Tiger Woods long-time golf coach unloads on state of PGA Tour: "The worst it's ever been..."

Butch Harmon has unloaded on the current state of the PGA Tour by declaring the business side is now "the worst it's ever been", following an interview with Golf Channel's Matt Adams. 

Harmon also considers it is no surprise to see TV ratings consistently down on the PGA Tour at the moment because the novice golf fan has "no idea who many of the players are" on the leaderboard. 

Woods worked alongside Harmon when he first burst on the scene in 1996 through to the end of 2002.

The former World No.1 won eight of his 15 career majors under the watchful eye of Harmon.

Woods famously won three consecutive majors at the US Open, The Open and US PGA in 2000 before taking the very next major in 2001 to complete the Grand Slam at the 2001 Masters. 

Many consider Woods played the greatest golf of his career under the watchful eye of Harmon, who has also coached the likes of Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Greg Norman and Dustin Johnson through the years. 

But back to the top of the story, and Harmon has unloaded heavy criticism of the state of the PGA Tour and professional golf at large right now. 

Harmon considers the dwindling TV ratings on the PGA Tour are a direct result of the circuit having lost many of its best players such as Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Sergio Garcia and Dustin Johnson to the Saudi-bankrolled LIV Golf League. 

Taking the latest TV ratings from The Sentry two weeks ago in Hawaii for example, Hideki Matsuyama's three-shot win over Collin Morikawa pulled in 461,000 viewers during the Golf Channel window. 

That was down on the 707,000 when Chris Kirk won The Sentry in 2024, and down on the 603,000 when Jon Rahm won the same event in 2023. 

"You've got to look at it two ways, I think at the moment the crop of young players we have are maybe the best crop we've had ever, there's a tremendous amount of them, the downside to that is when you turn on the TV on Saturday and Sunday and you look at the leaderboard, and the novice golf fan sees these 10 names, they have no idea who any of them are because they're not any of the superstars," a frustrated Harmon told Matt Adams. 

"That's why golf ratings are down and stuff, and that to me is wrong because these guys are so good.

"The other side to that is the business side of golf is the worst it's ever been. 

"I don't understand the way the Tour handles their stuff, I don't understand the rest of the world, all I know is from what I understand is that if the [PGA Tour] Commissioner had taken Yasir's [PIF governor Al-Rumuyyan] phone call four years ago we wouldn't be in this place. 

"But the arrogance of the PGA Tour thinking they were the best game in town and the only game in town and nobody was going to come in and do anything about that, well we've seen what's happened.

"What all you and I want and all golf fans want, when we turn on the TV on Sunday we want to see the best players playing against each other. We only get that four times a year now at the majors. For me that has to change."

Harmon added: "There has to be a way to bring everybody together, and for god sake let's hope they figure out."

Watch Harmon's comments in full here: