It has been very hard to know Tiger Woods. It has been easier—but not that easy—to know Tiger Woods' swing. For a long time, it has been the object of study, speculation, envy, criticism and mystery. Even Woods has been transfixed.
To this point, it's not unreasonable to surmise that he has devoted more time and attention to his swing than to anything or anyone else in his life.
By his early teens, Woods had spent enough time grinding on it to fulfill the "10,000-Hour Rule" that author Malcolm Gladwell cites for any high achievement. The readings on Woods' time clock might have tripled in the two decades since, making him the leading exemplar of what students of genius call "the infinite capacity for taking pains."
Though the process might seem painful to others, the golf swing is Woods' comfort zone. He talks about it more readily than other subjects, although his answers can be cryptic when he senses too much scrutiny. For as good as it is, time has taught us that the golf swing is actually Woods' weak spot. It's the part of the game in which he has the most room to get better.
Under Woods' self-narrative of constant improvement, he has kept rebuilding and risking, never settling. For so long, the results supported that Woods had an unerring sense for what was best for his swing, that given extraordinary talent, his decisions were well-calculated. Butch Harmon and Hank Haney, when they were his instructors, maintained no player they had ever worked with knew more about the swing.
As Woods achieved things no one had ever done, he did something else no champion golfer has ever done: From the top of the game, he committed to an overhaul of his swing. Not once, but twice, and each time after a historic feat: first after winning the Masters by 12 strokes in 1997, and then soon after winning seven of 11 majors in a run that ended in 2002. (Nick Faldo's changes under David Leadbetter took place well before Faldo's climb to the top.)
Woods would say he wanted to own his swing like Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino, players who were so in touch with their technique they could fix any flaw during competition. Great swingers and shotmakers of the past had settled on a style that grooved idiosyncratic imperfections over years, but Woods dared to start over with radical changes aimed at a technically flawless form. And though others had relied on long-term repetition to ingrain their actions, Woods believed extraordinary will could act as quick-drying glue. "No one has ever conquered the game of golf," Michael Jordan said a few years after his friend had completed one of his worst seasons, in 2004. "He thinks he can conquer it."
Even during that frustrating time, Woods never expressed doubt. "People thought it was asinine for me to change my swing after I won the Masters by 12 shots, like, 'Why would you want to change that?' " he said. "Well, I thought I could become better. I've always taken risks to try to become a better golfer, and that's one of the things that has gotten me this far."
The goal was to build a swing that transcended the compromise between distance and control that is the reality for any style of play. Woods strove for a technique that could blend precision and power, theoretically allowing him to hit the ideal shot in any situation. In 2000, Woods led or was second in nearly every key ball-striking statistic. He also finished a career-best 54th in driving accuracy but only half-jokingly told the category leader, Fred Funk, "I'm coming after you next." He wanted it all.
He hasn't gotten there. A troublesome left knee and his personal crisis undoubtedly played a role. But as Woods comes to the Masters without a win in the last 10 majors and on the third significant swing change of his professional career, observers are wondering if all the energy expended on alterations could have been better channeled. "I just sort of giggle," says Arnold Palmer. "I think Tiger has a basically sound swing, and he should stick to it. Always changing, it just takes away from something that is really very good."
"When Tiger started out, there was nothing mechanical about him," adds Jack Nicklaus. "Now he plays by mechanics, but I've noticed that when he starts making mistakes, he instinctively reverts back to feel. When he really has to win something, the touch and feel that he reverts to produces some unbelievable results. There are no mechanics at all when he's really under the gun. That's how he should play all the time."
There are indications Woods is going back to what Nicklaus originally saw. Whenever Woods has gotten lost with his swing, he says he retraces his steps. At 35, it's not unlikely that Woods has reviewed his work with all of his teachers: Rudy Duran, John Anselmo, Harmon, Haney and Sean Foley. Indeed, Foley has had Woods studying video of the fluid and immensely powerful swing he made as a junior, as if the future can be found in the beginning.
