The PGA Tour’s Tiger Woods and LIV Golf’s Greg Norman are two of golf’s greatest ever players, and both were coached by the Butch Harmon during their periods of dominance
Tiger Woods and Greg Norman have one key similarity that made them dominant world No. 1 golfers, according to their former coach Butch Harmon.
Both Woods and Norman announced themselves as two of the world’s best golfers during their respective periods at the top of the world rankings. Whilst Woods’ dominance is the more well-documented, Norman too enjoyed plenty of success prior to his role as LIV Golf CEO.
There is no doubt Woods and Norman have differing views when it comes to the off-course politics between the PGA Tour and LIV setup, but when comes to competing, legendary instructor Harmon revealed they are not so different.
Having worked with both, Harmon revealed that one aspect that helped Woods and Norman reach and then stay at the top of professional golf is their work ethic. “One thing I will tell you about the best players in the world,” the 80-year-old coach told On The Road with Iona.
“I had two of them I took to No. 1 who were there for a long time. Greg Norman and Tiger Woods. They outworked everybody, they worked harder than everybody. That is because they wanted to stay there.” Now known for his work with LIV, Norman enjoyed quite the playing career before his off-course role.
The 69-year-old was golf’s ultimate global player, winning 88 times around the world. Most notably, he won 20 times whilst competing on the PGA Tour, and banked 14 titles whilst playing on the DP World Tour – then the European Tour. He had plenty of success in his native Australasia too.
Butch Harmon worked with Tiger Woods ( Image: Getty Images)
In total Norman won an impressive 33 times on the PGA Tour of Australasia, all the more commendable amid his ventures into Europe and the United States. The Australian also has two major titles to his name, having won the Open Championship in 1986 and 1993.
His impressive form saw him spend a whopping 331 weeks at the top of the Official World Golf Ranking, the second most of all time. Unsurprisingly the man who of course spent the longest spell as world No. 1 was Woods, who sat on top of the world for more than double the length of time as Norman in second place, with his tally standing at 683 weeks.
Woods is the joint-most succesful PGA Tour player of all time, having won 82 times on the American-based circuit, a record he shares with the great Sam Snead. Fifteen of those came on the major stage, having won three Open Championships, three U.S. Opens, four PGA Championships and five Masters titles.
His last completed a remarkable comeback, after the 48-year-old’s career in the second half of the 2010’s was plagued with injury. In 2019 however his famously coined ‘return to glory’ was complete after once again getting his hands on the green jacket by being crowned Masters champion.
