Butch Harmon: The Master of Macau

Starting from 2010, tour players will have to switch from playing with U-grooves to V-grooves on their irons because the USGA believes this will help combat players’ ability to spin the ball from the rough. What do you make of it?

The groove issue isn’t going to affect the good players at all because they’re good. It’s going to affect the mediocre pros because they’re not going to be able to get away with shots out of the rough. In the old days, when I played, if I had a 160 yard shot over a lake I would have a big decision to make. 160 yards would have been a 7-iron for me from the fairway normally, but quite often from the rough it would be 9-iron. That’s because the ball would just ‘juice’ from the taller grass. It would fly a lot further, depending on the lie. The grooves the pros are using at the moment don’t allow that to happen. They can just hit the same club. When the new regulation comes into effect, the great players are still going to be great and the average players are going to have to get used to it. That’s good for golf.

But is that enough? Do you think the technological advancements in the game have gone too far?

Equipment today – clubheads, balls, shafts – is incredible. But I’m of the belief it should be for the average player who needs the advantage of technology. The tour player is the best in the world – he doesn’t need those advantages. I’d rather see technology for average players. Look at sports in the United States – in American football, the football is fatter and longer in college football; in baseball, juniors and college players use aluminum bats, while the pros use wood; in basketball, the key is further out for the pros. In all other sports, the rules are a little different for amateurs and pros. I wouldn’t mind seeing pro golf worldwide getting much stricter on rules and regulations. Let the technology go to the amateurs. A great player is still going to be a great player, but it sure would be interesting to take them back 25 years and give them all wooden drivers and soft balls and see how they play.

Are you, like Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman, an advocate of a one-ball rule?

Not really. Actually, I was having dinner with Jose Maria Olazabal the other week and he said the simplest way to bring shotmaking back to the game would be to restrict the number of clubs the pros can have in their bags. Have nine clubs instead of 14. If you had that, the pros have got to hit the same club different distances. Then you have to use imagination and creativity. Very few pros today don’t shape their shots – Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson still do – but I thought that was a very interesting philosophy. It’s a great idea, but nobody apart from Jose has brought it up. The talent would rise to the top. This is what I do with the juniors I teach. I just get them out playing with odd number clubs.

Taking you back to the early 1990s, how did you come to be Tiger Woods’ swing coach?

I got a lot of publicity after Greg Norman won the British Open in 1993 because of my work in helping change him change his swing and Earl [Woods, Tiger’s late father] approached me. Tiger had already won three US Junior Amateurs but I had never met him. We all had lunch and I watched him hit some balls and I gave them my opinions. A week later, Earl calls me, ‘I’d like to turn my son over to you.’