A memorable opponent of Tiger Woods in his days as an amateur, Steve Scott recalled an unorthodox motivational techniques Butch Harmon reserved for the prodigious Woods.
The young man who took Tiger Woods the distance in the 1996 U.S. Amateur Championship, Steve Scott revisited his epic battle with went the 20-year-old Woods on Thursday's OTB AM.
A little over seven months before the sport's most iconic player claimed his first major win at the '97 Masters, Scott finished second to Woods in his final event before turning professional.
In a detailed interview about that day which you can watch below, Scott recalls competing against Woods and how a singular gesture of sportsmanship on his part helped Woods on his way.
However, as a singular example of the embattled approach Woods and his coach Butch Harmon would take to keep the fires burning, Scott revisited the lengths they would go to to keep motivated.
"Just a couple times," he laughed when asked if he had retrospectively heard the message delivered to Woods by Harmon during their match 24-years ago.
"I read it once in Golf Digest or somewhere and I wrote him a letter. It was a motivational story, it wasn't a true story. It was just to get Tiger fired up."
Having recently finished his freshman season in Florida, the story concerned Scott and the apocryphal behaviour of his caddie, his then girlfriend and now wife Kristi.
"After the morning 18," Scott explained, "[Harmon] said to Tiger, 'Hey, every time you miss a putt do you notice that girl is laughing with Steve?'
"When he came off the 35th hole then after sinking this 35 foot putt, he goes to me, 'Well, I guess she ain't smiling now.'
"It was all a motivational story. My wife is an LPGA professional who would never do that sort of thing. She knows the game of golf well enough to never do that, first of all."
Incredibly, a few years after the event Scott found himself in the audience for an event at which Butch Harmon was speaking.
One of the other numerous times he has heard the mythic slight against Tiger Woods repackaged and resold, Harmon had no idea Scott was in the same room.
"He came to one of these big teaching seminars when I was a pro up in New York," Scott recalled. "He did a big seminar, talked for a couple of hours and part of that talk was this story.
"There was about 400 of my colleagues and he didn't know I was there at all, but everyone starts looking at me and eventually he kind of apologised afterwards.
"But you know, whatever, Butch is Butch."
You can watch the brilliant interview with Steve Scott and hear the full story of his classic match-up against Tiger Woods in full right here
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