LEARNING AT 4
In retrospect, Woods' earliest formal instruction has been underrated for what it helped imprint. He was 4 years old with three cut-down clubs when he began working with Rudy Duran in 1980 at Heartwell Golf Park, an 18-hole par-3 course of 2,143 yards in Long Beach, Calif., with a range and short-game facilities. As the assistant pro, Duran, with the blessing of owner Bud Lorbeer, ran a junior program that provided free range balls and a one-hour lesson on Saturdays. There was also an 18-hole tournament—with a first prize of three golf balls—that became the highlight of Woods' week.
Not long removed from a three-year struggle to play the Canadian and PGA tours, Duran had come to Heartwell thinking about what had been lacking in the way he had learned the game. After showing early promise, he had taken lessons with Johnny Revolta, the winner of 18 PGA Tour events and known as one of the great wedge players in history. The focus had been swing technique, but Duran soon learned that he was unprepared as a player.
"I went out on the mini-tours thinking that if I had a good swing on the driving range, I should never hit a bad shot on the course," says Duran, now a junior-golf coach and consultant. "And even when I hit good shots, I didn't really know how to make a score. As I thought back, I realized that the best way to learn the game was by playing the game. At Heartwell, I decided to create an environment in which I thought I would have flourished."
Under Duran, Heartwell became a kind of new-agey "Golf in the Kingdom" for juniors, and Woods flourished. Having copied only his father, Earl, and the players he had seen on television, as a kindergartener Tiger swung "like a shrunken-down touring pro: wonderful form, great rhythm and balance, a lot of pound-for-pound power," Duran says. "It really hasn't changed that much." But as Woods played, it was obvious the kid gave no thought to his swing, only to where he wanted his ball to go. "What he was really gifted at was playing the game," Duran says. "He assessed each shot and was uncanny at making the right decision. He managed the course."
Duran and Woods operated more as golf buddies than student and coach. "Tiger didn't really respond well to traditional lessons," Duran says. "If I tried to adjust his ball location or alignments, his success would go down. But if I gave just a bit of guidance and then backed off and let him work it out, his success went up. Tiger showed me that golf is learned, it isn't really taught. I just tried to provide a setting in which he could discover."
What Woods discovered most was how to go low. Equipped with a full set of proportionally fitted clubs and able to reach most of the short par 3s in regulation, Woods at age 7 shot a seven-under-par 22 on the back nine at Heartwell. His focus on winning the Saturday "Play Days" taught him to prepare, and at 8 he would win his first Optimist Junior World title, in the 10-and-under division.
Apart from the boy's exceptional coordination, Duran says it was precisely because Woods was so good at playing that his swing was so sound, not vice versa. To Nicklaus' point, Tiger was immersed in the target, and his focus was so intense that an efficient swing evolved out of his concentration to make the ball do what he wanted it to. "Tiger's swing was a tool, like a chisel for a sculptor," Duran says. "But first he had the vision, and the tool carried that out. He didn't think about where his elbow was pointing when he used the chisel. He thought about the image he was seeing."
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
When the opportunity
to run his own golf course took Duran out of the area, Tiger, then 10, began taking lessons from Anselmo, a kindly Southern California club pro who at 89 remains a highly respected teacher of junior players.
"Tiger had a swing that was given to him at an early age," says Anselmo, looking out over the range at Meadowlark Golf Club in Huntington Beach, where he gave Woods scores of lessons. "It was a gift, and it was beautiful to watch."
Anselmo, who had been good enough to play some tournament golf with Sam Snead and Lloyd Mangrum, was more old school in his approach than Duran, but he tried to keep his message simple. "Tiger did better when we worked on motion more than positions," Anselmo says. "He picked up the importance of posture or ball position better when I would show him how to hit certain shots, which was his favorite thing. I never tried to load him up with a lot of mechanical thoughts."
Duran remembers his exchanges with Woods during this period revealing an emphasis on visualization and feel. "I'd ask him, 'Hey, Tiger, what are you working on with John?' And he'd say something like, 'Not too sure. I guess when I think fade, it fades. And when I think draw, it draws.' "
Anselmo looked for ways to keep Woods' quicksilver hips from outracing his arms on the downswing, long before Harmon and Haney wrestled with the problem. Anselmo settled on the "basket drill," in which Woods held an empty metal range basket with his hands on opposing sides of the top rim and simply swung it rhythmically toward an imaginary target.
