May 8, 2024 • 43 mins
Claude catches up on the last couple weeks from Australia to Singapore and what he and Brooks' worked on that lead to of BK's win.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Witness insurmountable deficits turn into unforgettable victories at the Travelers Championship,
the northeast one and only PGA Tour signature event. See
Scotty Scheffler, Orriy McElroy, Victor Hovlin, Patrick Cantley and returning
champion Keegan Bradley, as well as other PGA Tour stars
in all four days of the competition at close by
(00:21):
TPC River Highlands. The excitement tees off June nineteenth through
the twenty third. For tickets and information, visit Travelers Championship
dot com. The Travelers Championship there is only one. It's
the Son of a Book podcast. We normally come to
(00:42):
you every Wednesday. Took a couple of weeks off as
I've been traveling and went down to the live event
in Adelaide, was at the live event in Singapore and
currently recording this in Bangkok. Just here in Thailand. I'm
opening up a new academy here under my brand, the
Claude Harman Performance Golf brand. Got one in Dubai, opening
them one here. Really really excited about it and it's
(01:05):
really cool to get an opportunity to travel. And I
think the last three three weeks for me has has
shown me that global golf is. It's so cool, right
And I think there's a lot of talk about growing
the game, all the stuff going on with live, all
the stuff going on with the PGA Tour and stuff.
But when you get outside the United States, when you travel,
(01:25):
I'm lucky enough to get to do that, you see
that golf is a global game and there is a
passion for golf all over the world. Just wanted to
touch a little bit on the live of that down
in Adelaide. Listen. I know that it's crazy times right
now in golf right and I know there are people
that are on the PGA Tour side, they're fiercely anti live.
(01:45):
There's the live people all of that. Listen. I've been
saying this, if you love golf and if you want
to watch golf, you can watch that anywhere. You can
consume it on the PGA Tour, DP World, LPGA Champs Tour,
Asian Tour Live, you can find all that anywhere. You
(02:07):
can find it on TV, you can find it online.
There were some great players down at the Adelaide tournament
for live and it's kind of become over the last
two years lives kind of signature event. And again, all
of my players that I work with, when I say
this all the time, the three players I work with,
Dustin Johnson, Brooks, Kepka, Pat Perez, they made the choice
(02:28):
to go to Live. I'm their coach. I go where
they go. So I think a lot of I think
one of the things that I think it does kind
of upset me and it makes me mad that I
think a lot of the To me, it's just my opinion.
A lot of the fiercely, fiercely anti Live people will
openly tell you they don't watch, they don't care, they've
(02:51):
never been to an event. So I try and use
the podcast to say listen, make up your own mind.
But the event in Adelaide has become over the last
two years kind of lives signature event, and the crowds
the first year were just they're unbelievable. And Australia is starved,
starved for professional golf, right. It used to be a
(03:16):
lot of players used to go down there and a
lot of players the Australian Open. There's been a rich,
rich history down in Australia of players going down there,
but in a number of years that that just kind
of didn't happen. And so I think one of the
reasons why the event is so so l liked and
(03:40):
so well attended is it's an opportunity for players to
or for the fans to kind of see some of
the best players in the world and they just don't
see that many great players in one place. The Australian
get to see Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, John Rahm,
(04:06):
cam Smith, Bryson, d Chambeau, Wac o'neman and then a
bunch of other players. So for the Aussie fans, I
think it's so well attended because it is an amazing
tournament and it's an opportunity for them to see a
lot of great players in one place. Now, yes, I
saw online they were talking, you know, the live guys.
(04:27):
You know there are social accounts where the live people
are going, hey, first time great players have been down there,
And somebody said, yeah, well Jordan Speith went down in
twenty fourteen and won the Australian Open. I got news
for you. Jordan Speith was paid to go down there
an appearance fee. He didn't go down there for free.
He didn't go down there because his sole intention was
(04:50):
to play Aussie golf. He did what every great player does,
what every great player should be allowed to do. If
you're the reigning if you're a reigning major champion, you
can go outside the United States. They will pay you
to come to their event. That has been going on
for over thirty years. That's not news, right, We've talked
(05:14):
about I've talked about this on the pod Dubai Abu
Dhabi Guitar China. Appearance fees are part of the game, right,
So yeah, the live guys, a lot of them, they
got the bag, they got paid. But that's been going on.
That's not news. So I don't care which side you're on.
(05:35):
If you love the PGA Tour, fine, If you like live,
that's fine. I don't care. But you don't have to choose,
and you can watch your golf wherever you want. If
you want to watch great players, if you want to
watch John Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Brooks, Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Cam Smith, Bryson,
(05:56):
you can watch them. They just play on live now, right.
So if you don't like that and you don't want
to watch because of that, in my opinion, I says
I think that says more about you than it does
about that my job as I've got my own podcast,
so I can say whatever the hell I want. But
I think one of my jobs is I've been to
(06:17):
every live event and I work with the players, So
if you haven't been, if you don't know a lot
about it, or whatever side you're on. The event was amazing.
It's one of the coolest golf events I've been to.
The fans were great, the golf course, the Grange. Yes,
I'd love for the tournament to be at Royal Adelaide
(06:40):
across the street, which is unbelievable. I'd love it to
be at Royal Melbourne. But the sand Belt golf courses
and the Grange is kind of old school. I posted
a video on my social and the bunkering in the
sand Belt region in Australia of these golf courses is
just so damn cool, right. The green complexes are cool,
(07:02):
the short game stuff is cool. So it's always great
to go down to Australia and see how cool the
golf courses are because it forces they're tight. If they're
firm and fast, you can run the golf ball. There's
so many different options coming into these green complexes, so
it forces you to kind of be a little bit
(07:23):
of a kind of old school shop maker. So the
event last year was well attended. There was a ton
of people. Fisher DJ he played last year. He played
again this year on the Saturday night. It was amazing.
It was just it felt like it felt like a
(07:43):
festival at a golf tournament at night. It was cool.
The fans were everywhere. They were excited to see all
these players. You could see the kids trying to get
views of their favorite players. And then and you know
the way that live works. You've got an individual winner
every week, and you've got the team format. Cam Smith's team,
(08:06):
the Rippers, all Australian. They're in a playoff with the
South Africans. That was cool. They the Australians ended up
winning two man playoff leash Mark Leishman and Cam Smith.
I mean, I talked to Cam in Singapore and he
was like, this is one of the coolest things I've
ever done. Right, It was one of the coolest things
(08:27):
of his career. Whether you like that or you don't,
Whether you agree with that or you don't, Cam Smith
thinks it's one of the coolest things he's ever done right.
So it was a great event. I couldn't believe how
many people showed up. I mean, they sold more tickets
this year than last year. And it was it was fun.
(08:49):
It was really really cool. And for those of the
players and the people involved in Live, it's their biggest event.
They don't have any majors, right, so it's the biggest
tournament they had, And it was great and it was
cool to go down there, and I thought it was
a fitting end for cam Smith and the Rippers to win.
(09:10):
They got up on stage did the shoey. It was
fun and listen. If you don't like that, I'm okay
with that. That's that's your choice. But I think my
job and what I try and do in my podcast
is to talk about what's going on in the game
of golf and talk about what's happening. And it was
(09:30):
really really cool. So we went straight from Adelaide and
went to Singapore and brooks Kepka won last week and listen,
I think it was a big, big win for brooks Kepka. Ah,
he did not. He didn't have his best stuff at Augusta.
He said that he knew that those of us around
(09:51):
him we knew that as well. He went in there
obviously having won the PGA last year, took a lead
on Sunday last year into the final group with John Rahm,
didn't get it done. The Masters is a tournament that
Brooks death desperately wants to win. It is what he
(10:14):
feels like, even though he's got five majors now, he
will feel at the end of his career that if
he doesn't have a Master's, if he doesn't have a
green jacket, that it will be something that he wants that.
He's been close twice, right, He's had two second place finishes,
once in nineteen when Tiger won and then last year
(10:36):
when John ramwan. He has the game to win around there.
He knows that he has been so close. He knows
he can win that golf tournament. He didn't have his
best stuff a couple of weeks ago. He was struggling
with his golf swing and struggling with his setup. He
couldn't get comfortable on the range, he wasn't seeing his window.
It was just a really, really weird week. I think
(10:58):
you know, Brooks was trying to psych himself up to
try and make things happen, and sometimes that just doesn't work.
And you will not find anyone in competitive professional gulf
that's harder on themselves than Brooks. I know, having been
(11:20):
around him for over a decade now and worked with him,
he demands and expects so much from himself, and I
think that can sometimes come across in his interviews and
his persona and the way he carries himself. I think
a lot of people look at that as maybe being arrogant,
as maybe being like he thinks he's better than everybody else.
(11:43):
I just think he has incredibly high standards of himself,
is incredibly high standards of all of us on his team.
