Instructor To Tour Stars
Harmon is best known for having been Tiger Woods' golf coach from 1993 to 2004, though they have since gone their separate ways. In April 2007, it was announced that Harmon would start working with Phil Mickelson. He has also worked with other major champions such as Ernie Els, Stewart Cink, Greg Norman, Davis Love III, Fred Couples and Justin Leonard, and with younger stars such as Nick Watney, Adam Scott, Dustin Johnson, Natalie Gulbis, and most recently Gary Woodland.
In 2003 Harmon was ranked the top golf teacher in the United States in a poll of his peers organized by Golf Digest magazine, and has repeated as winner of this honour each year since. He runs the Butch Harmon School of Golf at the Rio Secco Golf Club in Las Vegas, Nevada. He also gives golf clinics around the world.
On April 8, 2008, Ernie Els officially announced that he was switching swing coaches from David Leadbetter (whom Els had worked with since 1990) to Butch Harmon. During Els' 2008 Masters press conference, Els said the change was made to try to shorten and tighten his swing, as well as get a fresh perspective.
Harmon's brothers Craig and Bill are also both top golf coaches, who have made the top 50 Instructors' list compiled by Golf Digest on several occasions. Butch's other brother Dick was the golf professional at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas from 1977 to 2001. After leaving that position, he established two teaching centers in Houston. Dick died February 10, 2006 at age 58 from pneumonia.
Read more about this topic: Butch Harmon
Famous quotes containing the words instructor, tour and/or stars:
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Then, that no region of the universe
Should remain void of life, the floor of heaven
Was peopled with the stars and godlike forms,
The seas became the abode of glittering fish.
Earth took the beasts and mobile air the birds.
A holier animal was wanting.”
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)