on Valve as a watch, you, very seldom are you saying something like? Because there's so much going on all over the course.

Everything is off tape. But I know that he's made hole in one. Okay, I already know it. So my producer says to me, all right, but you've got to call this whole-in-one because you've got more BS than anybody if you can handle this one. He makes his whole-in-one.

I go crazy. I just go absolutely ballistic. Oh, my God, a whole-one to win the match. And Stuart Sink was one of my players. He'd beat Stewart, and so the next morning, I see him on the range. You go, damn, my bunch I watched the replay of last night. When I made it, Ho-I-W-N-W-N, you really got excited.

I said, what you don't know is. I already knew you made it. He goes, well, then you should deserve it. Academy Award. They're not going crazy. But I love the Ryder Cup. I love broadcasting the Ryder Cup. Look, I'm an American.

Do I want the Americans to win? But you would never know it by my commentary. Because a great shot is your great shot. And I'll tell you one thing about the Ryder Cup. If we don't get our heads out of our butts, we ain't going to win. Do you realize since 95, Europe's won 11, we won four times?

That's unbelievable when you think about it. Because every time they say, well, on paper, Well, paper doesn't play. On paper, it doesn't need squat. It's how you play. And we need to figure it out. We need to figure out how to be a team. That's the one thing they have done better than us. They can put their egos aside. And I'll give you a perfect example. Tommy Fleawood told me when they got beat at Whistling Strages, when we hammered. The whole team got together and said, we will never lose like this again. We may get beat, but we will never lose like this again. If you think of what happened in Rome a few years ago, we got hammered. Do you think two weeks later our guys cared that they lost? No, hell no, they don't give them. They're in their private jets and out on their yachts. Now, when they go play, do they want to win?

Of course they want to win. But it's not the end all. See, what people don't realize is the European Tour owns the Rider Cup in Europe. The PGA Tour does not own the Rider Cup. PGA of America owns the Rider Cup. And the money the European Tour makes off of the Rider Cup subsidizes their smaller events. So all of their players are into it.

They are really into the writer club. You can see it. I've done in my 13 years, have done TV for Sky. We always have a former captain doing TV with us. And I've asked all of them, how do you pair you guys together? How do you get this camarader so much better?

You know, like Americans are saying, well, I want to put a long kid here with a sword heater or this guy has to play with this guy because he uses this ball. We said, we just put two guys together that get along together. Because we know at some point in time something's going to happen.

out there that's not going to be good and they're just going to put the arm around each other. I said, no big deal. We got another hole. I mean, remember the debacle that House Sutton did in Detroit when he put Tiger and Phil together? Another days, they weren't even talking to each other. And Phil hit that terrible shot off the 18-pillard almost hit out of bounds. It was an alternate shot. And Tiger would go over there just shaking his head.

And, I mean, you know, but we need to figure out how to come together as a team. When we get to the singles, we're great because that's how they play. They play on their own. If you watch a year old's party, they got four guys lining up each hut. They got the two players into two caddies. We got a guy who said, you know, no, I got it. I got it. No worry about it.

Because we're so used to being individuals. And they have figured out how to be a tink for a week. And it's beautiful, to be honest with it. I know all the captains, you know, I've had writer cops where I had guys on both teams. I was coaching both them on both teams. So I've seen, and because I work for a European TV network, I know all about the European players. And boy, they love the Rider Cup.

We've asked them numerous times, take away the majors, what tournament do you want to win most in your life? Rider Cup. I want to win the Rider Cup. We have to win the Rider Cup. We need to win the Rider Cup. But since 95, how about that, 11 and 4? And I think, was it 85 that they went away from Great Piton in Ireland

and brought in all of Europe? That's when it changed, because we used to kill them. I mean, it was no contest. Like I remember when I was in high school, in Pond Springs, I think I was a sophomore junior in high school, and the Ryder Cup was at El Dorado, and I took a Greyhound bus hop. I'd got to sneak out of school,

get on a Greyhound bus, and drive out to where El Dorado was and get off and go watch the Ryder Cup there. So I've been watching Ryder Cuts my whole life. It's my favorite event. And if you think there's not gamesmanship, there is a lot of gamesmanship going on in that. Now, the President's Cup, a different animal.

Because most of the time, there's more on the international team living in Florida than there aren't the U.S. team. So they get along, there's no, there's no, none of this. it would have been cool if they'd have had when we had and I think lives dead if you want to get into that. But when it first started, they had all those good players, could you imagine if you had a match against the live teams? See, I think that TGL should have done that. They should have had a live team. But then you get this.

Totally. You know, the guy's got a put like this. No, you're putting it. Think about when you're playing a member guest or the club championship and you're playing a guy and he's got a three-furt, he looks at you. If he's looking at you, he's asking for it. You better make that SOB punt in because he doesn't want to. This guy loves to ask for it. I love asking for puts.

Yeah, that's my guarantee you. Who would the two best? Heavy and Jose Maria, you couldn't be. Yeah. They were the best. They were the most unbelievable team of the world. But there was this. And Raymond and Freddie used to get paired against them a lot. And Raymond would tell Freddie, you play, I'll take care of SET.

