To summarize their feud for those unaware, DeChambeau’s new nickname is ‘Brooksie.’
In a recent interview, Claude Harman III asked Butch Harmon, legendary coach, how he would handle the inevitable elephant in the United States locker room sure to make its presence felt at next week’s Ryder Cup.
“Hell, I’d pair them together,” Harmon said on the ‘Off Course’ podcast. “I’d say, ‘All right boys, get your heads out of your a– and go play.’ I’d put them out the first day, first match out.
“I’d say, ‘Guys, I want you to suck it up and go win a damn point. This isn’t about you; this is about the Ryder Cup … Go get a damn point.’ ”
Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau attend the launch the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in the United Arab Emirates on Jan. 14, 2020, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images
The United States team might battle this awkwardness all week long, but eliminating it Friday morning is a decision captain Steve Stricker will be tempted to make.
Imagine the energy that would run through not only the team, but all American fans at Whistling Straits, if DeChambeau and Koepka went out and dominated a foursomes match?
(Editor’s note: This is the final piece of a seven-part series on the life and career of reigning Masters champion Dustin Johnson.)
Given his enormous physical gifts, Dustin Johnson could shun the weight room and practice ground and likely still make do against the best pro golfers in the world.
Especially since one of his favorite hobbies is to kick back and float down a waterway. But when it comes to his occupation, the reigning Masters champion and world No. 1 eventually learned work isn’t a four-letter word.
“Dustin is freakishly athletic,” said David Winkle, Johnson’s agent his entire professional career. “I think it was a little bit of a curse early in his career that he was so athletic that he probably gets three or four hours of benefit out of an hour’s work of time.
“He became an extremely hard worker about four or five years ago and took his focus and his dedication to a new level. That’s when he made the leap from being a top-10 player in the world to being the best player in the world.”
About a decade ago, Johnson met uber trainer Joey Diovisalvi – Joey D as he’s better known – and gradually increased his workload in the weight room and on the practice range. Now he’s a beast in the gym and a machine on the range.
“He’s just big and strong with athleticism oozing from every angle,” Diovisalvi said. “I’ve been with him everywhere and the perception doesn’t match the reality.
He works as hard on the driving range as he does in the gym and he works as hard as he can. He puts in hours out there and sometimes too much.
“His work ethic is off the charts even though his talent is off the charts.”
Johnson discovered there are a lot more fruits that come with the labor and despite reaching the summit of golf – world No. 1, two-time major winner, FedEx Cup captain, future inductee into the World Golf Hall of Fame, reigning Masters champion – he isn’t about to put his feet up and lighten up.
“Having the success I’ve had, the feeling I get when I win, especially a major, all those things make my family proud and drive me to continue to work hard and continue to try and be the best I can,” Johnson said. “And I like being the best.”
Getting there included two pivotal discoveries.
The first took a few years to come to fruition. When Johnson started working with Butch Harmon in 2009, the coach quickly preached that Johnson should master the fade. Up until then, Johnson relied on a draw that much of the time he couldn’t control. As Lee Trevino said, you can talk to a fade but a hook won’t listen.
“We would work on it every practice session but he wouldn’t put it in play in a tournament. He just didn’t have the confidence. Try as I did, it took a while to catch on,” said Harmon, whose son, Claude, regularly works with Johnson while the elder Harmon stays in touch from afar. “And then one day he called me and he said, ‘Hey, Butchy, I was just playing today and I decided I was going to hit fades off every tee and man I drove it good. I think I’m going to play that way.’
“And I just laughed and said, ‘Yep, that’s a good idea.’”
That was in 2015 when Johnson was testing equipment
“It wasn’t like I couldn’t hit a cut,” Johnson said. “But if I had to cut one around a tree or something like that, it took me a while to trust it. Then when I was testing equipment, I hit a couple of cuts on the range and it felt really good. So the next three days I played and hit nothing but cuts.
“That was all she wrote.”
A few months later, another foundational moment occurred. At the 2016 Northern Trust Open at Riviera Country Club north of Los Angeles, Johnson won the morning wave of the pro-am with Janet Gretzky and Tristan Gretzky, his fiancée’s mother and younger brother.
Instead of celebrating, Johnson went to the range. There he hooked up with reps from TrackMan, a launch monitor that provides precise analytics concerning what a golf ball does after being hit.
At the time, Johnson was a middling wedge player. More harshly, it was a weakness, especially when he lived in the 50- to 150-yard range.
“He was leaving so many shots out there,” Winkle said. “If he could become even a medium-range wedge player, game over. He spent hours that day and then turned to me and said, ‘Wink, order me one of these.’”
It came in the mail three weeks later, and Johnson quickly developed a system where he’d spend hours working on half-, three-quarter and full shots with his wedges. Now he’s one of the best wedge players in the game.
“I knew I had to really work on my wedge game,” Johnson said. “Now I’m never surprised with whatever number I have to the green. I probably practice like 80 percent of my time on wedges.
“It took me a long time but as you get older, you figure out some things.”
Adam Scott called the putt heard round the golf world.
