Butch Harmon visits Portmarnock Links: Life away from living in the Tiger's shadow doesn't seem to have caused Butch Harmon too much stress. In fact, the man voted year in and year out by his peers as the world's greatest golf teacher not only looks exceedingly fit, but is busier than ever - even if he can no longer include Tiger Woods, the world's number one player, as his star pupil.

At Portmarnock Links yesterday for a Red Bull Masters Class with many of the Irish PGA's club professionals and a number of promising young amateur players, Harmon, though, conceded that there was no likelihood of him ever resuming as Woods's coach.

"I don't foresee that day happening," remarked Harmon. "Tiger's not going to ask and I am too busy to go back again . . . I sat in the hot seat for 10 years, let someone else have that."

If that may seem cold, it's not. Yet, deep down, Harmon is hurt that their decade-long coach-pupil relationship should now be reduced to a simple "hi" if they pair happen to meet in a corridor, or on the range.

Professionally too, he is hurt. "It hurts when you read some things. Like last week. There was an article in Golfweek where Tiger was talking about how he talks to a lot of instructors (but) throws out 90 per cent and keeps about 10 per cent, even when he was working with me . . . that hurts, because he and I know that's not true.

"But it is a different Tiger Woods today. This is a Tiger Woods that likes everything to be his idea, who likes to be in control of everything he does. That's fine. He has grown up into what he is and it has really allowed me to spend more time with so many more players."

Even if Harmon was asked to go back as coach to Woods, he has "no desire to go back there and be in that situation again". He said: "I'm very proud of the 10 years we had together, through the ranks, as a teenager, then as a man . . . there's no animosity at all."

For someone who was indelibly linked with Woods as he impacted so dramatically on the world stage, it is only natural that his teacher's eye should analyse what route his former pupil has decided to go down. And he doesn't seem too impressed, even if he insists "we have to cut Tiger some slack," pointing to when he worked with him to change his swing in 1998, "it took a whole year for him to feel comfortable with it . . . and everyone was asking 'what's wrong with Tiger?'."

Yet, for all that, Harmon doesn't know why Woods would wish to change a swing such as the one he had in 2000, when his wins in the US Open at Pebble Beach (by 15 strokes) and the British Open at St Andrews gave him a career grand slam.

"I always use his swing in a practice round at St Andrews as a model . . . it was the best I've ever seen a golf club swung by a human being," insisted Harmon. "Why you would want to change that is beyond me. You always try to get better but, at some point in time, maybe you ought to just keep what you have."

Word on the ground is that Woods is now working with Hank Hainey, another respected coach but one with a different philosophy to Harmon. And there's murmuring too that Woods has actually watched some of his old videos to analyse for himself his old swing.

Butch, too, is of the belief that Woods deserves time "to see if what he is trying to do in his swing works.

" I, for one, don't particularly like the way he is swinging compared to the way he used to swing. But I think we have to give him this full year to let him work on his mechanics of the way he is trying to swing and let us see if it works.

"If he is still driving the ball all over the place like he has been this year and the end of last year, then you'd have to say he's probably made a mistake in trying to change. At this point in time, the jury is still out on whether he is right or wrong."

Niall Kearney of Royal Dublin and Danielle McVeigh from Kilkeel were selected to go to the Harmon School of Golf in Houston, Texas, in October.