{"id":966,"date":"2012-05-02T23:26:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T23:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jaystuller.com\/?p=966"},"modified":"2012-05-02T23:26:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T23:26:35","slug":"about-golf-the-complete-butch-harmon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/golf\/instruction\/966\/about-golf-the-complete-butch-harmon","title":{"rendered":"About Golf: The Complete Butch Harmon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Butch Harmon at his academy in Las Vegas.<\/p><\/div>\n

The major golf monthlies are absolutely chock full of illustrated tips, fast-frame photographic features of perfect swings, and page-after-page on ways to improve one\u2019s game. From Ben Hogan\u2019s Five Lessons<\/em><\/strong> to Tiger Woods\u2019 How I Play Golf<\/em><\/strong>, books of advice are perennial solid sellers, with Dave Pelz and Phil Mickelson each covering the short game, while others devote entire tomes to Zen, positive thinking and perfect putting. Players travel to golf academies and spend gazillions on lessons.<\/p>\n

So if instruction really works, why aren\u2019t we all shooting par, instead of sucking like a Dyson vacuum?<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s because golf is an incredibly difficult sport with so many different components to performing well, evident in a new, four-hour two DVD set called Butch Harmon on Golf<\/strong><\/em>, in which the legendary instructor covers all of the basics of ball striking, faults and cures, several different ways to get out of bunkers, off hardpan and successfully manage difficult lies.\u00a0 With 57 different \u201cchapters\u201d and more than 250 specific tips, Harmon demonstrates basic golf techniques in clear language and by example.\u00a0 He also includes some awfully nifty tricks, like setting a head cover next to a teed-up ball, forcing a slicer to make an inside-out swing instead of coming over the top, in a way that doesn\u2019t require a complicated explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresented by Titleist,\u201d the DVD set is available in six languages, including English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, French and Korean, which will likely surprise people who didn\u2019t know Harmon was fluent in so many tongues.\u00a0 It costs $79.95 and is available at\u00a0 http:\/\/www.ButchHarmonDVD.com.<\/a> A second set can be purchased for only $69.95 and will include free shipping. The set also has a Facebook page: http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ButchHarmonDVD<\/a><\/p>\n

Another section of the DVD features interviews with several of Harmon\u2019s most successful students, with interviews and practice sessions with the likes of Ernie Els, Adam Scott, Dustin Johnson and Tiger Woods, the latter of whom Harmon coached from 1992 to 2004.\u00a0 In the DVD, Freddy Couples, for example, says that the he considers Harmon the game\u2019s best instructor \u201cbecause he\u2019s very tough on his students.\u00a0 I say that politely, but he\u2019s tough on his players. And he has an excellent eye for a golf swing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here too is a fascinating conversation between Harmon and Phil Mickelson, talking about the player\u2019s childhood development of a creative short game, and the reason he recently turned to the Las Vegas-based instructor to help straighten out drives that tended slice under pressure. (Think the 2006 U.S. Open at Winged Foot.) Mickelson shows how Harmon quickly identified how he would slide his left knee backward during his takeaway, which was the basic start of a swing that ended up striking the ball with an open-faced club. \u00a0There\u2019s a bit more involved, but from this one example, it\u2019s clear why Harmon is a much sought-after teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the past 40+ years I have been blessed to work with some of the greatest players in the game: Phil, Ernie, Greg, Tiger, Seve, Freddie, and several up and coming players, such as Adam, Nick, and Dustin, who are destined to carve their names in the golf record books,\u201d says Harmon.\u00a0 \u201cObviously I am proud to have been associated with them and to have contributed in some small way to their success. But their accomplishments are only part of the overall picture of the scores of everyday players, from all walks of life who have left the practice tee after working with me, that feel that their game has been improved. For everyone that has worked with me there are thousands of golfers that I will never have a chance to try and help.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that in mind, he set out to create a filmed record of a lifetime of golf knowledge, covering fundamentals, specialty shots, club selection and even anger management, one lesson that Tiger Woods has clearly forgotten. \u00a0Butch Harmon on Golf is indeed the summation of that knowledge. \u00a0And\u00a0the 68-year-old Harmon has in fact been in golf for his entire life. His father, Claude Harmon, a renowned club and teaching professional and 1948 Masters Champion, introduced him to the game. \u00a0His brothers are also well-respected instructors. \u00a0Butch played on the PGA Tour in the early 1970s. \u00a0Probably more pertinent to the DVDs is the fact that for the past dozen years, Harmon has been voted as the top instructor by his peers, in a poll conducted by Golf Digest.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, for some of us, instruction may actually work.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The major golf monthlies are absolutely chock full of illustrated tips, fast-frame photographic features of perfect swings, and page-after-page on… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,7],"tags":[6474,923,788,109,498,894,53,925,3127,429943,82,897,1194,10732,1154],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","category-instruction","category-personalities","tag-adam-scott","tag-u-s-open","tag-ernie-els","tag-las-vegas","tag-titleist","tag-ben-hogan","tag-tiger-woods","tag-claude-harmon","tag-facebook","tag-freddy-couples","tag-golf-digest","tag-winged-foot","tag-dave-pelz","tag-butchharmon","tag-phil-mickelson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2012\/05\/Butch-Harmon-3.6.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/jaystuller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}