And there was a little bit of a reset after
Augusta and a little bit of a refocus, and what
we did over the last two weeks is just get
back down to basics. And that's why I wanted to
talk about this because I think it's something that everyone
(12:05):
listening can can look at in their own game. When
Brooks struggles, ninety nine percent of the time, it's set
up related. And I've talked about this on the pod.
Before the ball position can get too far back, his alignment,
his stance can kind of get all all over the
place and That's what was happening at Augusta. He kept
(12:26):
saying to me on the range, in all of the
practice rounds, in all of the practice sessions, in all
of the warm ups, he had a two way miss.
He was struggling. All of the stuff that we were
trying to work on, that we'd normally work on didn't work.
He was struggling ball position. He couldn't get comfortable. No
matter what we were trying to tell on he was
(12:47):
just like, I just nothing feels right. And listen, as
a player, every now and again, you know, the system
doesn't work. They're not robots. They're not perfect. They're never
going to be perfect as good as they are, as
great as they are, even on the runs that they're on.
This historic run that Scotty Scheffler is on right now,
(13:07):
playing golf that we just haven't seen in so long,
the amazing, amazing golf that he's playing right now. Every
now and again, you know, the system doesn't work. It
doesn't feel right. We've seen that with Rory McElroy. When
Rory gets on these big, massive runs where it looks
like he's basically just gonna win every tournament right now,
(13:30):
you can see that Rory's searching. Rory didn't get the
result he wanted at the Masters. He went out and
saw my dad did a little trying to get a
little bit of a reset. It happens with players, and
you know, there's all these cliches and sports, but one
of my favorites is the only thing that really matters
after you get knocked down is what you do next,
(13:50):
because everybody's going to get knocked down, right, Everybody's going
to get hit in the mouth. Mike Tyson has famously
said everybody's got a plan until they get hit in
the mouth. Then the plan changes. And I think for
Brooks how much his focus and how much he defines
his career based off of the Majors. The Masters was
(14:11):
a punch in the face and so we did a
massive reset. So he came to his Caddy and I
Ricky Elliott, and he said, Okay, we've got to get
my set up right. We've got to get my basics right,
we've got to get my ball position right, we've got
to get my alignment right. So he said to us
early in the week down in Australia, he said, listen,
(14:31):
I want the two of you to nag me and
be hyper focused and hyper vigilant on my ball position,
my setup, my alignment. So when Brooks's ball position gets
back in his stance, he has his strong grip, his
hands can get too far forward, and that left arm
can get high, that right arm can get a little
(14:54):
bit low, the shoulders can get a little bit closed.
And what that does is it alters the takeaway to
where the takeaway no longer goes outside and vertical, it
starts to get inside. Even though he's trying to do
what he wants to do, what we want him to
do from a swing technique, when that ball position gets back,
when his shoulders get too shut, there's a domino effect.
(15:17):
You've heard me talk about this before on the pod.
There's a domino effect of things that happen. That is
the domino that starts to cause the other things on
the downswing, that's the domino. His setup, his ball position,
the things that he does before he hits the golf
ball are is the domino that starts to push all
the other dominoes. So it doesn't matter what he's trying
(15:39):
to do with the backswing and the takeaway, I'm telling
him get it more in front, get it more front.
We're also looking at the ball position, and he's struggling
to get comfortable. So at a major championship, it's hard
to make changes because you know that these players are
going out and having to play at Augusta. Like everyone
(16:01):
else in the field, there was a lot of wind
going on. He was playing in a lot of winds.
So then the ball position, because he's trying to keep
the golf ball down, that's going to be even worse.
So he said to Ricky and I listen, I don't
care if I tell you. I don't want to hear
any more about my alignment, ball position, and set up.
(16:21):
Keep saying it, so this is no joke. Every single
shot he hit in practice, every single shot that I
was with him on the golf course in practice rounds
for the last two weeks, his caddy, Ricky and I
before he hit a golf ball, he would so we
would Ricky and I would tag team him. I'd go
(16:42):
down the line, so I'd stand behind him, kind of
where we see most of the television coverage from where
you're behind and they get the shot tracer. That's what
I call down the line, and then Ricky would go
over and stand as if he was looking at what
we would call face on. So every especially on the range,
there wasn't a shot that Brooks was hitting where he
wasn't like saying to Ricky before he hit the shot,
(17:02):
how's my ball position? How's my alignment? He'd say, how's
my alignment? To me? Every single shot. We used a
lot of video. Brooks is a very visual learner. He
likes to see what his body's doing. He likes to
see what his ball position is, how things are working.
So one of the things that I always tell Brooks
is listened. When your shoulders get too closed, the left
arm gets too high, the right arm gets too low,
(17:24):
that elbow kind of tucks down. That's great if you're
trying to hit a draw right. We try and do
that with the amateur. A lot of you listening are
in the position that we're trying to get Brooks in.
Your shoulders are open, that right arm is high. So
I'm sure a lot of people that are trying to
draw the golf ball are being told listen, close your
shoulders more, get that right arm high, tuck that elbow in,
(17:46):
and then on the downswing, try and keep that right
elbow close to your body, try and swing more into out,
get that path more to the right. All of that
is great if you're trying to hit a draw, it's
not conducive to what Brooks is trying to do. He's
trying to hit fades. He's trying to hit fades that
start left of his target. He's also trying to hit
fades with one hundred and twenty mile an hour clubhead
(18:08):
speed and over one eighty ball speed. When that system
and that process gets off with his speed, he can
get the double miss and he can hit the golf
ball a long way offline. So process and sticking to
the process. He went to every member of his team
(18:29):
who was down there that week. Pete Cowen and Jeff Pierce,
his putting instructor, didn't come. I was down there and
he said to us, okay, He said to Ricky as Caddie,
Mark Wallace, trainer, doctor Arsapaya, who looks after kind of
his kind of team, and then Hamish, his trainer. He
said to all of us, listen, We said to all
of us internally, we've got to get back to basics,
(18:52):
and we've just got to really really stick to the process.
So I spent a lot of time with the off
course team. What is he doing in the gym? How
can we match what he's doing in the gym with
what we're trying to get him to feel with the
golf swing. And it was a total reset. And he
played good in Adelaide the final day, shot in the
(19:16):
sixties kind of I can't remember the actual number, but
played really good. Didn't feel like he made any putts.
Led Adelaide in greens and regulation, which is a big
stat for Books Brooks. When Brooks was number one in
the world and winning majors at a very fast clip,
everyone thought it was his driving. Yes, Brooks is a
(19:37):
good driver the golf ball. Yes, Brooks hits the golf
ball a long way, can hit high bomb fades, he
can dominate with the driver. When Brooks was number one
in the world, nobody really was paying attention to the
fact that he was one of the best iron players
in the game. And the players that played with Brooks
when he was number one in the world would be like, dude,
the guy's iron game is a joke. So when Adelaide,
(19:58):
what we started to see was number one. We started
to see Brooks hit a lot of fairways right, a
lot of fairways for someone with his speed, guys like Brooks,
DJ Rory, they're not going to hit twelve thirteen fairways
right because they're not hitting a lot of drivers. So
based off of how many drivers he's hitting, the driver
(20:19):
was better, the misses were better, they were less destructive.
But the iron game started to come back. The quality
of the strike started to come back. Where he was
catching it in the face started to come back. And
in Adelaide he started to hit a lot of shots
kind of pin high, not pin high to two feet
(20:42):
five feet, ten feet, pin high to fifteen twenty feet,
but they were quality golf shots. And then the thing
that he said before we got to Singapore at the
end of the week was his off speed stuff felt
normal again. Right off speed stuff means when he's trying
to instead of hitting eight, he's going to try in
a little three quarter seven. Instead of trying to nuke
(21:04):
or hammer a nine, he's gonna chip a little bit
of an eight, instead of trying to hammer a wedge,
He's going to three quarter the nine. Right. So the
off speed stuff started to get better as the setup
and the ball position and the process of what we
were doing with all of the basics. Everything that we
kind of did in the last two weeks with Brooks
(21:27):
was all before he hit the golf ball. Then the
domino effect of that allowed a lot of the things
that we're trying to work on in his golf swing
somewhat for lack of a better term, fall into place
without him having to think so much about it. But
every shot we were looking at the setup and he
(21:51):
was saying it was kind of a jog. And he
told me, listen, there is probably going to be a
point in the next two weeks where I'm gonna say, listen,
I'm tired of hearing about my setup. He said. I'm
telling you and everybody on the team you have permission.
If I tell you I'm tired of hearing about the setup,
stay with me, and stay on me, and keep beating
(22:12):
me up about my setup. If the ball is half
a ball, too far back, too far forward, I want
to know if my shoulders are half We're not measuring,
we don't have any three D on the driving range.
