Tommy Fleetwood’s long-awaited breakthrough came with his first Tour Championship title in 2025, earned through relentless practice and grueling range drills. One such drill, which Tiger Woods practiced for extended periods and even admitted to “hating” during his prime, proved crucial for developing a better feel for the correct club position and ultimately became central to Fleetwood’s progress.
Recently, Butch Harmon shared on the Son of a Butch podcast how he approached Fleetwood’s swing after the two began working together in 2023. “You know my process is to never take away something that’s there naturally. His swing is going to be his swing. I’ve taught you to do that when you teach, and we’re very good at doing that. I’m not trying to create a brand new swing. Tommy’s swing was Tommy’s swing,” Harmon began.“The problem with Tommy’s swing with the… the reason the irons were so good, Claude, cuz his swing is short, the motion is shorter, and the width at the top, he can get the club down in front of him more. His swing with the driver is much longer,” he added, speaking of the difference between Fleetwood’s iron play and his driving.
“And when it got longer, he collapsed a little at the top, and he got close to the head, and when he started down, he was very narrow. And when you’re narrow, you’ve got to back up to spine and hit it, and you’re a drawer of the golf ball, that’s going to bring in the flip on the edge stuff,” Harmon added, speaking of how it resulted in bad drives. To fix that, Harmon turned to one of his most trusted and grueling drills. One that Tiger Woods, even during his prime, loathed. “We worked very hard on a drill that I did with Tiger on all those years, where you go to the top and stop. And I would tell him to go and hit balls, and we’ve done that for hours at a time,” Harmon continued.
This drill, which Tiger Woods hated, helped him fix one of the biggest flaws in his swing — a problem familiar to many pros, where they get stuck on the downswing. Woods himself broke down the origins of this drill in the September 2000 cover story for Golf Digest — “One of the problems I had when I first turned pro was getting in a ‘stuck’ position on the downswing,” Woods explained. “The club would get behind me, and I would then have to try to square it at impact with my hands. Sometimes I could, other times I couldn’t, and the ball would fly anywhere.”
To correct it, Woods and Harmon focused on syncing up his arms and lower body, training him to let his arms fall as his weight transfers to his left side. That kept his arms in front of him, avoiding the stuck position that Fleetwood is a victim of as well. “This is a drill he’d make me do for hours upon hours, I’d be out there sweating in 100 degrees,” Woods said in his Golf Channel Academy Live segment in 2023. “I couldn’t stand it. I still can’t stand it. I hated doing it, but I knew it was something I needed to do in order to feel where I wanted to put my arms,” he added.
Here’s an incredible clip of a 24 yr old Tiger Woods and his then coach Butch Harmon talking about doing a simple drill for hrs upon hrs.
Here’s what Harmon had to say:
“Here’s the guy thats the best player in the world who hits more balls than anyone on the planet, and its… pic.twitter.com/SYZBVxqsRe
— Triple Net Investor (@TripleNetInvest) October 9, 2023
This is the same drill Fleetwood now works on, one that Woods hated, but it worked for him as he went on to win eight majors under Harmon’s tutelage, including the legendary “Tiger Slam” from 2000 to 2001. Now, a generation later, the same drill and the same teacher have helped guide Tommy Fleetwood to a career-defining breakthrough.
Tommy Fleetwood and Butch Harmon’s partnership
When Tommy Fleetwood joined forces with Butch Harmon in 2023, it wasn’t just a coaching change; it was the beginning of a quiet transformation that would redefine his career. In 2021, Fleetwood was ranked a distant 105th in overall strokes gained. A solid leap to 23rd in 2022 hinted at progress, but it was in 2023, the year he began working with Harmon, that everything clicked. Fleetwood surged to 5th in strokes gained, recorded nine top-10 finishes, and came agonizingly close to victory at the RBC Canadian Open.
Butch Harmon, the legendary coach behind some of golf’s greatest champions, brought more than just experience — he brought clarity. Rather than rebuild Fleetwood’s swing, Harmon honed in on the details, fixing subtle flaws without stripping away the natural rhythm. And from the moment they teamed up, the results were immediate. In 2025, Fleetwood has delivered eight top-10 finishes and found his peak form at the perfect time — placing inside the top five in every FedEx Cup Playoff event before finally capturing his first PGA Tour win at East Lake. It was a breakthrough years in the making, driven by perseverance, patience, and also because of Harmon’s timeless coaching methods.