(Editor’s note: All this week, in honor of the 20-year anniversary of Tiger Woods’ “Better than Most” putt, we’ve been looking back at the magical moment at TPC Sawgrass, perhaps the greatest in the history of The Players Championship. Also see:
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Adam Scott called the putt heard round the golf world.
Seriously, the Aussie went all Nostradamus well before NBC commentator Gary Koch started saying “better than most” in the 2001 Players Championship.
Scott wasn’t playing in the tournament and to this day has no idea why he was at TPC Sawgrass. But he ended up doing guest commentary for Sky Sports alongside his coach, Butch Harmon, who also was working with Tiger Woods at the time.
During Saturday’s sunlit third round, the two were on a break and standing outside of the Sky Sports compound overlooking the famous 17th green.
Before them was Woods, surveying a putt from the back fringe of the island green that would need to break twice, slide down a steep ridge and travel 60 feet to reach the front-left pin placement. Up to then, a handful of players had putted from the top of the ridge on the 17th and every ball zoomed past the hole and off the green and onto the fringe below.
“This is such a hard putt,” Harmon said back then.
“I wouldn’t want it,” Scott said.
“He could putt the ball off the green,” Harmon said.
“Sure could,” Scott said.
“He could four-putt. He could three-putt. It sure as hell isn’t an easy two-putt. And it’s basically impossible to make the putt,” Harmon said.
“Just wait,” Scott said. “Wait until we hear the roar when he makes it.”
Ka-boom.
Woods made the Better Than Most putt, which was Koch’s famous phrase as the putt neared the hole and then disappeared. The Richter Scale went crazy, Woods started fist-pumping and roaring, and Harmon and Scott high-fived each other until their hands hurt.
“When I told Butch Tiger was going to make it, he laughed,” Scott said. “But sure enough, the putter was up in the air and the ball was going in. It just blew the roof off the place. It was unbelievable. If you watch the footage long enough, Tiger points up to Butch with a huge smile.
Tiger Woods points after sinking a 60-foot birdie putt at the 17th hole of the TPC Sawgrass Players Stadium Course on March 24, 2001, in the third round of The Players Championship. Woods went on to win the tournament two days later in a Monday finish. [Bob Self/Florida Times-Union]“That was a pretty good one to be hanging out for as a spectator.”
After the round, Harmon met up with Woods.
“I said, ‘That was some putt you made on 17.’ And all he said was, ‘That was cool, wasn’t it Butchy.’ That’s all he ever said about it to me.”
It was cool, indeed. Well, not for everyone.
On the green with Woods was his caddie, Steve Williams, and Phil Mickelson and his caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay. The titanic pairing of the top 2 players in the world had already stirred up thunderous applause the first 16 holes but Woods’ putt was off the charts.
“I remember when the ball got to the crest of the slope that it had perfect pace,” Mickelson said 20 years later. “And then when it got to about 10 feet out it looked like he was going to make it. Seriously, from where he was, the ball was actually going to go in and I just remember thinking, ‘Are you frickin’ kidding me?’
“I had seen so much of that kind of stuff from him for so long it didn’t unnerve me. The guy certainly didn’t need any help, he was playing such great golf at the time. And then he makes a bomb. When you’re thinking he was going to three-putt and he makes it, it felt like a two-shot swing.
“Well, 20 years later, I still don’t really know what more I can say.”
[listicle id=778081998]
Mackay said it was the most Tiger thing ever.
“I just remember laughing when it went in. Who else is going to make that putt? Are you kidding me?” Mackay said. “I was fortunate to be with Phil when he did something incredible, and when you see Tiger or someone else do something incredible, you just sort of look down and wait for that tidal wave of sound to hit you. So I saw the ball going toward the hole and you’re waiting that 10th of a second for the sound explosion and then it came. It was huge.”
Williams heartedly celebrated with his boss on the green.
“Tiger had an uncanny knack of making the impossible possible,” Williams said in an email. “It seemed like the more difficult the shot the more focused he became and he just relished any opportunity that would give a knockout blow to his opponents. Tiger’s imagination on the greens made him one of the greatest putters of all time under pressure.”
Woods shot 66 that day and then won the weather-delayed tournament on Monday. He had won the Arnold Palmer Invitational the week before, and then would win the Masters the following week, completing the Tiger Slam by winning four consecutive major championships.
Rob McNamara, TGR Ventures vice president who also serves as a frequent playing partner for Woods and provides a second set of eyes, was in the clubhouse watching on a small TV when Woods teed up his heroics on the 17th green.
“That was his first Players win and that meant a lot to him,” McNamara said. “After he won the (career) Grand Slam (in 2000), his record was pretty astonishing, but the focus then shifted to him having not won a Players.
[vertical-gallery id=778090281]
“I remember the criticism that he hadn’t won a Players. People were trying to diminish what Tiger was doing. I think it was very telling that he silenced the critics when he won the Players. Which was a little bit ridiculous.”
Woods really didn’t talk about the Better Than Most putt.
