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MIND / THE NEXT ONE’S GOOD
The Shot that Made Tiger Tiger A complete history of The Stinger BY JERRY TARDE
I f you’re a golfer, he needs no introduction. Butch Harmon is the greatest golf teacher of all time, the most outrageously under-appre- ciated figure yet to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame and Tiger Woods’ coach in his formative and peak years from 1993 to 2004 – ages 17 to 28. “The way I put it,” Butch was telling me the other day in his office outside Las Vegas, “is Jack Nicklaus was the greatest champion of all time, but Tiger was the greatest player.” If Tiger didn’t fire Butch, and Butch had been his lifelong coach, like Jack
conference. Even as a kid, especially as a kid, Tiger had clubhead speed. He was reminiscent of the young Seve Ballesteros, who played hooky from school and hit 3-irons on Somo Beach, near his hometown of Pedreña, Spain. Like Seve, Tiger fell in love with golf and taught himself shotmaking with that club, from chips around the green to driving irons. “That 1-iron was probably the start of learning how to hit the ball down, plus we had balata balls back then, so learning how to take spin off it was a big thing,” he said. “The longer the ball stays in the air, the longer time it
Grout was to Nicklaus, Tiger may very well have held both titles. That’s not a knock on Hank Haney or Sean Foley or any of the coaches that came after Butch. It’s a statement of fact, and the evidence I’d offer is one shot that Butch taught Tiger because it was the key to everything. The shot that made Tiger was a knockdown 2-iron you know by an- other name: The Stinger. The origins of the shot can be traced back to a beryllium copper Ping Eye2 1-iron that he cadged from his father because Earl didn’t have the clubhead speed to “hit it in the air,” said Tiger in a 2018 press
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN SZURLEJ
12 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
MARCH/APRIL 2025
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