Butch Harmon - The Pro: Lessons from My Father About Golf and Life

I would like to dedicate this book to my loving family: my brothers, Craig, Dick, and Bill, who in the writing of this book revived so many special memories for me; my children, C.H., Michaele, and Cole, who keep me young through the wonder of their lives; and finally, my dearest wife, Christy, who is the very air that I breathe. My love and thanks to each of you.

Introduction

PASSING THE PEARLS

I dont remember the first time I heard it: that booming voice erupting from the barrel-chested, bigger-than-life man who dominated my life.

These are pearls Im giving you, my father would say as he stared through the backs of my eyes and pointed his meaty finger in my direction, never threatening but like a maestro conducting the final movement of a symphony. Pearls! Not everybody gets these! Pay attention!

We were standing on the driving range at Winged Foot, the thirty-sixhole golf club in Mamaroneck, New York, twenty-five minutes from the city and one of the greatest championship golf clubs in the world, host of the 1929, 1959, 1974, and 2006 U.S. Opens, the 1957 U.S. Womens Open, the 1997 PGA Championship, and the 2004 U.S. Amateur Championship. My father, the man passing the pearls to his sons that afternoon, was the pro. Todays pearl: practice.

You dont practice a golf swing, you practice golf shots, he said, the finger waving as the symphony reached a crescendo. You can stand out here all day working on this position or that, but if you arent working on golf shots, youre wasting your time. I dont work on anything Im not going to need on the back nine on a Sunday.

At that stage in my life I didnt say Blah, blah, blah out loud, because I knew it would have earned me swift and well-deserved corrective measures, but I wasnt listening, either. Like most sons, particularly those like me, who were bestowed with their fathers names, there were many years when I found my dad to be an irrepressible bore, a know-it-all who had me rolling my eyes and yawning during his predictable, well-trodden speeches. What I didnt realize that afternoon was just how prophetic and wise my fathers words were and how often I would use them later on in life.

Purpose! Purpose! he said, punching each word with the finger. If you arent out here practicing with a purpose, you might as well be playing bean bag. Everything you do out here has to be for a reason. If youre going through the motions, go do something else, because youre wasting your time and taking up a spot on the range that somebody elsesomebody seriouscould be using.

At this point I gazed down the first fairway of the West Course at a group of members who had just teed off, my mind a million miles away from the messagethe pearlbeing laid out for me.

Every shot must be played for a reason, my father continued, even though I knew he could see that hed lost me. Just beating balls with a pretty swing might impress the twenty-handicap members, but its not doing you one bit of good when it comes to playing golf. If youre out here hitting high, straight six-irons, posing pretty for the ladies, what are you going to do when you get to the third tee and have to cut a low three-iron into a hurting wind?

Okay, this wasnt the kind of lesson Dad would have given those same twenty-handicap members who kept his appointment book full. I knew that I was getting something from him that he didnt give to most, something that could be called a pearl if you were so inclined, which my father was. I still couldnt have cared less. The members on the first fairway were about to hit their second shots, and a male cardinal lit in a tree beside the putting green. My dad might as well have been prattling on about the weather.

Out of frustration, Dad dug his big hand deep into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a bulging money clip. He always carried stupid amounts of cash, having upwards of a thousand dollars on him at any given time. This was the case even back in the sixties, when a thousand dollars would buy a freshly painted and well-running used Mustang and put a substantial down payment on a house. Maybe it came from his experiences in the Great Depression, although we never talked about it, but he believed that a man should always have cash. When my three brothers and I were young, he would insist that we never leave the house with less than five dollars in our pockets. We werent supposed to spend the moneyin fact, there was a full accounting of what we spent every nightbut we had to carry it. A mans got to have cash, he would say. You never know when youll need it.

This day, with a cool north wind predicting the end of another New York golf season, my father tossed the money clip to the ground with a quick flick of the wrist. Then he pulled a five-iron out of his golf bag, took a couple of practice swings, and began the same pre-shot ritual I had watched my entire life. Id seen it millions of times on the range, thousands of times during rounds where I either followed him or carried his golf bag, and during dozens of professional tournaments where I had walked side-by-side with my father as he competed against the likes of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, and Sam Snead.

The routine never varied. From a spot behind the ball, he took the club in his left hand and then in his right. His hands were uniquethick and leathery with so many calluses they felt like the scratchy weathered masts of a giant sailing ship. Like most golf pros of his generation, Dad had built his own game from scratch, finding the fundamentals in countless trials and failures that showed in each crease on his palms. I had felt those hands many times as they held me when I was young, and when they hugged me days and nights well into adulthood. My father never shied away from physical affection with his sons, and we never thought twice about hugging and kissing him every day of his life. When placed on a golf club, however, the rough-hewn hands took on a softer, more artistic flair. Dad gripped a club the way Miles Davis held a muted hornlike an appendage, no different from a third arm. It was a part of him.

His eyes were his second-most indelible feature. Caribbean hazel and intense, all the Harmon boys could read his feelings by looking there. When he gripped the club, those eyes focused on the position of his hands as if he were a surgeon performing a risky procedure. Because of joint problems hed had since childhood, my dad wrapped his left thumb around the grip rather than running it straight down the shaft, as is customary. As a result his left-hand grip looked more like Ted Williams holding a baseball bat than Ben Hogan gripping a golf club. I never saw him teach that grip to anyone else, but it worked for him for half a century. Im still convinced he could have hit a five-iron blindfolded in his sleep at midnight and nothing would have been different, it came so naturally to him. But that didnt stop him from concentrating on his hands as they wrapped around the grip of the club. Then he put the clubhead behind the ball before placing his right foot and then his left in position. Two waggles of the club, and then his eyes moved slowly between the ball and the line of his intended shot.

Usually he was ready to swing. But this time he hesitated. Without taking his eyes off the target, he said, Do you see those flags?