"It's the motion of a proper pitch shot, which is the basis of a good swing," Anselmo says. "It coordinates your hands and arms with your body in a natural swinging action, keeping everything working together with the right weight shift. Tiger did that drill all the time."
Between 13 and 15, Woods grew six inches, requiring Anselmo to raise the plane of his swing before a suddenly too-flat swing became ingrained. He moved Woods closer to the ball, raised his hands at address and bent his clubs more upright by 1 degree. He also had Woods set his hands above his right shoulder at the completion of his backswing and hold the position for several 30-second intervals. Anselmo said Woods made the transition in about a week. "His arc got so much bigger," Anselmo says. "That's when he really started hitting the ball long. I thought he got too flat these last few years."
THE HARMON YEARS
Woods won more junior World titles and three consecutive U.S. Juniors under Anselmo's guidance, a feat that Earl Woods believed will endure as Tiger's most insurmountable record. When Woods was 17, Anselmo had a serious bout with colon cancer. During his convalescence, Greg Norman won the 1993 British Open with Harmon as his coach, impressing Earl. At the U.S. Amateur in Houston
a few weeks later, Tiger and his father
met with Harmon and agreed to begin to work together.
"I understood, but I was disappointed to lose Tiger," Anselmo says. "Maybe I would have stayed with him longer if I hadn't gotten sick, I don't know. Tiger was magnificent, and those were wonderful years. I think the teachers after me have done a good job, but I don't think he needed much changing, to be honest. Sure, there was a looseness to his swing, but that was just because he hadn't filled out. I liked that freedom, that full release of his body. That was beautiful. He should hold onto that."
It was under Harmon that Woods began to study the swing in earnest and consider it the most vital component of his success. It wasn't long before Woods was confiding that he never hit a shot in competition without a swing thought.
Harmon vividly remembers his first session with Woods, at Lochinvar in Houston. "Greatest pair of hands I've ever seen," Harmon says. "Tiger dropped the club underneath the plane and behind him coming down, but he had, and still has, the ability to feel that and use his hands to catch up or hold off, depending on the position his body was in. In those days, he relied on that phenomenal timing. Of course, he could also get stuck and hit it 20 miles to the right. He was so flippy past the ball that he actually wore out the skin on his right wrist where it would rub against his glove as his hand flipped over after impact."
The challenge, Harmon says, was to "match the speed of the arms with the unwind of the body, which wasn't easy because Tiger had one of the fastest unwinds of the body anyone had ever seen. I decided he had to have more of a three-quarter-type swing, not a full windup and a full release."
Harmon was most concerned about avoiding what would soon become known in Woods-speak as the hated "stuck" position. "His arc was a little narrow and long," Harmon says, "so I widened it to give him more room to keep his arms in front of the body coming down and put him on the right path as he came into the hitting area. I wanted him to get the feeling that he was starting his downswing with his arms, and then I wanted him to feel like his arms were swinging past his body. That wouldn't happen, of course, but I had to slow down his hips. He was learning that feel is not real."
To have more control of the club through impact, especially in holding off the hit with irons and wedges to produce a more penetrating, lower ball flight, Harmon encouraged Woods to get in the gym and get stronger in his core, hands and arms. At Stanford, Woods began a weight-training regimen that would noticeably increase his musculature.
Woods also began to consider his expanding understanding of the golf swing a competitive advantage. He took pride spotting the swing faults of his opponents, and, especially in match play when he was winning U.S. Amateurs, used that knowledge to bolster his confidence at crucial junctures. On the Tuesday before the 1997 Masters, he sat on a couch in a rented home and explained his growing appreciation for sound technique. "It's like a circle," Woods said. "When the pressure's on, good mechanics will overcome nervousness. At the same time, the guy who has good mechanics will get less nervous because he knows the other guys will break down first."
Having access to Harmon's video library of the game's greats, Woods came to admire the swings of many players. "It was never one person," he once said. "I tried to pick like 50 players and take the best out of those and make one super player."
