Butch Harmon interview: Trump will never be a member at Augusta

Donald Trump, as the US president and seemingly one of the country’s keenest golfers, could be forgiven for hoping the gates of Augusta National would swing open for his patronage.

Butch Harmon, the game’s most famous coach, however, has bad news for the man in the Oval Office. Trump is never going to be invited to be a member. He simply does not tally with the National’s image of dignity and discreetness.

“I think you can answer that yourself – because he’s Trump,” Harmon replied when asked why. “I think he is who he is. He’s full of himself. He’s the type of person that I don’t think fits the profile of an Augusta member.

“I’ve known him most of my whole life, because his father was a member of Winged Foot [the exclusive New York course]; what you see is what you get with him. And I don’t think his personality fits the membership at Augusta.

“And it doesn’t matter that he is president. I don’t think that has anything to do with it, because there’s been a lot of other presidents who played golf, and they’re not members. [Bill] Clinton, [Barack] Obama, they played golf. I think it’s just his personality doesn’t mix with that particular club. That’s as politically correct as I can be.”

‘It was embarrassing being American during Ryder Cup’

Harmon, who coached Tiger Woods from 1993 to 2004 and oversaw his Masters breakthrough in 1997, will be at Augusta in his role as analyst for Sky Sports at the season’s first major that starts on Thursday. He, for one, is glad for Augusta’s strict rules.

While Trump will not even be welcomed as a guest this week – and threaten to upstage the sport as he did at the US Open tennis and football’s Club World Cup final – the raucous supporters from last year’s Ryder Cup will also be excluded.

“I thought the Ryder Cup was disgusting,” Harmon said. “It was embarrassing being an American. I love the Ryder Cup, it’s my favourite one to broadcast and being from New York, I had planned to work with the Sky [Sports] team. But I decided to pull out for that main reason. I felt we would spend more time talking about what’s going on in the gallery with the fans being unruly than we would the golf and I just didn’t feel I wanted to be part of it.

“This is the beauty of Augusta. These are the best behaved patrons in all of golf. I love the Open Championship because all the gallery people understand golf and they understand how to cheer. But this place, it’s like a holy grail of golf in the US, and it’s difficult to get a ticket to come. It’s probably the hardest event to get a ticket to.

“The patrons there are very well behaved, because they’re the same people that come back year after year. I hated the way things were going at the Ryder Cup. I thought it was a terrible embarrassment for the United States, and let’s hope it never happens again.”

‘If Rahm is not at Adare Manor, it will be self-inflicted’

Harmon hopes to be at Adare Manor next year, where his nation will try to win on European soil for the first time in 34 years. Jon Rahm’s position on Team Europe is a point of contention and if he finds himself off the team then Harmon believes it will be his own fault.

The Spaniard is involved in a stand-off with the DP World Tour over his membership status. The former world No 1 is refusing to sign up to the same deal as Ryder Cup partner Tyrrell Hatton, who has paid his outstanding fines over playing on the LIV Golf league and committed to appear in at least six tour events this year, with two of them chosen by Wentworth HQ. Rahm believes he should not have to settle up his fines, or play more than four events. As it stands, he will lose his European card and so be ineligible for the biennial match in Co Limerick.

“If Jon is not there, I think it will be self-inflicted,” Harmon said. “I don’t see where he has been coming from on his little rant. Jon is one of the best players in the world and if he can keep his emotions in check he has to be one of the guys you consider at Augusta.

“But the stuff of the DP World Tour, I feel that was uncalled for. If you want to play there, there’s the rules. If you don’t want to play there, don’t play there and accept the consequences. It’s his choice.”