Synopsis
The popular golf instructor shares the most important lessons he has learned about the game of golf, presenting a four-pronged approach to improving one's game that emphasizes the swing, the short game and putting, mental preparation and course management, and physical conditioning.
Extrait
Chapter 1
My Game and Yours
ON LEARING GOLF, PLAYING GOLF, AND TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO PLAY GOLF
On April 11, 1948, members of two prestigious golf clubs -- Seminole in North Palm Beach, Florida, and Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, New York-clanged glasses of champagne, guzzled beer, sipped Scotch whisky, and sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" at their respective 19th holes into the wee hours of the morning, to celebrate the great achievement of one of their own. Claude Harmon, the same pro who taught them on Sunday mornings how to cure a vicious slice or splash the ball out of sand, had just won the highly coveted Masters championship.
I was 4 years old at the time of my father's victory. I was staying in Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters is played every year, with my mom and dad. Dad came in late after a night of celebration. According to my mom, when he returned, he covered me with the green jacket they give to the Masters winner, a gesture that made perfect sense since Dad always shared everything with his family.
Played over the hilly and highly demanding Augusta National Golf Club course, the Masters, along with the U.S. Open, the PGA, and the British Open, is one of golf's four major championships. For a big-name pro to win this prestigious event was one thing. That was expected. What wasn't expected was a little-known self-taught pro shooting a recordtying score of 279, over 72 holes, to beat his nearest rival, Cary Middlecoff, by five strokes, and such seasoned stars as Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, and Gene Sarazen, by even bigger margins. According to star gazers and golf aficionados, this wasn't supposed to happen. After all, club pros watch the bad swings of members all day long, have little time to practice, and are not accustomed to playing under pressure. Claude Harmon sure proved the press, and all other doubters, wrong.
Over the years I asked my dad, hundreds of times, about that victory -- how he clinched it with a birdie, birdie, eagle run on holes 6, 7, and 8 of the final round -- and, as always, he was very modest in his explanation. Instead of taking full credit for shooting scores of 70, 69, and 70, he repeatedly thanked Craig Wood, his former boss at Winged Foot, for teaching him a lot about golf swing technique. Ironically, Wood was the head professional at Winged Foot when he, too, won a Masters -- his in 1941.
Prior to the 1948 Masters, Wood shared his local knowledge about Augusta National with Dad, and told him which shots he should practice. Consequently, Dad was ready for battle.
According to Dad, another reason he was able to hit such spectacular shots and shoot under par the final day to clinch the Masters was that he worked at Seminole and Winged Foot: two clubs with world-class courses that forced him to become an accurate striker of the ball and an inventive shotmaker. To put it simply, at both courses, but at Winged Foot particularly, you had to hit straight drives to avoid playing an approach shot through trees; you had to be a master of sand and an expert chipper and pitcher too, if you wanted to save par from close by the greens.
There are two courses at Winged Foot Golf Club, the West and the East, both designed in 1923 by Albert W. Tillinghast, an architectural genius with a flair for hazards.
Both courses, situated on rolling terrain, feature tree-lined fairways and undulated greens of sundry shapes and sizes. The East Course has been the venue for two women's United States Open championships. The West Course, the longer and the most famous of this dynamic duo, has hosted four United States Open Golf Championships: in 1929, 1959, 1974, and 1984. Both courses are very challenging. The West, however, is the one that demands the greatest degree of controlled length off the tee. It demands cool nerves, too, when hitting approach shots through shoots of tall oak trees to elevated greens surrounded by steep-faced bunkers.
The Seminole Golf Club was started by E. E Hutton, whose Wall Street cronies, along with the duPonts, Baruchs, Kennedys, Phippses, and other socialite families, popularized this winter wonderland. The fact that His Royal Highness, the Duke of Windsor, cited Seminole as one of his favorite courses made the Palm Beach club an even more special place.
The Seminole golf course was designed by Donald Ross, the renowned course architect whose other most famous works include Pinehurst Number Two in North Carolina, Oakland Hills in Michigan, Inverness and Scioto in Ohio, and Oak Hill in New York.
In building Seminole, Ross was influenced by the layout of Royal Dornoch, a spectacular course located in Dornoch, Scotland, his hometown.
One of Ross's trademarks, and a throwback to Dornoch, was the crown green at the top of an upslope. There are several of those to test even the nerves of scratch players and visiting pros at Seminole.