After his 12-stroke victory at Augusta, Woods still believed his swing was too reliant on timing. "Anybody can time their swing for a week, but try to time it for a career," he said in 1999. "Nobody could have done that with that golf swing." Woods insisted Harmon install more changes.
"I agreed with Tiger about the flaws, but I wanted to do it a piece at a time," Harmon says. "He wanted to do it all at once. I told him it was going to be hard to play through it, and that he might want to do what Faldo did with Leadbetter and basically take a year off. He said no, and in 1998 he struggled and won only once. He had a tendency to overdo changes. I had to be very careful what I told him." The changes included a weaker grip, a less-inside takeaway, raising the left-arm plane on the backswing, and altering the clubhead angle at the top to a more toe-down, or less-shut position. "All that got him into a position at the top where he could really match his arms and his body speed and achieve the true loft of the club at impact," Harmon says. Because the club was more open at the top, Woods didn't have to fire his hips as fast to keep the clubface square, which helped him come back to the ball in a unified sequence. At the Byron Nelson in 1999, Woods famously signaled what was to come with a phone call to Harmon from the range. "I got it," he said.
Three years later, after winning the 2002 U.S. Open at Bethpage, Woods again became restless, urging Harmon to oversee another overhaul. Harmon disagreed, and the impasse led to Woods telling him at that year's PGA Championship that he wanted to spend his time on the range alone. They never worked together at a tournament again. "My feeling was, I didn't see any need to change it, because I had never seen anyone play that well," Harmon says. "All he needed to do was maintenance, maintaining the positions he was in. We had proved they had all worked. But he constantly wanted to change and wanted to change.
"Tiger wanted to go to a longer driver than the 43½-inch steel-shafted driver he was using," Harmon adds. "He felt people were hitting the ball farther, and he needed to take advantage. And I was not on that program. I thought he hit the ball plenty far enough, and that his strength was that he was one of the longest and most accurate drivers. When he drove the ball in the fairway, he was nearly unbeatable. That's what I kept trying to drive into him. But it didn't take. It's something about the ego of these long hitters. So we parted ways, but I'm proud of the work we did together."
SHIFTING TO HANEY
Though woods was ostensibly working alone in 2003, Haney's work with Mark O'Meara caused the three to share many practice rounds at Isleworth. Woods and Haney spoke often about the golf swing, and though they didn't officially become student and teacher until March 2004, close observers could see the Haney influence in Woods' swing before that.
The partnership began the most second-guessed period of Woods' career. Although he won six majors during the Haney years and won a greater percentage of his tournaments than he had with Harmon, and led the PGA Tour in greens in regulation three times, the presumption that Woods would just keep getting better and better was a millstone for Haney, which contributed mightily to the teacher resigning last May. The biggest flashpoint was the distinctive change in Woods' backswing under Haney. It featured more forearm rotation and an earlier set of the wrists, along with a rounding of the arms past hip level that produced a flatter plane than Woods had ever employed, one that several critics claimed was getting Woods "stuck" more than ever.
According to Haney, Woods had two main goals in his swing. The first was to be on a better plane at the top of the swing; he was still in search of a position from which he could simply "fire" and know that the upper and lower halves of his body would match up for an unencumbered release.
"If you look at where Tiger had the club as a young player, he was obviously way across the line," Haney says. "Butch went a long way to fixing that, and my first order of business was to continue to work in that direction. The way I view the proper plane is that it is defined by the angle of the clubshaft at address and maintained throughout the swing. And I think for the most part Tiger made that change very effectively."
The other goal was to stop the snapping action from the hyperextension of Woods' left leg through impact, a move that had become a habit during the Harmon years and that Woods believed had contributed to his left knee being injured and requiring surgery to repair cartilage damage in late 2002. After the procedure, Woods said he knew he would have to change his swing. "I really had no choice," he said.
"At the time that I took over he told me, 'I have only 20 percent of my ACL right now. I have to stop damaging my knee,' " says Haney, who last year told Golf Digest that the swing changes he worked on with Woods were not related to the knee. "He was convinced that his golf swing was doing the damage to his knee," Haney says today. "Everything had to revolve around saving his knee. I couldn't do anything without that being my first thought."