“The only thing Tiger said about the putt was that he started fist-pumping it and started walking pretty early,” McNamara said. “And then it sort of barely jumped into the right side and when he watched the film he realized he started his walk too early. That putt could have missed. But when you’re young and confident that walk is early. But that’s the thing about Tiger. Sometimes he wills those putts in and that was definitely one of them.”
Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee, a former PGA Tour player who won the 1998 Great Vancouver Open, doesn’t remember where he was when he saw the putt but he hasn’t forgotten one thing that stood out to him.
“If you go back and watch the whole clip, Tiger circles the green and then when he gets over the putt, he does something I had never seen him do. He stood over the putt and made strokes with just his right hand,” Chamblee said. “It was a great example of someone being an artist. He walked around, looked at the putt, saw what the green was, and he stood over the putt and had put all that information into his computer and just tried to feel what the putt was going to do.
“And off it went. That putt just shows you the magic of the guy.”
Koch, a six-time winner on the PGA Tour and a mainstay on NBC telecasts since 1996, sat down with Woods on the 15th anniversary of the putt. One thing that came out of the conversation sort of startled Koch.
“I asked him, ‘I’m assuming you hit some practice putts from up there? I mean you were the only one that even came close to reading the break properly,’” Koch said. “And he goes, ‘Nope. Never hit a putt from up there. Never did.’”
Many say a change might do Jordan Spieth good; he’s shown no signs he’s ready to snap out of the funk that’s dogged him the past few years.
The trials and tribulations of Jordan Spieth have been well documented. The former World No. 1 simply can’t recapture the consistency he once displayed in winning 10 tournaments and three majors in a three-year stretch, and ascending to the top of the golf world. Spieth has fallen to 108th in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings and down to No. 84 in the Official World Golf Ranking.
And while there’s nothing indicating he’s set to part with coach Cameron McCormick, a new report insists he’s looking to have someone outside his camp take a fresh look at his swing.
Many have speculated that a change might do Spieth good — through the first six events of the new PGA Tour season, he’s shown no signs he’s ready to snap out of the funk that’s dogged him for the past few years. The former University of Texas star has thrice missed the cut in 2020-21 and his highest finish during the three weekends he made was a T-38 at the CJ Cup.
[vertical-gallery id=778083001]
Spieth’s strength was never the long ball, but even the game’s finer points have failed him in the new season — he’s currently 126th in Strokes Gained: Putting, 230th in Strokes Gained: Approaching the Green and a surprising 198th in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green.
Harmon, known for focusing on a player’s strengths, might be exactly what the 27-year-old Spieth needs to kickstart his career. Spieth has long been known for occasional yips, but they’ve dominated his headlines in recent years. For example, Spieth’s 40 on the back in the opening round of the Vivint Houston Open was just a few competitive rounds removed from the 81 he posted in the second round of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot.
After struggling at Bay Hill, Brooks Koepka went to see the legendary coach but made clear there are no changes to his team.
PONTE VEDRA, Fla. — Brooks Koepka didn’t wait long after his career-worst round on the PGA Tour to go in search of answers.
Koepka told Golfweek that he left the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill on Sunday and flew to Las Vegas, where he spent several hours on Monday with legendary coach Butch Harmon. On Tuesday he flew back east to TPC Sawgrass, where the Players Championship begins tomorrow.
“I saw him Monday for quite a few hours,” Koepka said Wednesday morning. “It was important to get out there and find something you believe in.”
The world No. 3 has struggled in his comeback from a three-month layoff for a knee injury. He was T-43 at the Genesis Open, missed the cut at the Honda Classic then finished T-47 at Bay Hill last weekend, during which he skiied to a Saturday 81, the worst score of his career.
Koepka made clear his visit to Butch has no impact on the status of his team. He has worked for seven years on his full swing with Butch’s son, Claude Harmon III, and on his short game with Pete Cowen.
“Claude is still my swing coach and Pete is still my short game coach,” he said. “I’m not a tinkerer. I keep things simple and I had gotten away from that. It’s not a knock on anyone. Not on Claude. Not on Pete. Not on Ricky [Elliott, his caddie]. It’s a knock on me.”
On Tuesday night Koepka gathered his inner circle at a house near TPC Sawgrass for a meeting. “We had a team meeting last night. I called myself out on some things,” he admitted. “Everyone wanted to make sure that when they show up they’re doing their job. They’re 100% focused. I’m doing what I need to do, they’re doing what they need to do. It was just a regroup session.”
Asked what the elder Harmon told him, Koepka pointed to a creeping narrowness in his swing. “It’s all simple stuff. You go back to basics,” he explained. “I was getting pretty narrow on the backswing, narrow on the follow through. From there you got no speed, no power, no control. You try to get that width and you can get power and you can finally load, weight shifted in the correct spots, things like that.”
The drive-by with Butch left Koepka noticeably more upbeat ahead of his opening round in the company of the only two men ahead of him in the world rankings: Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm. “I feel good. I feel like we got something to work on,” he said. “The season starts now for us and let’s kick it into gear.”
