Golf Course

"Don't be long on your approach," my partner in the Tom Tait Invitational says to me. I've already hit my drive on the dogleg 15th hole of the Orchards golf course in western Massachusetts. Now my ball is sitting in the middle of the fairway, a pretty place for it, but I'm still about 195 yards from the green. A soft 3-wood seems the smart shot, until my partner cautions me about the trouble at lies beyond the green. "Better to be short," he warns.

"Damn!" I mutter to myself a minute later. The 4-wood I've just hit -- instead of the 3-wood -- has indeed left my ball short, but in a sand bunker to the left of the inclined green, well below the hole. Now I've got to loft it out of the bunker. I fear this shot more than any other in golf.

Can Butch help me pull it off?

If you could ask just one person for advice on enduring the emotional gauntlet of performing under pressure, chances are you'd pick master teaching pro Claude "Butch" Harmon, Jr., guru to golf's legend-in-the-making, Tiger Woods.

I first met Harmon at a tournament when I was researching my book, Stalking the Shark: Pressure and Passion on the Pro Golf Tour. The tournament was the Shark Shootout, an unofficial event hosted by the man who was then Harmon's prize pupil, Greg Norman. I fell into step with Harmon midway through the front nine.

Many of the people that I met on the tour were suspicious when I told them I was writing a book, but not Harmon. "Is that right," he remarked. "I'm writing one myself."

Harmon is a straight-ahead guy, completely unpretentious, the sort of teacher who can bond with his students. He also has a sense of humor -- a prerequisite for success in a profession defined by large but fragile egos. He conveys a sense of being both a friend and a protector, combining the role of a corner man in boxing with that of a mentor.

Harmon invited me to visit him if I were ever in Houston, where he is director of golf at the exclusive Lochinvar Golf Club. A few weeks before my tournament at the Orchards, after a round at my home course when I hit my opening drive out of bounds and another when I took a humbling score of 10 on one hole, I decided it was past time to accept his invitation. I wanted to get a one-on-one lesson from Harmon and talk with him about the hardest part of golf, and for that matter, of business: how to toughen up your mental game and win under pressure. Perhaps a conversation with a pro to the pros would help me get to the next level.

We met in Harmon's cozy clubhouse office, where one wall is lined with videotapes of his sessions with Norman, Woods, and some names I recognized from other sports, including Michael Jordan -- a passionate golfer when he isn't playing basketball.

Golf, like business, pits people in head-to-head matchups where your mental fitness is just as important as your talent and skill. What's the one thing that separates winners from losers?

It all comes down to focus -- the ability to concentrate completely on the shot you're playing now, in the present. Tiger Woods is the most focused young guy I've ever met. At the Mercedes Championships, when Tiger squared off against Tom Lehman in a one-hole playoff, all I said to him was, "Just relax and let it happen -- Lehman's yours." And Tiger said, "Oh yeah, I got it."

There are pros who get the lead and panic: "Oh god, I'm leading, what am I going to do now?" And there are others who get the lead and say, "Yeah, this is where I belong." Tiger is one of those "this is where I belong" guys. He thrives on competition. All you have to do is challenge him -- I've never seen him fail.

Whether it's business or golf, it's awfully hard to stay focused when the losses start piling up. What will you say to Tiger Woods when he hits a slump?

It's going to be interesting to see how Tiger handles a slump, because you're right -- he'll hit one. And when he does, we'll go right back to working on the basics that we've always worked on.

When you're stuck in a slump, most of the time it's a confidence thing more than a physical thing. So you have to draw on the good times, the times you've played really well. Think about all the good shots you've hit, understand that they're still in your body, and realize that you can tap into them again.

Remember that in golf you fail many more times than you succeed. If there are 144 players in a pro tournament, 143 will lose. There's only 1 winner. So most of the time you're going to lose. But as long as you go out and try as hard as you can, you won't have anything to be embarrassed about. That holds true for every level of golf, amateurs as well as pros.

Isn't there a difference between losing well and losing badly? Did Greg Norman "lose well" when he blew six-stroke lead in the final round of the Masters last year and he said he wasn't ashamed of what happened -- that's golf?