Golf is often called a game played mostly between the ears. And there’s a sharp reason for it. Rory McIlroy said after his 2014 Open win that playing at this level is ‘all mental.’ But only a few people have seen that up close, like Butch Harmon. He coached Tiger Woods to eight majors and helped Greg Norman and Dustin Johnson to World No. 1 then. Now the 83-year-old has a blunt verdict on the players he has taught or worked with. They are talented. They are fragile, and when something goes wrong, it is rarely their fault.

Butch Harmon made the comments on Golf Digest’s The Real Deal with Bob Philion. The talk began with Jedi mind tricks and whether he had used them on his players.

“Absolutely. What you learn is that when you deal with the tour player, it’s never their fault. There’s something wrong with the equipment. And I say this as the player. It’s never us…If it’s a bad swing, it’s the coach’s fault. Bad decision, mental guy’s fault. Too long, too short, caddy’s fault. So it’s never their fault. But you’ve got to learn how to trick them into making them believe that it was their idea about something.”

The reason for the blame game is quite simple— The difference between a good week and a bad week is usually a feeling. And that feeling can be pinned to almost anything. But for Harmon, the way out is simple.

“So, yes, there is a way to kind of trick the guys into believing that it’s their idea. You’re dealing with, uh, a group of individuals that’s so talented but yet so fragile,” he said with a slight chuckle.

Simply put, pro players will often not take advice from outside until they feel like they found it themselves. And his example was Dustin Johnson.

Johnson came to Harmon not knowing how to play a hook. So naturally, they spent hours on the range working on his fades. They practiced attacking right-side pins and shaping shots around doglegs. However, Johnson never used it on the course until one fine day he called Butch Harmon to say he had hit fades on the range, played them all day, and shot a 64. Moreover, he sounded giddy when he said he was going to play fade from now on. Harmon recalled the story with a shrug, saying he had given the same idea for five years, but Johnson used it when he thought it was his own.

But notably, Harmon doesn’t mind. For him, it’s a mind game that works well. But furthermore, he admits the pros don’t always postpone the blame deliberately, liking how hard the sport is.

“The game of golf is not that difficult, but then again it’s not that easy. They make it look easy, but it really isn’t.”

Perhaps a reason why pro players find it hard to change.

Unsurprisingly, Harmon has admitted before to using mind games with players. In a chat with Mark Rolfing in 2022, he explained how he plants “little seeds,” as pro players would like it “to be their idea.”

Interestingly, people around the game describe a similar pattern in players. Jack Nicklaus, for one, said in 2015 that Tiger Woods was struggling more mentally than physically before adding that “a teacher can’t teach what’s inside your head.”

And players have at times admitted to nitpicking the smallest things to improve their game. Speaking at the Pat McAfee Show, Nelly Korda explained that shoes with higher heels help her get her chest closer to the ground, which she said made her swing steeper and her hips faster.

“It’s literally just the smallest of things, but golfers are crazy. I’m crazy, just to let you know,” she said with a chuckle.

But ultimately, Harmon does not fight the player’s ego, and he works around it. His ultimate goal is to help them win and not aim for just the top tens or twenty-fives. For that, he explains he has a simple ability to say positive thoughts to the player before their first tee on the tournament. It certainly helps them believe more and address their problems faster.

But for now, he’s sure to call out the pros’ egos and use a little mind trick on them when they do.