But if my shoulders need to be a little bit
more open, he said, tell me they need to be
a little bit more open. If they're a little bit
too closed, tell me, they're a little bit too close.
(22:33):
So I think Brooks wanted to take ownership of that
and hold himself accountable for that, but also he wants
to hold us accountable for that as well. Witness insurmountable
deficits turn into unforgettable victories at the Travelers Championship, the
northeast one and only PGA tour signature event. See Scotty Scheffler,
(22:58):
Worry McElroy, Victor Hovlin, Patrick Cantley, and returning champion Keegan Bradley,
as well as other PGA Tourist stars in all four
days of the competition at close by TPC River Highlands.
The excitement tees off June nineteenth through the twenty third.
For tickets and information, visit Travelers Championship dot com. The
Travelers Championship there is only one. For those of you
(23:24):
that watched the live event, Adelaide went to the first
team playoff that live has had. There hasn't been a
team playoff. There's been a couple of other playoffs. Brooks'
is one in one of them, DJ's one and one
of them, but there hasn't really been a team playoff.
And the team playoff and what more of a fitting
playoff in Australia was Cam Smith's live team. Lucas Herbert Australian,
(23:48):
Mark Leishman Australian, Matty Jones Australian, Cam Smith Australian, the
All Australian team in Australia playoff against the Stingers, the
All South African team. Right, the fans were going nuts.
It was crazy, right, So it was a great finish
to the tournament and everybody was watching. So the locker
(24:09):
room in Adelaide was kind of in on the bottom
floor and then upstairs where the player dining was was
where everybody was eating TVs and everything like that. So
Sunday a lot of guys are leaving, maybe catching a flight,
packing up everything out of the locker room. So you
walk down a hallway and there was a door on
the right and a door on the left, and the
door on the left there was a gym and the
(24:31):
door on the right was into the locker room. So
the majority of people were either packing up, the caddies
are packing up all the bags, they're putting the club
gloves all in the covers, everything they're putting everything, they're
locking up. Everybody that was flying out that night. The
locker room's filled with suitcases and stuff like that. So
guys are showering, they're getting their stuff, they're catching flights.
(24:52):
But the majority of the people had just finished. They
knew there was going to be a playoff. The players,
all the people that are involved in the live team,
the caddies. I was sitting with Wac o'neman and Mito Pereira.
We were grabbing some food afterwards and the playoff happened.
So we're all sitting and you know, a bunch of
players and stuff, and the playoff was going on. There's
(25:12):
a couple holes in the playoff and everything like that.
I was upstairs. I went downstairs to grab my phone
charger out of the locker, and I went past the gym.
Who's in the gym getting his ass kicked by doctor
Aarra and his trader Hamish Brooks Koepka. I took video
of it. Played good that day. Shot in the sixties.
Led the week in greens and Regulation, literally getting the
(25:35):
shit kicked out of him by his trainer, full workout hour.
He was at the gym every night after the rounds.
He was working out after the rounds. He wasn't leaving
the golf course untill eight o'clock. Listen, lots of players
do this, right, This isn't anything that is specific to Brooks.
People do this in the NBA, people do this in
(25:57):
the NFL, people do this in the pre rugby, Major
League Baseball. Every professional athlete in every professional sport, there
are people that do this. Brooks is one of them.
He was getting his ass handed to him by his
trainer in the gym and he said, I need to
do this. I need to kind of get beat up
(26:19):
to kind of refocus. That's kind of the way that
he operates. He's talked for the last two weeks how
sore he is because he's been getting his ass kicked
in the gym, which he asked for, which he wanted.
But my point is that's how much he wants to win.
That's how important winning is to him. And when he
doesn't win, he beats himself up and he holds himself accountable.
(26:44):
And I took a video of it. I was blown away.
I was like, I didn't even know he's working out.
And I walked in, looked at him, looked at the team.
They shook their heads. He looked at me, shook his head.
Nobody said anything, and I walked out and we got
to Singapore. Same thing. Stay on me on the setup,
stay on me on the ball position, stay on me
(27:06):
on the alignment. We could start to see that things
were starting to turn around. Every team goes through this, right,
Every instructor that works with players goes through this. I've
had instructors on the pod. The hottest instructor in the
game right now who's having so much success, Mark Blackburn.
He sees this. You can tell when players have fallen down,
(27:28):
when they've struggled, when they've had to hit the reset button.
You can tell when they're doing the work, when they're
putting in the time, when they're committed, when they're ready
to go. Brooks was ready to go. He wasn't happy
with the way he played Augusta, so I figured Singapore
would be a good week. It's a good golf course,
it's a fun golf course, and the practice sessions were good.
(27:52):
He said. Golf was starting to feel for him normal,
starting to feel the club in the places needed to be,
starting to see the ball start in the windows. He
was hitting it really good in the practice rounds, but
he wasn't making a lot of pots, and he said
after Adelaide, man, I feel like if I just could
make a few more potts, start to see some balls
(28:14):
go in. The ball striking is there. And I kept
saying to him in Adelaide, I know you're hitting it better.
You know you're hitting it better. You can feel it,
we can see it. You just have to be patient
because the good rounds are going to come. But it's
hard to do that as an athlete. It's hard to
do that as a player. So Singapore was good and
(28:36):
we were out in the pro am. We did a
nine hole pro am on Thursday, and he played the
back nine and the fourteenth hole. In the fifteenth hole
or right along the water, So fourteenth holes part three
water all the way down the left hand side. Fifteenth hole,
part four, water all the way down the right hand side.
(28:56):
So in the practice round started on ten Brooks, pipes
it right down the middle, hits it's about ten feet.
Putt breaks, you know, it's breaking from right to left.
Hits a really good putt, maybe just a little bit
too hard, hits the lip, you know, lips out and
(29:17):
you can just see him just go, man, what do
I have to do to make a putt. He changed
putters as well in the last month, which is something
that Brooks doesn't really do. He doesn't really change his equipment.
He's won all five of his majors with the same
style of putter, the blade kind of Scotty Cameron Newport
that you know from watching Tiger Woods, but he's made
(29:39):
the decision to kind of go to a little bit
more of a mallet, pretty much the same putter that
Justin Thomas is using. Right, We saw that with Scotty Scheffler.
Scotty Shuffler was struggling a little bit with his putting.
He went to a mallet and it's helped. Right, We
were making some changes to his putting stroke to where
the blade was. He was just taking a little bit
on the inside and then there's a little bit of
(30:01):
a loop. So we were doing a lot of work
to just try and feel like for him that he
wasn't using so much of his hands, that he was
trying to feel like he was letting his arms swing
a little bit better. So again, same thing he kept saying, listen,
stay on me about how the putter is going back.
Make sure that putter doesn't get too inside on me.
Make sure my ball position doesn't get too far back
on me. The same thing happens with Brooks's putting, that
(30:24):
happens with his full swing. So we stayed on that.
We sent a lot of videos every single night. I'm
videoing golf swings during the day, set up driver irons,
putting ball positions. Every single night. I'm sending those to
him just so he can see them, and he would
send him back to me, saying, starting to look better,
(30:45):
starting to feel better. I like this, still think I
could do this better. So we knew we were kind
of trending in a better place. So practice round again.
Eleventh hole pipes, It hits, it's about fifteen feet one eighties.
It lits it out again, and you can see he's
getting more and more frustrated. Twelfth hole part four, hammer's
(31:08):
drive down there, hits it to about five feet, missus
thirteen pipes of driver. Again, this isn't the program. Hits
one to about fifteen feet, lips it out and just
lost it. You could sell. He's like, I'm so tired
of not making any potts. I'm working my ass off
in the gym. I feel like I'm doing all the
(31:28):
right stuff. I just can't make a pot. So we
got to the fourteenth hole, which is part three, water
all the way down the left hand side, and as
we were walking up, we just talked about it and
I said, man, and Ricky, and I is caddy Ricky Ellen,
who's been on his bag since day one, since he
started playing on the PGA Tour, since he's won all
(31:49):
these majors, And we just said, listen, you're the best
pressure putter, one of the best pressure pressure punters I've
ever seen. Definitely, Brooks is one of the best pressure
putters I've ever seen in a major championship. He likes that.
And I said, but when you're putting bad, it's not
always your technique right sometimes, so I said to him, listen,
(32:13):
your stroke looks better, you know, it looks better. Your
stroke is okay based off of what you've been doing.
Maybe it's just the speed and the line and we
just need to dial those in a little bit more.
And I said, listen, halfway through this practice round, you've
hit really good pots. It's not your stroke, it's just, hey,
(32:37):
you hit that one a little bit too hard. Hey
you hit that one a little bit too soft. Maybe
that broke a little bit more than you thought. So again,
that's execution, that's not technique. We're looking at the veils
he would miss. He missed a couple of putts in
that practice. Early He's like, can you video my setup?
Can you video the punch take. We showed it to
him and he's like, dude, that all looks good. Right.