Ross had a flair for creating hazards, too, which is why the numerous pure white sand traps, all strategically placed around Seminole's fairly long layout, are no surprise. Should you be fortunate and play Seminole one day, you'll never forget the 16th hole, a dogleg-right par four that features a sea of sand surrounding a green that has the Atlantic Ocean as its backdrop.
Because of my father, I was lucky to be able to play at these great courses with some of the greatest names in golf.
By the time I was 6 years old, I had a club in my hand, a shortened 7-wood that my father gave me. Dad told me to swing this club as hard as I could, because he always believed, as I do now, that it's easier to get a student to slow down his swing later in life than it is to get him to speed it up.
Early on, I was taught the basic fundamentals by my dad and his assistant at Winged Foot, Jack Burke, Jr., another fine player who went on to win the 1956 Masters and PGA championships.
When I was 8, Dad encouraged me to learn to play under pressure. He'd have me challenge the members at Seminole when they played the par-four 6th hole near our on-course home. I would drop a ball down about a hundred yards from the green, then bet the members a package of Life Savers that I could "get home."
As I grew older, I learned much more about the art of shotmaking and scoring. Dad's assistants -- Mike Souchak, Dick Mayer, and Dave Marr, who all went on to win major championships -- shared swing secrets with me. Tommy Armour, one of the all-time greats from Scotland, and Craig Wood both taught me some things about shotmaking as well. Dad, however, who incidentally held the course records at both Winged Foot courses with a score of 61, remained my chief mentor, particularly when it came to the subject of practice.
Like Ben Hogan, Dad was big on practice. Unlike Hogan, however, he didn't spend most of his hours trying to perfect the golf swing. Most of his time was spent practicing the short game. That was also what he encouraged me to do.
When I asked him why he had me hit so many chips, pitches, and sand shots, he explained that 65 percent of all shots are played from 100 yards in from the green.
My practice sessions with Dad were anything but run of the mill. To prepare me for serious competition, he'd have me hit shag bags of balls from different lies: chips and pitches from manicured fairway grass, light rough, deep rough, hardpan, and divot holes. In addition, he'd have me experiment with different clubs.
Furthermore, with the goal in mind to teach me how to become a creative shotmaker, he'd have me set the clubface square, open, or closed, so I would learn how the ball reacted in the air and on the ground.
When it came time to practice sand shots, I didn't learn how to recover from only good lies. I had to play from buried lies, downhill lies, uphill lies, and sidehill lies. Also, Dad would have me hit shots from bunkers using a 4- or 5-iron. That drill taught me that the proper technique -- a right-hand controlled method (where the right hand dominates throughout the entire backswing and downswing) -- was more critical to recovering than using a sand wedge, the normal club for playing out of bunkers.
When I finally got the chance to hit drives, Dad had me purposely try to hit fades and draws. I was never allowed to hit more than eight shots in a row in the same direction. That practice strategy kept my concentration powers sharp, and taught me how to work the ball in different wind conditions. Besides that, it got me used to hitting tee shots on holes that curved right or left.
To enhance my creativity and ability to play iron shots, Dad had me practice hitting off different lies, to ever-changing targets. Plus, he had me choke down sometimes to see how that affected distance control. Out on the course, he allowed me to play only even-numbered irons one day, odd-numbered irons the next. This forced me to be more inventive in my shotmaking. For example, if the distance called for a 6-iron, and I had to play an odd-numbered club, I learned how to play an easy 5-iron or a hard 7-iron instead, to reach the green.
Although at the time this stringent and unorthodox form of practice made little sense to me, and sometimes seemed more torturous than enjoyable, it paid off greatly. I soon realized Dad's master plan. I was practicing my weaknesses instead of my strengths, which made me a much more well-rounded shotmaker. Furthermore, this manner of practice readied me for anything the golf gods threw at me in tournament play.
During my teens, when not caddying for Dad and learning more and more about golf technique, I played in junior competitions, including three United States Junior championships.
In those days, my idol was Arnold Palmer, who my dad said I patterned my "physical" swing after. However, I learned more from Ben Hogan, one of the game's all-time best ball strikers and course strategists.
My dad had played many rounds with Hogan, and taught him how to hit a few fancy shots along the way. As a result, Mr. Hogan took great pleasure in educating me on two important aspects of the game: course management and the mental side of golf.