That created some complications. Haney says a flexed left knee at impact encourages a hook because it tends to produce a more inside-out downswing, and according to Haney, "Tiger has a great fear of missing left. One of Tiger's big swing thoughts with Butch was to snap his left knee as he came through the ball. That's a great way to eliminate left. But that option was not available to me."
To compensate, Haney advocated changes that encouraged a fade. He weakened Woods' grip and put the club more in the palm, which made it harder to close the clubface. He got the club pointing more to the left at the top, which encouraged a more pronounced out-to-in downswing. He also urged Woods to keep his head from moving to the right on his backswing and then dropping down and tilting to the right on the downswing, another position that encourages a hook. But here Haney says he hit a roadblock.
"It's interesting," Haney says. "Butch always tried to limit his head movement, and it was a huge thing on my list to not tilt his head to the right on the backswing and drop too much on the downswing. But I couldn't get him to commit to it. I told him, 'Tiger, if you aren't going to straighten your left knee to spin your hip out of the way, and you have a fear of left, you cannot lay your head back all the time.' But he always felt that if he couldn't move off the ball, he couldn't hit the ball as far." Haney adds that moving the head down and behind the ball also contributed to Woods getting in the stuck position, causing push-fades with the driver.
"Now Foley's got him moving his weight hard into his left side, and he's trying to keep his head more on the ball at impact," Haney says. "Those are two things that will take the left shot out of play, and I think it's really going to help him. Maybe Foley had a better explanation of why to do it than I did, although I have to believe I did a lot of the groundwork."
More candid and relaxed in conversation after resigning, Haney is no longer defensive about observations that Woods seems to have lost the advantage he once held over the field as a superior driver. "From the day I got on the job to the day I left, I felt like his driving was an issue," Haney says. "It took maybe 3½ years before I stopped seeing wild drives in practice at Isleworth, and then not as many in tournaments. His driving wasn't an issue when he was with Butch. He was a better driver, no doubt about it. Back then he used the equivalent of today's 3-wood, as far as the size of the clubhead and the length of the shaft. Maybe a longer shaft [44½ inches] didn't match up with his swing as well. Or maybe Butch's swing was better for a driver, although I think he was definitely a better iron player with me."
Haney also believes the thicker and more muscular body that Woods built through heavy trainingwhich for a time included a military-style regimen that his physical therapist, Keith Kleven, tried to discourage—hampered his swing, and might have worsened or even caused some of his injuries. "I think it's fair to say that Butch had a better body to work with than I did," Haney says. "With me, he started looking more like a linebacker than a golfer."
The denouement for Haney began when Woods came back in 2009 from his post-Torrey Pines surgery proclaiming in Golf Digest that "my reconstructed knee enables me to finally make the swing that my instructor, Hank Haney, and I have been working on for years. That's because my legwork is so much better with a knee that doesn't shift all over the place and is pain-free for the first time in 10 years."
But in 2009, though he won seven times worldwide, Woods' ball-striking did not seem dramatically improved. When he did not win a major for the first time since 2004, much of the blame fell on Haney. Woods' warm-up before his final round at last year's Masters, the two barely speaking, was the last time they would work together.
"It was a job that was harder than it appeared, because things aren't always what they seem," Haney says. "Looking at a touring pro's swing, and assuming that this is what his teacher wants him to do, and this is what his teacher told him to do, and this is what his teacher's hoping for him to do—those are big assumptions. I mean, Tiger Woods does what he wants to do. The other thing, in the last three years, he hasn't worked as hard. Without a doubt there has been a slip in his work ethic."
THE LATEST STEPS
Like Haney, Sean Foley's introduction to Woods came through Woods' friendship and practice rounds with another student, Sean O'Hair. When Woods struggled badly at Firestone last August, he called Foley to ask the instructor to work with him the next week at the PGA Championship. After a trial period, Woods acknowledged in September that Foley was his new coach.
The 36-year-old Canadian is a verbal dynamo, and he and Woods have shared some skull sessions. "We did more talking than hitting balls, especially early," Woods said before his opening round of the year at Torrey Pines, "because it was about understanding the philosophy."