(32:57):
We're like, it looks good. I could see him getting
more frustrated, and I just told him, I said, listen,
Steph Curry plays for the Golden State Warriors. One of
the best three point shooters the game's ever seen. He's
so good at shooting three points that a lot of
people think he changed the way the NBA is being played,
because the NBA is now a lot of three pointers.
(33:19):
He's the best at it. If he's in the NBA Finals,
Game seven, and he goes from three point land in
the first quarter, oh for seven. And they start the
second quarter and he goes and he misses the first two,
and then they start getting him open looks and he
starts passing it taking shots. Steve Kerr, the head coach
(33:40):
of the Golden State Warriors, is going to call time out.
He played with Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls. He's
won championships, He's going to call time out and pull
Steph aside and say, what the hell are you doing?
Keep shooting. And I said that story to Brooks. I'm like,
you've got to keep shooting. Steph Curry is not going
to stop shooting. He's going to keep taking his shot.
And I said, you just have to be patient and
(34:03):
keep shooting. And we were talking about that on the
fourteenth hole. We talked about it the rest of the round.
And so during his warm up even on Sunday, I
took some videos of his golf swing while he's warming
up and I just said, listen, take a look at this.
This where you are with your seven iron face on.
He's like, yeah, that ball position's good. Showed him one
down the line. I said, yeah, that setup's good. The setup,
(34:24):
we couldn't see that left arm. When Brooks gets a
little bit too closed with the setup, we see too
much of his left forearm from down the line, his
hips get a little bit too closed. In Adelaide, I
put an alignment rod through his belt loops so we
could set up and he could see where his hips were.
And we were doing that. That's a great tip. If
you're struggling with your alignment with your lower body, put
(34:45):
an alignment rod through your belt loops and get that
set up and you'll see where those hips are. So
if your hips are too closed or hips are too open.
So the last thing I said to him before he
went out on Sunday, Man, it's just keep shooting, keep shooting,
and so on. Sunday got off to a really good
I mean the first round that he played on Friday,
(35:07):
I think it was five under through seven and started
to see some putts go in one of the leaders
I think he was leading, if not one of the
leaders right near the lead, maybe one back. And then Saturday,
really good round of golf going, but I think it
was then on sixteen he three putted and from like
(35:28):
five feet he lipped one out, which is what has
been happening with his putting. And I said to the
guys on the team, it's gonna be interesting to see
how he finishes. Now we're gonna know a lot about
where his headspace is based off of what we see.
For the next two holes, par three and then an
easy par five. Right the par three seventeenth, he made
(35:49):
a bad swing hit it to the bunker, just got
a little bit under it and then hit it's about
seven feet and then lipped one in for par. I
thought that that was huge. I really did. Mentally, I
thought that that was a really really big deal. And
then Sunday kind of got to lead to about two
(36:12):
shots and then on the fourteenth hole, where in the
practice round on Thursday, his caddie Ricky and Elliot and
I started talking to him about you've got to stay patient.
But I said to him in that practice round as
well when he won the PGA at o'kill, there's always
going to be a point in the round to where
you have to make a putt. You have to do
(36:32):
something right, you have to do something special, and you're
probably going to be faced with if you want to
win the tournament, there's no real other option other than
to make a pott. And at o'kill last year in
the PGA, that's what he had. He had a downhill
fast left to right, probably thirteen foot for par on
(36:55):
a par five. He made the pot and I said
to him in the practice round during the pro I said,
were you thinking about your stroke? Then he said no,
I said, that was you As the athlete saying, if
I want to win this golf tournament, I've got to
will this putt in the hole. Tiger Woods did that.
Tiger Woods told me, and it's funny. We're going back
to Valhalla for the PGA next week. He told me
(37:17):
to get into the playoff against Bob May. And I
think it was two thousand. He had a putt that
he had to make to get into a playoff with
Bob May. He's supposed to crush Bob May. He didn't.
He had to make a putt. I said, in your head,
what are you saying to yourself? And Tiger, I'll never
forget it to you. Tiger said to me. I said
to myself, I want to win another major if I
want to hoist the Wannamaker. If I don't want to
(37:38):
get into a playoff and try and win this tournament,
there is no other option other than to make it.
And that's what we were trying to say to Brooks. Listen,
you've done this before. You know how to do this.
Turn your brain off and just putt. Just try and
make it. Try and make it. Sometimes we get into
(37:58):
that spell where we're trying not to miss it right,
Try and make it, and so on the green where
we started talking to him about that pin was back left,
water all the way down on the right. He hit
one to about forty feet, big break fast right to left,
left it about eight feet short, maybe ten feet short,
(38:20):
stood up for par, hooped it right in the center
next hole. In my head, I'm saying to myself, Okay,
water on the left right, bunker's right ball. It's not
a long hole. He doesn't have to pound driver down there.
But you make a bad swing, you're struggling to make
a par. He took out his three iron, roasted one
right down the middle of the fairway, and then stood
(38:41):
up and hit a little three quarter off speed, a
little chip. It was either a wedge or nine to
about twelve feet pin high, made it, then went to eighteen.
Knew he had a lead, think he had a two
shot lead at that point. Knew that he could take two.
They always say, if you could take two, take two.
Didn't hit a great drive, hit it to the right,
(39:02):
had to lay up, hit one over the green, didn't
come down, and then finished the tournament off by holing
probably about a six seven foot birdie putt, which I
think was huge and I said to him after the round,
man he putted great today, and he said, I should
turn my brain off. I just quit thinking about my stroke.
I just turned my brain off. And I think that's
(39:24):
an important lesson for everyone listening that sometimes you can
overthink it. Sometimes you're trying not to miss it. You're
not trying to make it. Sometimes you're trying to not
hit a bad shot, and you're not trying to hit
a good shot, You're just trying not to hit a
bad one. I think what we saw from Books in
(39:46):
Singapore is kind of the reset that he needed. He's
going to go into the PGA Championship at Valhalla with
a lot of confidence. I think he's gonna play well.
I really do. I think he learned a lot over
the last month. I think he's done the work. I
think he's put his body through a lot. I think
he's punished himself. I think he's demanded a lot of himself,
(40:10):
demanded a lot from the team around him. And I
think the Masters was the reset he needed. I think
the Masters was a little bit of the reset that
I needed and the team needed. And I think it
just goes to show you, guys, everyone listening grip, stance,
posture alignment, the basics, the stuff that no one is
(40:33):
making TikTok Instagram videos, YouTube videos. It's not cool, it's
not sexy. It's not laying it down, it's not shallowing
it out, it's not all that bullshit. We just went
back to basics with Brooks. We just went back to basics, posture, alignment, grip,
where he's aiming, all of that. That started the dominoes
(40:56):
going in the right direction. And I don't care whether
you think it was a statement when for Brooks or not.
I know it was, and I know he knows it was.
It was the confidence he needed. It's his fourth win
on liv. Listen, if you don't think the competition's any good,
I think that says more about you than it does
about the competition. He's beating some of the best players
(41:16):
in the world, and I really don't care if you
don't think that. I know that because I see the
golf that they're playing, I know the players he's playing against,
and I think it's a good reset for Brooks. And
we'll see what this brings for the rest of the year.
He's got three majors left and he believes in his
goal this year, he's got five, he's got three chances left.
(41:41):
I know in his head he's trying to get to
eight by the end of this year because he believes
he can get to ten. He believes he can get
to double digits. And I just thought I would share
that story with you that sometimes you have to hit
the reset button. Sometimes you have to go back to basics.
Sometimes you can get the dominoes to change by the
(42:05):
things that you're doing before you hit the golf ball.
So so so proud of him. I know how hard
he works, I know how hard he wants all of
this and a really really good win for him. And
I'm really excited to get to Valhalla. I'll fly back
to the US tomorrow night, get back on Thursday, and
then we will head up to Valhalla and the PGA
(42:28):
on Sunday. Going to do and record a little PGA
preview show which will come out next week with my dad.
Butch Harmon talk about obviously the favorite Scotti Scheffler. Can
he get another major? The run he's on is historic,
I think, I mean it is. He's playing unbelievable golf.
Hopefully get his kind of take on some of the
(42:48):
stuff that he's been working on with Rory. Is this
the opportunity ten years on last major? Roy One? Was
it the PGA Championship at Valhalla twenty fourteen? And if
I told anybody listening that in fourteen Brooks Koepka would
have more majors than Rory, you wouldn't believe it. Why
because you probably hadn't heard of Brooks yet, and maybe
(43:09):
you didn't think he was that good, and he wasn't
that good at that point. And Rory in twenty fourteen,
I thought by now he'd have ten. That's how good
he is, That's how great of a player he is.
