Legendary golf coach Butch Harmon has reflected on his relationship with Rory McIlroy after an emergency lesson before the Masters.
All eyes will be on McIlroy as the world no.2 bids to win at Augusta for the first time.
McIlroy can become only the sixth golfer in history to win the career grand slam by claiming that elusive Green Jacket.
The Northern Irishman, who has not added to his four major wins in ten years, recently disclosed a trip to visit Tiger Woods’ former coach Harmon to get a second opinion on some swing problems.
He then finished third after a positive week at the Texas Open, fuelling inevitable excitement that this could finally be the year.
But the first meeting with Butch came when McIlroy was a 14-year-old prodigy, and despite coaching some of the game’s greatest players, Harmon could not believe his eyes.
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Speaking to talkSPORT.com, Butch said: “We were in Ireland and we had 30 of the best juniors in Ireland, 15 boys, 15 girls. And Rory happened to be one of them. He was only 14. I played nine holes with him.
“I can remember coming in, my brothers and I were asking, ‘Who’d you play with? How’d they play?’ I said, ‘I played with this little curly-haired kid named Rory something. I can’t remember his last name’.
‘So was he any good?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he was really good. This kid’s got a chance to be special’.
“Well, here he is, one of the best players in the world today.”
While McIlroy is coached on a full-time basis by compatriot Michael Bannon, he visits Harmon once in a while for extra advice.
And Butch has revealed exactly what went down in Las Vegas during the most recent lesson.
“We had a very good session a couple of weeks ago, when he was on the west coast doing some testing with TaylorMade,” Harmon said.
“He came here and we spent four hours going over some things in his swing he wasn’t happy with. A lot of it was missing greens with wedges and short irons. The fixes were pretty small, but created a much better swing.
“I’m a pretty simple person in the way that I teach. I’m not into all the Xs and Os and the numbers like that. I just watch the ball, and that pretty much tells me what we need to do.
“The big thing was to give him confidence with the shorter irons. You know Rory has a swing built for driving – it’s probably the best swing in the game today, which is why he drives it so well.
“He swings it at 120-125mph with a big long arc, and a big long follow through, and I was trying to get him to make more of a three-quarter swing, not such a long follow through to try to take the ball out of the air a little bit, to control the distance better.”
McIlroy described Harmon as ‘half coach, half psychologist’ – and the 34-year-old golfer has seen his mental strength questioned at Augusta on numerous occasions.
He was cruising towards victory at the 2011 Masters before a shocking collapse in the final round.
More recently, McIlroy missed the cut in 2023 despite arriving as pre-tournament favourite.
And Butch admits much of their recent meeting was about the bit between the ears.
“And then we talked about Augusta,” Harmon added. “About his mindset going in there.
“We all know how much he wants it. This is his chance to complete the career grand slam. This is the only one missing. He’s had his opportunities before and they’ve slipped away.
“So I talked to him about how to relax, how to enjoy himself, and how to enjoy the moment. Just play golf. It sounds easy, but he wants it so bad he just puts an excess amount of pressure on himself.
“I think he just needs to relax a little, and get into the round. It’s the old saying – just go shot, by shot, by shot.
“It’s easy to say but it’s hard when you’re pushing. I said just go play golf – you’re Rory McIlroy for Christ’s sake, one of the best players who’s ever played the game. And the course was built for him, if you look at the way he drives the golf ball.
“I’ll be very interested to see how he takes that small bit of advice I gave him. And some of the other stuff, we talked about the anxiety of some of the other players I’ve worked with when they’re waiting to tee off.
“You watch them on Thursday morning and they’re like a horse in the starting gate. It’s not that they’re nervous, it’s just that feeling that I want to go, come on, I’m ready.
“I like his schedule, not coming into Augusta until Tuesday afternoon. He was there on Monday and Tuesday and said he had two good practice sessions. So he’s ready to go.
“And I’ll be interested to see what he makes of a couple of the minor tweaks we made. We’ll see how he does.”
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News Summary:
- I met Rory McIlroy when he was 14-years old and he left me stunned, this is what I told him before the Masters
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