Foley, whose ideas are grounded in his knowledge of biomechanics, offers a concise diagnosis of why Woods needed further swing changes: "What Tiger was doing wasn't efficient," Foley says. "He was losing tons of speed and power, some of the things that used to most separate him. And then he was getting more crooked. He couldn't hit the fairway because his alignments were not correct. Simple as that."
Along with strengthening Woods' grip, having him keep his arms closer to his body and moving them on a more vertical plane on the backswing, Foley is adamant that Woods get more weight shifted to his left side at impact. "What I remember from his junior days and when he was winning the amateurs was that he always flushed it," Foley says. "It might have gone a little crooked, but it was always hit so solid. He really compressed the ball. He had a better impact position then, and he can get there again."
What might close the deal where Haney couldn't is Foley's belief that hanging back on his right side through the ball, a move that Woods says developed because he was trying to protect his knee, is one that actually contributes to a snapping left leg.
"If you're making the downward move in the forward swing but not pushing the axis of the swing forward enough," Foley says in full wonk mode, "the spine will tilt away from the target, and even though the legs are moving to the target, the left leg will snap straight. And that goes into the joints instead of the muscles being able to absorb the breaking effect."
It sounds complicated, but Foley says, "I'm trying to keep it super simple. Under what he was doing before, he had to think more. I know from working with Tiger, he is very much into the golf shot at hand. He's playing golf and not golf swing."
Still, Woods had a rough 2011 debut in January at Torrey Pines, where he had won the previous five events he had played. After opening with two 69s in which his ball-striking had seemed promising, Woods was shockingly ragged tee to green over the weekend, shooting 74-75 and finishing T-44. Woods said,"There's no such thing as a setback," but considering that he was coming off an impressive performance at Sherwood, his expressed certainty that the changes under Foley were coming along much faster than the alterations under Haney, and that he'd had seven weeks of off-season preparation that both teacher and student had called very productive, it was a setback.
At Torrey Pines, Woods for the first time characterized the transition from Haney to Foley as "tough," pointing out that he is employing less hand action and more body rotation through the hitting area—even on short-game shots—than he did with Haney. "They're very different swings," he said. "It's one of the things I struggled with when I worked with Hank, trying to relearn some new things and going away from what I did with Butch. The old motor patterns are still there."
The goal is a simpler style of play. Get the ball in the fairway with a lower flight with the driver, tighten the dispersion of misses, work the ball less. Such a style will take the pressure off his short game and his putter. It's more of the game that gave Nicklaus—whose 18 professional majors remain Woods' goal—such longevity.
"Sure, he could win hitting less than 40 percent of the fairways with his driver, 'cause he's been doing that for a few years, but it's much more difficult to sustain," Foley says. "In the days he was hitting fairways, he was winning by eight and 12 and 15. Look, the guy should hit it straight. Because he's the one who's supposed to."
It would seem so, but at the moment there's a strong argument that the rebuilding time required for all the overhauls in the end have cost Woods more opportunities to win majors than the changes created.
His earliest teacher has kept the faith from afar. "Tiger has always been the best manager of his game," Duran says. "As far as changing his swing, it's very possible that he needed new ideas and new projects to stay inspired, and that those things kept him energized during times—because he was winning everything—when it would have been easy to lose motivation. I believe he still knows what he's doing and just needs to find his own way in his own time, and that's going to be best for him."
But Woods is almost surely past the halfway point of his professional career, and there is urgency for the man who we always presumed had supreme self-trust to now trust his method.
There was a brief moment at Torrey Pines where Woods sounded almost unsure. "Oh, it's progressing, but I don't know," he said. "It's one of those things where I don't know where the end is. You never know where the end is until you're done with your playing career."
Woods surely doesn't want that to be soon. As to when he wants his changes under Foley to be integrated, he gave a one-word answer: "Augusta." After that, Woods plans to do what history's other great players have done in their primes, and what Harmon implored in 2002: fine-tuning.
Until he does, it will be difficult to say that Tiger Woods has ever completely known his swing.
