Golf: Training Days

CLAUDE “Butch” Harmon has never stopped adding new chapters to his tumultuous story.

"Life is good. Man, it's real good," he said recently. "I have never been happier, professionally or personally. If you'd have told me years back, when I had just about reached my lowest point, that I'd be this successful, loved and in love, I would have asked you what you were smoking."

This is a rare admission by perhaps the world's best golf teacher. That's not to say that Harmon has become woolly or endearing. "Hell no," he says. "I still tell my pupils what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. And they can take it or leave it. If you don't believe me go ask (Phil) Mickelson."