So I think there's a lot of storylines that we
could kind of see aligning at the PGA, and I'm
really excited to get to it. So yeah, two week
(43:32):
break from the pod, but we are back. Can't thank
everybody enough for listening, Rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get
your podcast. Son of a Butch comes to you almost
every Wednesday. But we will definitely see you next week.
Witness insurmountable deficits turn into unforgettable victories at the Travelers Championship,
the northeast one and only PGA Tour signature event. See
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in all four days of the competition at close by
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TPC River Highlands. The excitement tees off June nineteenth through
the twenty third. For tickets and information, visit Travelers Championship
dot com. The Travelers Championship there is only one. It's
the Son of a Book podcast. We normally come to
(00:42):
you every Wednesday. Took a couple of weeks off as
I've been traveling and went down to the live event
in Adelaide, was at the live event in Singapore and
currently recording this in Bangkok. Just here in Thailand. I'm
opening up a new academy here under my brand, the
Claude Harman Performance Golf brand. Got one in Dubai, opening
them one here. Really really excited about it and it's
(01:05):
really cool to get an opportunity to travel. And I
think the last three three weeks for me has has
shown me that global golf is. It's so cool, right
And I think there's a lot of talk about growing
the game, all the stuff going on with live, all
the stuff going on with the PGA Tour and stuff.
But when you get outside the United States, when you travel,
(01:25):
I'm lucky enough to get to do that, you see
that golf is a global game and there is a
passion for golf all over the world. Just wanted to
touch a little bit on the live of that down
in Adelaide. Listen. I know that it's crazy times right
now in golf right and I know there are people
that are on the PGA Tour side, they're fiercely anti live.
(01:45):
There's the live people all of that. Listen. I've been
saying this, if you love golf and if you want
to watch golf, you can watch that anywhere. You can
consume it on the PGA Tour, DP World, LPGA Champs Tour,
Asian Tour Live, you can find all that anywhere. You
(02:07):
can find it on TV, you can find it online.
There were some great players down at the Adelaide tournament
for live and it's kind of become over the last
two years lives kind of signature event. And again, all
of my players that I work with, when I say
this all the time, the three players I work with,
Dustin Johnson, Brooks, Kepka, Pat Perez, they made the choice
(02:28):
to go to Live. I'm their coach. I go where
they go. So I think a lot of I think
one of the things that I think it does kind
of upset me and it makes me mad that I
think a lot of the To me, it's just my opinion.
A lot of the fiercely, fiercely anti Live people will
openly tell you they don't watch, they don't care, they've
(02:51):
never been to an event. So I try and use
the podcast to say listen, make up your own mind.
But the event in Adelaide has become over the last
two years kind of lives signature event, and the crowds
the first year were just they're unbelievable. And Australia is starved,
starved for professional golf, right. It used to be a
(03:16):
lot of players used to go down there and a
lot of players the Australian Open. There's been a rich,
rich history down in Australia of players going down there,
but in a number of years that that just kind
of didn't happen. And so I think one of the
reasons why the event is so so l liked and
(03:40):
so well attended is it's an opportunity for players to
or for the fans to kind of see some of
the best players in the world and they just don't
see that many great players in one place. The Australian
get to see Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson, John Rahm,
(04:06):
cam Smith, Bryson, d Chambeau, Wac o'neman and then a
bunch of other players. So for the Aussie fans, I
think it's so well attended because it is an amazing
tournament and it's an opportunity for them to see a
lot of great players in one place. Now, yes, I
saw online they were talking, you know, the live guys.
(04:27):
You know there are social accounts where the live people
are going, hey, first time great players have been down there,
And somebody said, yeah, well Jordan Speith went down in
twenty fourteen and won the Australian Open. I got news
for you. Jordan Speith was paid to go down there
an appearance fee. He didn't go down there for free.
He didn't go down there because his sole intention was
(04:50):
to play Aussie golf. He did what every great player does,
what every great player should be allowed to do. If
you're the reigning if you're a reigning major champion, you
can go outside the United States. They will pay you
to come to their event. That has been going on
for over thirty years. That's not news, right, We've talked
(05:14):
about I've talked about this on the pod Dubai Abu
Dhabi Guitar China. Appearance fees are part of the game, right,
So yeah, the live guys, a lot of them, they
got the bag, they got paid. But that's been going on.
That's not news. So I don't care which side you're on.
(05:35):
If you love the PGA Tour, fine, If you like live,
that's fine. I don't care. But you don't have to choose,
and you can watch your golf wherever you want. If
you want to watch great players, if you want to
watch John Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Brooks, Koepka, Phil Mickelson, Cam Smith, Bryson,
(05:56):
you can watch them. They just play on live now, right.
So if you don't like that and you don't want
to watch because of that, in my opinion, I says
I think that says more about you than it does
about that my job as I've got my own podcast,
so I can say whatever the hell I want. But
I think one of my jobs is I've been to
(06:17):
every live event and I work with the players, So
if you haven't been, if you don't know a lot
about it, or whatever side you're on. The event was amazing.
It's one of the coolest golf events I've been to.
The fans were great, the golf course, the Grange. Yes,
I'd love for the tournament to be at Royal Adelaide
(06:40):
across the street, which is unbelievable. I'd love it to
be at Royal Melbourne. But the sand Belt golf courses
and the Grange is kind of old school. I posted
a video on my social and the bunkering in the
sand Belt region in Australia of these golf courses is
just so damn cool, right. The green complexes are cool,
(07:02):
the short game stuff is cool. So it's always great
to go down to Australia and see how cool the
golf courses are because it forces they're tight. If they're
firm and fast, you can run the golf ball. There's
so many different options coming into these green complexes, so
it forces you to kind of be a little bit
(07:23):
of a kind of old school shop maker. So the
event last year was well attended. There was a ton
of people. Fisher DJ he played last year. He played
again this year on the Saturday night. It was amazing.
It was just it felt like it felt like a
(07:43):
festival at a golf tournament at night. It was cool.
The fans were everywhere. They were excited to see all
these players. You could see the kids trying to get
views of their favorite players. And then and you know
the way that live works. You've got an individual winner
every week, and you've got the team format. Cam Smith's team,
(08:06):
the Rippers, all Australian. They're in a playoff with the
South Africans. That was cool. They the Australians ended up
winning two man playoff leash Mark Leishman and Cam Smith.
I mean, I talked to Cam in Singapore and he
was like, this is one of the coolest things I've
ever done. Right, It was one of the coolest things
(08:27):
of his career. Whether you like that or you don't,
Whether you agree with that or you don't, Cam Smith
thinks it's one of the coolest things he's ever done right.
So it was a great event. I couldn't believe how
many people showed up. I mean, they sold more tickets
this year than last year. And it was it was fun.
(08:49):
It was really really cool. And for those of the
players and the people involved in Live, it's their biggest event.
They don't have any majors, right, so it's the biggest
tournament they had, And it was great and it was
cool to go down there, and I thought it was
a fitting end for cam Smith and the Rippers to win.
(09:10):
They got up on stage did the shoey. It was
fun and listen. If you don't like that, I'm okay
with that. That's that's your choice. But I think my
job and what I try and do in my podcast
is to talk about what's going on in the game
of golf and talk about what's happening. And it was
(09:30):
really really cool. So we went straight from Adelaide and
went to Singapore and brooks Kepka won last week and listen,
I think it was a big, big win for brooks Kepka. Ah,
he did not. He didn't have his best stuff at Augusta.
He said that he knew that those of us around
(09:51):
him we knew that as well. He went in there
obviously having won the PGA last year, took a lead
on Sunday last year into the final group with John Rahm,
didn't get it done. The Masters is a tournament that
Brooks death desperately wants to win. It is what he
(10:14):
feels like, even though he's got five majors now, he
will feel at the end of his career that if
he doesn't have a Master's, if he doesn't have a
green jacket, that it will be something that he wants that.
He's been close twice, right, He's had two second place finishes,
once in nineteen when Tiger won and then last year
(10:36):
when John ramwan. He has the game to win around there.
He knows that he has been so close. He knows
he can win that golf tournament. He didn't have his
best stuff a couple of weeks ago. He was struggling
with his golf swing and struggling with his setup. He
couldn't get comfortable on the range, he wasn't seeing his window.
It was just a really, really weird week. I think
(10:58):
you know, Brooks was trying to psych himself up to
try and make things happen, and sometimes that just doesn't work.
And you will not find anyone in competitive professional gulf
that's harder on themselves than Brooks. I know, having been
(11:20):
around him for over a decade now and worked with him,
he demands and expects so much from himself, and I
think that can sometimes come across in his interviews and
his persona and the way he carries himself. I think
a lot of people look at that as maybe being arrogant,
as maybe being like he thinks he's better than everybody else.
(11:43):
I just think he has incredibly high standards of himself,
is incredibly high standards of all of us on his team.