I played with Mr. Hogan in 1960 at the Meadow Brook Club on Long Island, New York. By that time, Mr. Hogan had won two PGA championships, four U.S. Open titles, two Masters, and one British Open; so I truly shook like a leaf on the first tee. Nevertheless, I returned a respectable score of 78. Hogan's score was 75, but his score wasn't what impressed me. It was how he shot that score. What I learned from him that day I have never forgotten, and for that reason I teach these valuable lessons to my students:
* Don't always select a driver to tee off with on a par-four or par-five hole.
* A fade is a much more highly controlled shot than a draw.
* Make a practice swing that is the exact rehearsal of the swing you intend to put on the ball.
* Set up the same way every time to play a particular club, unless you're hitting a specialty shot, such as a draw or low punch.
* Stare at the area of fairway where you want your tee shot to land.
* Take time to visualize the shot you intend to hit.
* Plan ahead on approach shots, so that if you mishit the ball you are left with a relatively easy chip to save par.
* Don't get upset by bad holes.
* Don't get overexcited or overconfident because you played a hole particularly well.
* Concentrate only on hitting fairways and greens.
* Stay patient and good scores will come.
Mr. Hogan's lessons, along with those from my dad, plus the swing and shotmaking tips given to me by the many top pros who played "The Foot," helped me improve quickly during my teenage years.
The highlight of these years was my 8 and 7 victory over Mike Turnesa, Jr., in the finals of the Metropolitan Junior, played in 1961 at the Inwood Country Club in New York. My opponent's uncle, Jim Turnesa, had won the 1952 PGA championship, so the local press had a field day building up a rivalry, then reporting it in the newspapers.
My impressive record in junior high and high school golf earned me a scholarship to the University of Houston, a school that over the years has produced a long list of Tour professionals.
Houston seemed to be the perfect place for me to learn a secondary profession and prepare myself competitively for a career on the PGA Tour. To make a short story shorter, it didn't work out. I didn't like the school or the state, something I find particularly amusing now since I live in Texas today.
I played on the PGA Tour as an amateur in 1962 to see if I had the ingredients that were needed for earning a living week after week. That was pressure enough. But, quite frankly, there were other pressures that were surfacing. Being the son of Claude Harmon, I was sort of in a Catch 22 situation. If I won tournaments, people would say, "Well, of course Butch played well, he's Harmon's kid." If I failed, they'd say, "Can't understand it, how come Harmon's son can't get his game up to Tour standard?"
Not sure whether I wanted to turn pro or not, I enlisted in the army in 1963. I spent two years in Alaska, during which time I won several allmilitary tournaments, and the Alaskan State Amateur.
Just as I was getting used to the cold weather and practicing in snow, I was whisked off to the jungles of Viet Nam, where shooting mortars took the place of shooting golf balls.
I left the service in 1966, then went to work for my dad as an assistant pro at Winged Foot. In 1968 I decided to try to qualify for the PGA Tour.
After qualifying I played on the Tour full time from 1969 to 1971. However, my only high points of this three-year stint were winning the first B.C. Open and playing in two U.S. Open championships. I decided to become a club professional instead and, like my father before me, devote my life to teaching people how to play golf.
I got that "club job," as we pros say. Or rather, that club job came and got me.
To tell this story I have to backtrack in time a few years.
In late 1967, His Royal Majesty King Hassan II of Morocco, after reading How to Play Golf by Tommy Armour, expressed an interest in playing what is sometimes called the "royal and ancient pastime." Since kings generally want the very best, and can usually get it at the snap of their fingers, he notified his consulate in America that they were to look Tommy Armour up and bring him back to Morocco to be King Hassan's personal coach.
When Armour received the summons, he wrote a letter back to His Royal Majesty, telling him that he was honored about the invite and happy that his book was so well received. Sadly, however, he couldn't accept the job because he was getting on in years and had stopped traveling. Even the time he could devote to teaching in America was limited.
In that same letter, Armour recommended a "much better teacher." That teacher was my dad.
In 1968, my dad went over to Morocco and got the king started; and in 1969, because I was the first son in my family, I was invited to play in the Moroccan Open at a course just outside Casablanca. As luck would have it, I finished second in the event, which prompted His Majesty to invite me and Julius Boros, two-time U.S. Open champion and 1968 PGA champion, to play golf the next day at his personal nine-hole course, located on the summer palace grounds along the ocean.
On the 3rd hole His Majesty hit his ball into a greenside bunker. After watching him mishit the ball several times, Julius, who was one of the all-time great bunker players, took it upon himself to walk over to His Majesty and give him a quick lesson on hitting the ball out of the trap.
For ten...
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