Instead, he would pull his little BS because Raymond was tough. He won the toughest guys that ever. He'd go right up. Sevi was going to be like that today, on Sevi? Well, both of us can play this game, you know. I can play the same game. You're playing. Oh, no, no, Raymond, no, I don't know. You don't know. You don't have to what I'm talking about.

Let's just play golf. And that's what to me makes the writer cup fun. It's little stuff you don't hear about that goes on in the fair ways. Now they've got microphones out there everywhere. It's not as much as it used to be. But, I mean, there was some good stuff going on out there. And don't you think of the Ryder Cup would be better if they do it like the President's Cup instead of just putting you're down and they're done. No, let's see. Okay. Okay, I'm going to, my first one, I got Sally going off first. Who do you want? Okay, I'm going to put so and so up there. And then you get the matchups you want. And that's what we want to see. We want to see the matchups. We want to see

the guys. We want to see Rory and Chef. We're going ahead to head against each other. We want to see this. This is what we want to see. That's the one thing I would change in the writer come. I'd say, let's just put them up. You pick, I pick. I pick. I pick you pick. we get the matches. Then it gets even better. Then you really get, because you can get two guys that you know don't like each other,

playing against each other. And that's when it's going to get fun. That's the dream. Well, Butch, I promise that the U.S. struggles are not due to a lack of complaining on our end. We're doing our part to change things.

We've taken up too much of your time already, but I did want to ask you about one other player on the way out. Everybody, you know, a lot of people talk about Ben Hogan. I feel like we don't hear as many Sam Sneed stories, and it feels like there's probably quadruple of the Sam Sneed stories out there. I'm curious if you had a go-to about, you know, interacting with him.

Sam Sneed. I can remember Dad beat Sam Sneed and PJ one year. Can't remember where it was. And they had coming down in the stretch, they had a hole where they had to get a rope out to see who was away. Sneed was away and he missed and my dad made the putt. And Sam, when I was young and do him. He goes, either way he talked, he had a little bit. He hung me with that rope.

He hung me with that rope. I would say this. I think Ben Hogan is the biggest strikeer of a golf ball I've ever seen. And I'll surprise you, who I would say, I think, was to be the next one,

be Trevino. I think Leap Trevino controlled his ball through the air as good as anybody I've ever seen in modern golf. He was just a phenomenal golfer, had his own way of doing it, and he could compete

and beat you. I mean, look at every time he went head to head with Nicholas, he beat him at Marion in the playoff and stuff. I don't think Lee gets some credit he should get. He just an amazing, amazing golfer. And so much fun to listen to him talk when he was playing. And, you know, remember the deal at Marion when he threw the rubber snake at the Jack on the T? Well, people say, oh, that was terrible. The way I heard it was they talked about it in the locker room. Lee says, hey, I got this snake in the bag. While you're over there, can I throw it? Oh, you know, Jack, yeah, We don't have characters like that anymore. In the old days, you had character, well, there was no money.

People asked me all the time, they said, you know, we look at your father's record. He had an incredible record in Nagers. I said, well, that's how he played in. And so why did he play the tour? I said, well, first of all, we had a lot of kids in our family. Second of all, he was a pro, Wingflint and Seminole and he owned the pro shop and both of them. He was making three times the money, the leading money winner was making. And so that's why he didn't play the tour.

Because there was no money in those days. I mean, he didn't make any. If dad won the master, I think he won 2,300 or something. You know, and now, did he make millions for the rest of his career? Because he was the former master champion, of course. But it's just different times. But they were characters in those days, man. I mean, I'll tell you a great story about Jimmy DeMaric.

I don't mean to keep things. I got nothing to do. Yeah. This day, they have a big pro member at Seminole every year that gets an incredible field. In the old days, it was the field of the year. They had Hogan, Nelson Sneed, and all these guys played in it. I don't know. This was back in the 50s, so I would have been,

see, I was born in 43. I might have been 10, say. My dad's a pro there. And so Sweet de Merritt comes up, and he's got three ladies with him. And he goes around to the side, doesn't go through the clubhouse, comes around the side of the players, but he didn't get, thinker didn't let them in because they didn't have badges. He says, well, go down and tell Claude that I've got three guests with me,

and send the badges down. So the guy goes down and he comes back and he says, Mr. Mayor, Claude says he only has badges for the pros, but if you go to the front desk, they have him. Formed to the mayor, it says they are pros, damn. Send the badges. See, I don't think we get that anymore. It didn't have a great story.

I'll end you with that one, boys. I didn't see that one coming. That's a good walk off there. Oh, well, thank you so much for your time. honestly I said you were one of the most interesting golf lives ever. And that was before hearing a lot of these stories. So it's only enriched the tale. And gosh, I'd love to do it again sometimes.

I really, really appreciate your time. Be my point. When you're old like I am and have been in his business my whole life. I've seen about everything you can see. I could tell you a few more. Some good rules, ones. If you ever want to hear those, then it really tough. All right.

Well, we may take you up on that. But thank you again for your time and all the stories. And the listeners will appreciate it as well. Telling DJ, thank you. It's an honor to be with you. And any time I can do it, I'm happy to do it. Cheers, thanks.