And there was a little bit of a reset after
Augusta and a little bit of a refocus, and what
we did over the last two weeks is just get
back down to basics. And that's why I wanted to
talk about this because I think it's something that everyone
(12:05):
listening can can look at in their own game. When
Brooks struggles, ninety nine percent of the time, it's set
up related. And I've talked about this on the pod.
Before the ball position can get too far back, his alignment,
his stance can kind of get all all over the
place and That's what was happening at Augusta. He kept
(12:26):
saying to me on the range, in all of the
practice rounds, in all of the practice sessions, in all
of the warm ups, he had a two way miss.
He was struggling. All of the stuff that we were
trying to work on, that we'd normally work on didn't work.
He was struggling ball position. He couldn't get comfortable. No
matter what we were trying to tell on he was
(12:47):
just like, I just nothing feels right. And listen, as
a player, every now and again, you know, the system
doesn't work. They're not robots. They're not perfect. They're never
going to be perfect as good as they are, as
great as they are, even on the runs that they're on.
This historic run that Scotty Scheffler is on right now,
(13:07):
playing golf that we just haven't seen in so long,
the amazing, amazing golf that he's playing right now. Every
now and again, you know, the system doesn't work. It
doesn't feel right. We've seen that with Rory McElroy. When
Rory gets on these big, massive runs where it looks
like he's basically just gonna win every tournament right now,
(13:30):
you can see that Rory's searching. Rory didn't get the
result he wanted at the Masters. He went out and
saw my dad did a little trying to get a
little bit of a reset. It happens with players, and
you know, there's all these cliches and sports, but one
of my favorites is the only thing that really matters
after you get knocked down is what you do next,
(13:50):
because everybody's going to get knocked down, right, Everybody's going
to get hit in the mouth. Mike Tyson has famously
said everybody's got a plan until they get hit in
the mouth. Then the plan changes. And I think for
Brooks how much his focus and how much he defines
his career based off of the Majors. The Masters was
(14:11):
a punch in the face and so we did a
massive reset. So he came to his Caddy and I
Ricky Elliott, and he said, Okay, we've got to get
my set up right. We've got to get my basics right,
we've got to get my ball position right, we've got
to get my alignment right. So he said to us
early in the week down in Australia, he said, listen,
(14:31):
I want the two of you to nag me and
be hyper focused and hyper vigilant on my ball position,
my setup, my alignment. So when Brooks's ball position gets
back in his stance, he has his strong grip, his
hands can get too far forward, and that left arm
can get high, that right arm can get a little
(14:54):
bit low, the shoulders can get a little bit closed.
And what that does is it alters the takeaway to
where the takeaway no longer goes outside and vertical, it
starts to get inside. Even though he's trying to do
what he wants to do, what we want him to
do from a swing technique, when that ball position gets back,
when his shoulders get too shut, there's a domino effect.
(15:17):
You've heard me talk about this before on the pod.
There's a domino effect of things that happen. That is
the domino that starts to cause the other things on
the downswing, that's the domino. His setup, his ball position,
the things that he does before he hits the golf
ball are is the domino that starts to push all
the other dominoes. So it doesn't matter what he's trying
(15:39):
to do with the backswing and the takeaway, I'm telling
him get it more in front, get it more front.
We're also looking at the ball position, and he's struggling
to get comfortable. So at a major championship, it's hard
to make changes because you know that these players are
going out and having to play at Augusta. Like everyone
(16:01):
else in the field, there was a lot of wind
going on. He was playing in a lot of winds.
So then the ball position, because he's trying to keep
the golf ball down, that's going to be even worse.
So he said to Ricky and I listen, I don't
care if I tell you. I don't want to hear
any more about my alignment, ball position, and set up.
(16:21):
Keep saying it, so this is no joke. Every single
shot he hit in practice, every single shot that I
was with him on the golf course in practice rounds
for the last two weeks, his caddy, Ricky and I
before he hit a golf ball, he would so we
would Ricky and I would tag team him. I'd go
(16:42):
down the line, so I'd stand behind him, kind of
where we see most of the television coverage from where
you're behind and they get the shot tracer. That's what
I call down the line, and then Ricky would go
over and stand as if he was looking at what
we would call face on. So every especially on the range,
there wasn't a shot that Brooks was hitting where he
wasn't like saying to Ricky before he hit the shot,
(17:02):
how's my ball position? How's my alignment? He'd say, how's
my alignment? To me? Every single shot. We used a
lot of video. Brooks is a very visual learner. He
likes to see what his body's doing. He likes to
see what his ball position is, how things are working.
So one of the things that I always tell Brooks
is listened. When your shoulders get too closed, the left
arm gets too high, the right arm gets too low,
(17:24):
that elbow kind of tucks down. That's great if you're
trying to hit a draw right. We try and do
that with the amateur. A lot of you listening are
in the position that we're trying to get Brooks in.
Your shoulders are open, that right arm is high. So
I'm sure a lot of people that are trying to
draw the golf ball are being told listen, close your
shoulders more, get that right arm high, tuck that elbow in,
(17:46):
and then on the downswing, try and keep that right
elbow close to your body, try and swing more into out,
get that path more to the right. All of that
is great if you're trying to hit a draw, it's
not conducive to what Brooks is trying to do. He's
trying to hit fades. He's trying to hit fades that
start left of his target. He's also trying to hit
fades with one hundred and twenty mile an hour clubhead
(18:08):
speed and over one eighty ball speed. When that system
and that process gets off with his speed, he can
get the double miss and he can hit the golf
ball a long way offline. So process and sticking to
the process. He went to every member of his team
(18:29):
who was down there that week. Pete Cowen and Jeff Pierce,
his putting instructor, didn't come. I was down there and
he said to us, okay, He said to Ricky as Caddie,
Mark Wallace, trainer, doctor Arsapaya, who looks after kind of
his kind of team, and then Hamish, his trainer. He
said to all of us, listen, We said to all
of us internally, we've got to get back to basics,
(18:52):
and we've just got to really really stick to the process.
So I spent a lot of time with the off
course team. What is he doing in the gym? How
can we match what he's doing in the gym with
what we're trying to get him to feel with the
golf swing. And it was a total reset. And he
played good in Adelaide the final day, shot in the
(19:16):
sixties kind of I can't remember the actual number, but
played really good. Didn't feel like he made any putts.
Led Adelaide in greens and regulation, which is a big
stat for Books Brooks. When Brooks was number one in
the world and winning majors at a very fast clip,
everyone thought it was his driving. Yes, Brooks is a
(19:37):
good driver the golf ball. Yes, Brooks hits the golf
ball a long way, can hit high bomb fades, he
can dominate with the driver. When Brooks was number one
in the world, nobody really was paying attention to the
fact that he was one of the best iron players
in the game. And the players that played with Brooks
when he was number one in the world would be like, dude,
the guy's iron game is a joke. So when Adelaide,
(19:58):
what we started to see was number one. We started
to see Brooks hit a lot of fairways right, a
lot of fairways for someone with his speed, guys like Brooks,
DJ Rory, they're not going to hit twelve thirteen fairways
right because they're not hitting a lot of drivers. So
based off of how many drivers he's hitting, the driver
(20:19):
was better, the misses were better, they were less destructive.
But the iron game started to come back. The quality
of the strike started to come back. Where he was
catching it in the face started to come back. And
in Adelaide he started to hit a lot of shots
kind of pin high, not pin high to two feet
(20:42):
five feet, ten feet, pin high to fifteen twenty feet,
but they were quality golf shots. And then the thing
that he said before we got to Singapore at the
end of the week was his off speed stuff felt
normal again. Right off speed stuff means when he's trying
to instead of hitting eight, he's going to try in
a little three quarter seven. Instead of trying to nuke
(21:04):
or hammer a nine, he's gonna chip a little bit
of an eight, instead of trying to hammer a wedge,
He's going to three quarter the nine. Right. So the
off speed stuff started to get better as the setup
and the ball position and the process of what we
were doing with all of the basics. Everything that we
kind of did in the last two weeks with Brooks
(21:27):
was all before he hit the golf ball. Then the
domino effect of that allowed a lot of the things
that we're trying to work on in his golf swing
somewhat for lack of a better term, fall into place
without him having to think so much about it. But
every shot we were looking at the setup and he
(21:51):
was saying it was kind of a jog. And he
told me, listen, there is probably going to be a
point in the next two weeks where I'm gonna say, listen,
I'm tired of hearing about my setup. He said. I'm
telling you and everybody on the team you have permission.
If I tell you I'm tired of hearing about the setup,
stay with me, and stay on me, and keep beating
(22:12):
me up about my setup. If the ball is half
a ball, too far back, too far forward, I want
to know if my shoulders are half We're not measuring,
we don't have any three D on the driving range.
But if my shoulders need to be a little bit
more open, he said, tell me they need to be
a little bit more open. If they're a little bit
too closed, tell me, they're a little bit too close.
