Can Hank Haney fix this swing?

By Matthew Rudy
Photos by Stephen Szurlej March 2009

The sweat pours off Charles Barkley's bald head in rivulets as he hits his 604th ball of the day into a thick green tarp at an indoor range in suburban Dallas. "Again," deadpans Hank Haney from his perch on a stool behind the retired NBA star. Barkley closes his eyes and pantomimes an exaggeratedly flat backswing once, twice, three times. "Good.

Now hit it." Barkley is 15 years and half a dozen surgeries removed from his Round Mound of Rebound days for the Philadelphia 76ers and Phoenix Suns, but he still moves like an athlete. He makes a fluid backswing with his 6-iron and smashes a shot into the tarp. "I'm not sure if I'm dreaming this," Haney says. "You're crossing some major humps here, bud."

Those humps, as seen by millions on NBC's Lake Tahoe celebrity tournament telecasts or on YouTube -- where even Tiger Woods does a spot-on impersonation -- have to this point been golf instruction's Gordian Knot.

GOLF ACADEMY: In two days at the Hank Haney Golf Academy in November, Barkley hit 1,500 balls and watched hours of footage. Haney says he has only one other student, Tiger Woods, who works as hard on his game.

For the last decade, Barkley has been trapped in his peculiar version of teacher-proof golf purgatory. Ten years ago, he was breaking 80 regularly with a homemade golf swing. Now, Barkley is a double-bogey golfer with an instantly recognizable -- and lampoonable -- signature move: The Most Famous Hitch in Golf.

The 6-feet-5, 300-pound former NBA great gets to the top of his backswing, moves the club about a foot, then comes to a full stop again in a spasmodic hitch. He drops his head three feet before restarting his downswing in a wristy swipe at the ball, accompanied by a lurch backward. The suffering has been anything but private: In last year's Lake Tahoe event, where he finished last, Barkley beaned more spectators during the three days -- two -- than he made pars.

The screen captures shown above -- taken from a now-famous YouTube video -- don't come close to capturing Barkley's real-life awkwardness. "Charles' swing is the most recognizable swing in golf -- and not in a good way," says Haney. "When you have a mess like he has, you're not going to fix it with a swing thought."

If the two days Haney and Barkley spent together in Dallas in November are any barometer, it's going to take dozens of drills, thousands of practice balls -- 1,500 during the two days -- and an ample supply of extra-absorbent towels. The Golf Channel is documenting the entire rebuilding process, from clubfitting to instruction sessions to Barkley's first forays onto the course, for a new reality series called "Project Barkley with Hank Haney."

The latest Lake Tahoe disaster -- Barkley's third consecutive last-place finish -- prompted Woods to suggest that his friend and his teacher get together to work on The Hitch. Barkley was all for it: "It sucks getting ridiculed and humiliated," he says. Haney accepted the challenge as well, but as strange as it might sound, fixing the stall in Barkley's downswing wasn't a priority when constructing a six-month instruction plan.

"Charles has been to a bunch of teachers, and they have all focused on the hitch," says Haney. "He's never gotten any better, because everybody sees the hitch and immediately thinks, Fix the hitch, fix the hitch. But the hitch is coming from something else."

That something else is physics. Barkley takes the club back on an extreme upright plane -- so much that the shaft is on the same line as his spine at the top of his backswing. Looking down-range from behind, Barkley's club points at 1 o'clock. It should be pointing at 10:30. "From there, he's coming down at such a severe angle that if he doesn't do something, he's going to bury the club into the ground behind the ball," says Haney. "He stops because he's attempting to make a correction. Honestly, the fact that he can hit the ball at all from that position shows what a great athlete he is."