"Hurry the hell up!" Tiger Woods' former coach calls for tougher slow play penalties

Tiger Woods’ former coach Butch Harmon has revealed his simple idea to crack down on the scourge of slow play in professional golf.

The debate over the pace of play reared up again during the Tour Championship last month, with Patrick Cantlay drawing the bulk of criticism for taking too long to hit throughout the final round in Atlanta.

Cantlay was paired with Tommy Fleetwood, who defied the antics of his playing partner to claim his long-awaited breakthrough victory on the PGA Tour, winning by three shots to be crowned FedExCup champion.

Fleetwood, who may have to face Cantlay at the Ryder Cup later this month, has recently been working with legendary coach Harmon, who combined with Woods for eight major championship titles before they parted company in 2004.

Harmon, who also coached Phil Mickelson for eight years, believes fines are no incentive to speed up play on the main Tours, and he has urged golf’s authorities to hit frequent offenders with two-shot penalties.

“These guys don’t care about money,” said the 82-year-old on the Son of a Butch podcast, hosted by his son, Claude Harmon III.

“They’re all multi-millionaires. You’re not going to get them to speed up. But if you put two shots on them, it could cost them making a cut, it could cost them winning a tournament, it could cost them keeping their card.”

“Could cost them getting in a Ryder Cup,” added his son, who is also a renowned coach having worked with the likes of Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Rickie Fowler.

“But what the hell is going on? I mean, I watched Cantlay down on the 8th hole. He made seven looks at the hole.

“I blame the Tour. I 100 percent blame all the Tours because if they wanted to stomp out slow play, they could.”

Harmon Snr continued: “But if you put two shots on these guys, first of all, they would go crazy. They’d say ‘I can’t believe you’re going to penalise me two shots.’ Well, then hurry the hell up, damn it!”

Harmon revealed that Fleetwood was apparently unfazed by Cantlay’s appalling pace of play at East Lake, adding: “I said to Tommy, ‘does it bother you how slow it is? I know you were on the clock on the 11th hole, I saw them come to get you,’.

“But Tommy just said ‘you know, the guy’s slow, but I wouldn’t let him bother me. I’m just in my world and he could get in his world to be as slow as he wanted because I was still going to whip his butt!’”