(22:33):
So I think Brooks wanted to take ownership of that
and hold himself accountable for that, but also he wants
to hold us accountable for that as well. Witness insurmountable
deficits turn into unforgettable victories at the Travelers Championship, the
northeast one and only PGA tour signature event. See Scotty Scheffler,
(22:58):
Worry McElroy, Victor Hovlin, Patrick Cantley, and returning champion Keegan Bradley,
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The excitement tees off June nineteenth through the twenty third.
For tickets and information, visit Travelers Championship dot com. The
Travelers Championship there is only one. For those of you
(23:24):
that watched the live event, Adelaide went to the first
team playoff that live has had. There hasn't been a
team playoff. There's been a couple of other playoffs. Brooks'
is one in one of them, DJ's one and one
of them, but there hasn't really been a team playoff.
And the team playoff and what more of a fitting
playoff in Australia was Cam Smith's live team. Lucas Herbert Australian,
(23:48):
Mark Leishman Australian, Matty Jones Australian, Cam Smith Australian, the
All Australian team in Australia playoff against the Stingers, the
All South African team. Right, the fans were going nuts.
It was crazy, right, So it was a great finish
to the tournament and everybody was watching. So the locker
(24:09):
room in Adelaide was kind of in on the bottom
floor and then upstairs where the player dining was was
where everybody was eating TVs and everything like that. So
Sunday a lot of guys are leaving, maybe catching a flight,
packing up everything out of the locker room. So you
walk down a hallway and there was a door on
the right and a door on the left, and the
door on the left there was a gym and the
(24:31):
door on the right was into the locker room. So
the majority of people were either packing up, the caddies
are packing up all the bags, they're putting the club
gloves all in the covers, everything they're putting everything, they're
locking up. Everybody that was flying out that night. The
locker room's filled with suitcases and stuff like that. So
guys are showering, they're getting their stuff, they're catching flights.
(24:52):
But the majority of the people had just finished. They
knew there was going to be a playoff. The players,
all the people that are involved in the live team,
the caddies. I was sitting with Wac o'neman and Mito Pereira.
We were grabbing some food afterwards and the playoff happened.
So we're all sitting and you know, a bunch of
players and stuff, and the playoff was going on. There's
(25:12):
a couple holes in the playoff and everything like that.
I was upstairs. I went downstairs to grab my phone
charger out of the locker, and I went past the gym.
Who's in the gym getting his ass kicked by doctor
Aarra and his trader Hamish Brooks Koepka. I took video
of it. Played good that day. Shot in the sixties.
Led the week in greens and Regulation, literally getting the
(25:35):
shit kicked out of him by his trainer, full workout hour.
He was at the gym every night after the rounds.
He was working out after the rounds. He wasn't leaving
the golf course untill eight o'clock. Listen, lots of players
do this, right, This isn't anything that is specific to Brooks.
People do this in the NBA, people do this in
(25:57):
the NFL, people do this in the pre rugby, Major
League Baseball. Every professional athlete in every professional sport, there
are people that do this. Brooks is one of them.
He was getting his ass handed to him by his
trainer in the gym and he said, I need to
do this. I need to kind of get beat up
(26:19):
to kind of refocus. That's kind of the way that
he operates. He's talked for the last two weeks how
sore he is because he's been getting his ass kicked
in the gym, which he asked for, which he wanted.
But my point is that's how much he wants to win.
That's how important winning is to him. And when he
doesn't win, he beats himself up and he holds himself accountable.
(26:44):
And I took a video of it. I was blown away.
I was like, I didn't even know he's working out.
And I walked in, looked at him, looked at the team.
They shook their heads. He looked at me, shook his head.
Nobody said anything, and I walked out and we got
to Singapore. Same thing. Stay on me on the setup,
stay on me on the ball position, stay on me
(27:06):
on the alignment. We could start to see that things
were starting to turn around. Every team goes through this, right,
Every instructor that works with players goes through this. I've
had instructors on the pod. The hottest instructor in the
game right now who's having so much success, Mark Blackburn.
He sees this. You can tell when players have fallen down,
(27:28):
when they've struggled, when they've had to hit the reset button.
You can tell when they're doing the work, when they're
putting in the time, when they're committed, when they're ready
to go. Brooks was ready to go. He wasn't happy
with the way he played Augusta, so I figured Singapore
would be a good week. It's a good golf course,
it's a fun golf course, and the practice sessions were good.
(27:52):
He said. Golf was starting to feel for him normal,
starting to feel the club in the places needed to be,
starting to see the ball start in the windows. He
was hitting it really good in the practice rounds, but
he wasn't making a lot of pots, and he said
after Adelaide, man, I feel like if I just could
make a few more potts, start to see some balls
(28:14):
go in. The ball striking is there. And I kept
saying to him in Adelaide, I know you're hitting it better.
You know you're hitting it better. You can feel it,
we can see it. You just have to be patient
because the good rounds are going to come. But it's
hard to do that as an athlete. It's hard to
do that as a player. So Singapore was good and
(28:36):
we were out in the pro am. We did a
nine hole pro am on Thursday, and he played the
back nine and the fourteenth hole. In the fifteenth hole
or right along the water, So fourteenth holes part three
water all the way down the left hand side. Fifteenth hole,
part four, water all the way down the right hand side.
(28:56):
So in the practice round started on ten Brooks, pipes
it right down the middle, hits it's about ten feet.
Putt breaks, you know, it's breaking from right to left.
Hits a really good putt, maybe just a little bit
too hard, hits the lip, you know, lips out and
(29:17):
you can just see him just go, man, what do
I have to do to make a putt. He changed
putters as well in the last month, which is something
that Brooks doesn't really do. He doesn't really change his equipment.
He's won all five of his majors with the same
style of putter, the blade kind of Scotty Cameron Newport
that you know from watching Tiger Woods, but he's made
(29:39):
the decision to kind of go to a little bit
more of a mallet, pretty much the same putter that
Justin Thomas is using. Right, We saw that with Scotty Scheffler.
Scotty Shuffler was struggling a little bit with his putting.
He went to a mallet and it's helped. Right, We
were making some changes to his putting stroke to where
the blade was. He was just taking a little bit
on the inside and then there's a little bit of
(30:01):
a loop. So we were doing a lot of work
to just try and feel like for him that he
wasn't using so much of his hands, that he was
trying to feel like he was letting his arms swing
a little bit better. So again, same thing he kept saying, listen,
stay on me about how the putter is going back.
Make sure that putter doesn't get too inside on me.
Make sure my ball position doesn't get too far back
on me. The same thing happens with Brooks's putting, that
(30:24):
happens with his full swing. So we stayed on that.
We sent a lot of videos every single night. I'm
videoing golf swings during the day, set up driver irons,
putting ball positions. Every single night. I'm sending those to
him just so he can see them, and he would
send him back to me, saying, starting to look better,
(30:45):
starting to feel better. I like this, still think I
could do this better. So we knew we were kind
of trending in a better place. So practice round again.
Eleventh hole pipes, It hits, it's about fifteen feet one eighties.
It lits it out again, and you can see he's
getting more and more frustrated. Twelfth hole part four, hammer's
(31:08):
drive down there, hits it to about five feet, missus
thirteen pipes of driver. Again, this isn't the program. Hits
one to about fifteen feet, lips it out and just
lost it. You could sell. He's like, I'm so tired
of not making any potts. I'm working my ass off
in the gym. I feel like I'm doing all the
(31:28):
right stuff. I just can't make a pot. So we
got to the fourteenth hole, which is part three, water
all the way down the left hand side, and as
we were walking up, we just talked about it and
I said, man, and Ricky, and I is caddy Ricky Ellen,
who's been on his bag since day one, since he
started playing on the PGA Tour, since he's won all
(31:49):
these majors, And we just said, listen, you're the best
pressure putter, one of the best pressure pressure punters I've
ever seen. Definitely, Brooks is one of the best pressure
putters I've ever seen in a major championship. He likes that.
And I said, but when you're putting bad, it's not
always your technique right sometimes, so I said to him, listen,
(32:13):
your stroke looks better, you know, it looks better. Your
stroke is okay based off of what you've been doing.
Maybe it's just the speed and the line and we
just need to dial those in a little bit more.
And I said, listen, halfway through this practice round, you've
hit really good pots. It's not your stroke, it's just, hey,
(32:37):
you hit that one a little bit too hard. Hey
you hit that one a little bit too soft. Maybe
that broke a little bit more than you thought. So again,
that's execution, that's not technique. We're looking at the veils
he would miss. He missed a couple of putts in
that practice. Early He's like, can you video my setup?
Can you video the punch take. We showed it to
him and he's like, dude, that all looks good. Right.
