Butch Harmon is recognized as perhaps the greatest golf coach of all time.
He helped to develop Tiger Woods into the greatest golfer of all time in the late 90s and early 2000s. Then, after he and Woods parted ways, he worked with Phil Mickelson as the American turned the tide in their rivalry.
Mickelson credits Harmon with teaching him to play in The Open Championship, as he completely rebuilt Mickelson’s game to help him win the Claret Jug.
And since 2022, Harmon has been working with Tommy Fleetwood and has helped take the Englishman’s game to the next level. Since working with Harmon, Fleetwood has gone from the best player to never win, to a weekly contender and Tour Championship winner.
And speaking before his first PGA Tour start of 2026, Fleetwood revealed the biggest thing he’s learned from Woods’ former coach.
Tommy Fleetwood names the biggest thing he’s learned from Butch Harmon
Fleetwood is known as the nice guy in golf. So much so that Rory McIlroy once said that if he were a little less nice, he’d win more.
Prior to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Fleetwood was asked if Harmon had taught him to be “tougher”, and he said, “No. I think it’s important to be yourself. I think anytime you’re trying to be something that you’re not, things get just difficult.
“So again, I just try and be myself. If that’s what I am, if I’m like a really nice person, then that’s great, like I’m happy with that.
“But no, Butch, the work that we’ve done over the few years, I said back in Atlanta, the best compliment I could give the last three years of working with Butch Harmon was when I felt under the most pressure and my swing gets sort of gone through the middle stretch of the round on Sunday, I could find it on the back of the 12th tee with a few practice swings and kind of reset myself.
“That’s the biggest compliment I could give our work, like that moment there and the next few holes that I played. Butch is an incredible coach. He’s not just a technical guy. He’s very smart, he knows what he’s doing with the swing, but he’s an incredible coach and he makes you feel good.
“We can talk about courses and go through shots there. Like I love working with him and I gain confidence from just working with him and having the trust that he’s doing the right things for me.”
Scottie Scheffler once said that you can’t find your swing in a tournament, but it seems that Harmon has found the secret to finding it in the middle of a round!
Butch Harmon named the biggest change he’s seen in Tommy Fleetwood
Having worked closely with the likes of Woods and Mickelson, Harmon knows exactly what it takes to win on the big stage. Not only physically, but mentally.
And he said before last year’s Masters that the biggest change he’s noticed in Fleetwood since working with him is his self-belief.
He said, “I have been working with him for about two-and-a-half years, and I have seen an increase in his self-belief during that time. It is one of the things I talk to him about all the time. I tell him: ‘You need to understand how good you really are’.”
It looks like he’s really started to believe it after rising to third in the World Golf Rankings in 2025 and winning his first PGA Tour event. Next for Fleetwood is a major championship, and it would be foolish to bet against him.
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