(32:57):
We're like, it looks good. I could see him getting
more frustrated, and I just told him, I said, listen,
Steph Curry plays for the Golden State Warriors. One of
the best three point shooters the game's ever seen. He's
so good at shooting three points that a lot of
people think he changed the way the NBA is being played,
because the NBA is now a lot of three pointers.
(33:19):
He's the best at it. If he's in the NBA Finals,
Game seven, and he goes from three point land in
the first quarter, oh for seven. And they start the
second quarter and he goes and he misses the first two,
and then they start getting him open looks and he
starts passing it taking shots. Steve Kerr, the head coach
(33:40):
of the Golden State Warriors, is going to call time out.
He played with Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls. He's
won championships, He's going to call time out and pull
Steph aside and say, what the hell are you doing?
Keep shooting. And I said that story to Brooks. I'm like,
you've got to keep shooting. Steph Curry is not going
to stop shooting. He's going to keep taking his shot.
And I said, you just have to be patient and
(34:03):
keep shooting. And we were talking about that on the
fourteenth hole. We talked about it the rest of the round.
And so during his warm up even on Sunday, I
took some videos of his golf swing while he's warming
up and I just said, listen, take a look at this.
This where you are with your seven iron face on.
He's like, yeah, that ball position's good. Showed him one
down the line. I said, yeah, that setup's good. The setup,
(34:24):
we couldn't see that left arm. When Brooks gets a
little bit too closed with the setup, we see too
much of his left forearm from down the line, his
hips get a little bit too closed. In Adelaide, I
put an alignment rod through his belt loops so we
could set up and he could see where his hips were.
And we were doing that. That's a great tip. If
you're struggling with your alignment with your lower body, put
(34:45):
an alignment rod through your belt loops and get that
set up and you'll see where those hips are. So
if your hips are too closed or hips are too open.
So the last thing I said to him before he
went out on Sunday, Man, it's just keep shooting, keep shooting,
and so on. Sunday got off to a really good
I mean the first round that he played on Friday,
(35:07):
I think it was five under through seven and started
to see some putts go in one of the leaders
I think he was leading, if not one of the
leaders right near the lead, maybe one back. And then Saturday,
really good round of golf going, but I think it
was then on sixteen he three putted and from like
(35:28):
five feet he lipped one out, which is what has
been happening with his putting. And I said to the
guys on the team, it's gonna be interesting to see
how he finishes. Now we're gonna know a lot about
where his headspace is based off of what we see.
For the next two holes, par three and then an
easy par five. Right the par three seventeenth, he made
(35:49):
a bad swing hit it to the bunker, just got
a little bit under it and then hit it's about
seven feet and then lipped one in for par. I
thought that that was huge. I really did. Mentally, I
thought that that was a really really big deal. And
then Sunday kind of got to lead to about two
(36:12):
shots and then on the fourteenth hole, where in the
practice round on Thursday, his caddie Ricky and Elliot and
I started talking to him about you've got to stay patient.
But I said to him in that practice round as
well when he won the PGA at o'kill, there's always
going to be a point in the round to where
you have to make a putt. You have to do
(36:32):
something right, you have to do something special, and you're
probably going to be faced with if you want to
win the tournament, there's no real other option other than
to make a pott. And at o'kill last year in
the PGA, that's what he had. He had a downhill
fast left to right, probably thirteen foot for par on
(36:55):
a par five. He made the pot and I said
to him in the practice round during the pro I said,
were you thinking about your stroke? Then he said no,
I said, that was you As the athlete saying, if
I want to win this golf tournament, I've got to
will this putt in the hole. Tiger Woods did that.
Tiger Woods told me, and it's funny. We're going back
to Valhalla for the PGA next week. He told me
(37:17):
to get into the playoff against Bob May. And I
think it was two thousand. He had a putt that
he had to make to get into a playoff with
Bob May. He's supposed to crush Bob May. He didn't.
He had to make a putt. I said, in your head,
what are you saying to yourself? And Tiger, I'll never
forget it to you. Tiger said to me. I said
to myself, I want to win another major if I
want to hoist the Wannamaker. If I don't want to
(37:38):
get into a playoff and try and win this tournament,
there is no other option other than to make it.
And that's what we were trying to say to Brooks. Listen,
you've done this before. You know how to do this.
Turn your brain off and just putt. Just try and
make it. Try and make it. Sometimes we get into
(37:58):
that spell where we're trying not to miss it right,
Try and make it, and so on the green where
we started talking to him about that pin was back left,
water all the way down on the right. He hit
one to about forty feet, big break fast right to left,
left it about eight feet short, maybe ten feet short,
(38:20):
stood up for par, hooped it right in the center
next hole. In my head, I'm saying to myself, Okay,
water on the left right, bunker's right ball. It's not
a long hole. He doesn't have to pound driver down there.
But you make a bad swing, you're struggling to make
a par. He took out his three iron, roasted one
right down the middle of the fairway, and then stood
(38:41):
up and hit a little three quarter off speed, a
little chip. It was either a wedge or nine to
about twelve feet pin high, made it, then went to eighteen.
Knew he had a lead, think he had a two
shot lead at that point. Knew that he could take two.
They always say, if you could take two, take two.
Didn't hit a great drive, hit it to the right,
(39:02):
had to lay up, hit one over the green, didn't
come down, and then finished the tournament off by holing
probably about a six seven foot birdie putt, which I
think was huge and I said to him after the round,
man he putted great today, and he said, I should
turn my brain off. I just quit thinking about my stroke.
I just turned my brain off. And I think that's
(39:24):
an important lesson for everyone listening that sometimes you can
overthink it. Sometimes you're trying not to miss it. You're
not trying to make it. Sometimes you're trying to not
hit a bad shot, and you're not trying to hit
a good shot, You're just trying not to hit a
bad one. I think what we saw from Books in
(39:46):
Singapore is kind of the reset that he needed. He's
going to go into the PGA Championship at Valhalla with
a lot of confidence. I think he's gonna play well.
I really do. I think he learned a lot over
the last month. I think he's done the work. I
think he's put his body through a lot. I think
he's punished himself. I think he's demanded a lot of himself,
(40:10):
demanded a lot from the team around him. And I
think the Masters was the reset he needed. I think
the Masters was a little bit of the reset that
I needed and the team needed. And I think it
just goes to show you, guys, everyone listening grip, stance,
posture alignment, the basics, the stuff that no one is
(40:33):
making TikTok Instagram videos, YouTube videos. It's not cool, it's
not sexy. It's not laying it down, it's not shallowing
it out, it's not all that bullshit. We just went
back to basics with Brooks. We just went back to basics, posture, alignment, grip,
where he's aiming, all of that. That started the dominoes
(40:56):
going in the right direction. And I don't care whether
you think it was a statement when for Brooks or not.
I know it was, and I know he knows it was.
It was the confidence he needed. It's his fourth win
on liv. Listen, if you don't think the competition's any good,
I think that says more about you than it does
about the competition. He's beating some of the best players
(41:16):
in the world, and I really don't care if you
don't think that. I know that because I see the
golf that they're playing, I know the players he's playing against,
and I think it's a good reset for Brooks. And
we'll see what this brings for the rest of the year.
He's got three majors left and he believes in his
goal this year, he's got five, he's got three chances left.
(41:41):
I know in his head he's trying to get to
eight by the end of this year because he believes
he can get to ten. He believes he can get
to double digits. And I just thought I would share
that story with you that sometimes you have to hit
the reset button. Sometimes you have to go back to basics.
Sometimes you can get the dominoes to change by the
(42:05):
things that you're doing before you hit the golf ball.
So so so proud of him. I know how hard
he works, I know how hard he wants all of
this and a really really good win for him. And
I'm really excited to get to Valhalla. I'll fly back
to the US tomorrow night, get back on Thursday, and
then we will head up to Valhalla and the PGA
(42:28):
on Sunday. Going to do and record a little PGA
preview show which will come out next week with my dad.
Butch Harmon talk about obviously the favorite Scotti Scheffler. Can
he get another major? The run he's on is historic,
I think, I mean it is. He's playing unbelievable golf.
Hopefully get his kind of take on some of the
(42:48):
stuff that he's been working on with Rory. Is this
the opportunity ten years on last major? Roy One? Was
it the PGA Championship at Valhalla twenty fourteen? And if
I told anybody listening that in fourteen Brooks Koepka would
have more majors than Rory, you wouldn't believe it. Why
because you probably hadn't heard of Brooks yet, and maybe
(43:09):
you didn't think he was that good, and he wasn't
that good at that point. And Rory in twenty fourteen,
I thought by now he'd have ten. That's how good
he is, That's how great of a player he is.
So I think there's a lot of storylines that we
could kind of see aligning at the PGA, and I'm
really excited to get to it. So yeah, two week
(43:32):
break from the pod, but we are back. Can't thank
everybody enough for listening, Rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get
your podcast. Son of a Butch comes to you almost
every Wednesday. But we will definitely see you next week.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.