The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (10 page)

Over my years with him, Tiger got better with the driver, but it was a gradual, hard-earned improvement with no big breakthroughs. We tried a lot of different strategies, including coming very close to developing a driver “stinger”—a low-flying shot intended to increase accuracy that would in theory be easier to repeat. He could execute it flawlessly in practice but never trusted it enough to put it into competition.

I can now admit I never felt totally comfortable when Tiger was standing over a drive in competition. When he hit a good one, I felt relieved. I was always worried about the big miss. And I know that most of the time, he was too.

Tiger’s basic strategy with the driver was to play away from the side of the hole with the most trouble, even if it meant going into the rough. Generally, he favored missing to the right, because a pushed or faded shot would land more softly than a hook and have less chance of bouncing into a really bad spot. He knew that from a reasonable lie in the rough, he was good enough to get the ball on or around the green most of the time and avoid bogey. Indeed, it was his incredible ability with the other 13 clubs that made him so conservative with a driver. All Tiger needed was a shot, and he could not only survive but even go on to win. One of his playing thoughts was to capitalize on holes where he hit good drives, especially on par 5s, to shoot low scores.

Because of this strategy, the fairways were in effect half as wide for him as they were for most other players. He played to one side of the middle of the fairway, to defensively compensate for where the trouble was. He was good enough to afford half a miss, but even he couldn’t afford a big miss.

His fear was really only with the driver. It might have been because it was the one club with which he was more concerned with distance than control. The biggest flaw in his swing—a tendency to let the shaft get too flat on the downswing—was more exposed with the longest club, which comes into the ball on a flatter plane. It’s probably no coincidence that Tiger was a better driver early in his career, when he still used a steel shaft that was 43½ inches long. When, around 2003, he finally joined other players in using 45-inch graphite shafts, which were also lighter and could be swung faster, he had more problems. Ironically, for a lot of lesser players, the drive, teed up invitingly, was the easiest shot to play. For him it was the hardest.

It wasn’t a unique phenomenon. Driver problems had attacked many top players after years of competing, among them Seve Ballesteros, Ian Baker-Finch, and David Duval. Typically issues began with a flaw in technique, and then became as much mental as physical. Although Tiger’s mental strength seemed to make him the most unlikely candidate for such a problem, after a few weeks of working with Tiger I came to believe that he had the beginnings of such an issue as well. To deal with it, without ever mentioning it to him, I drew on my own experience with the driver yips.

From studying the problem, I learned that only a very small percentage of the golfing population was even a candidate for the driver yips. It was definitely a good player’s issue. The power and speed to hit massive blocks and big hooks are possible only with certain swing characteristics: across the line at the top, powerful lower-body motion, inside-out swing path, and an overreliance on hand action to square the club in the hitting area. Such players also tend to grip the club with their left hands in a “stronger” position—turned more clockwise—as well as hold the club more in the fingers than in the palm. Those had been
my
tendencies, and Tiger had them as well—though to a much smaller extent.

Just as I’d done with myself, with Tiger I started to apply some opposites. It was basically Golf 101. To correct his getting the shaft across the line and stuck behind him, I began to give him drills that exaggerated getting the shaft pointed to the left of the target at the top. On the way down, I wanted him to not only feel the club more in front of him but actually come across the ball from outside the target line. This is the swing path of about 95 percent of all golfers; it produces the slice that is the signature of the hacker. But it was the fix for Tiger.

I knew that if he mastered this feeling, it would give him a bail-out shot when he got uncomfortable on the course. He could “saw off” a cut by exaggerating the feeling that he was swinging from the outside. By teeing it low and accepting that he was going to lose some yardage, he could hit a playable “spinner” that at worst would go into the right rough. When we played together after I began coaching him, he’d noticed me hitting this shot. It didn’t go anywhere, especially compared to his drives, and he’d make fun of me for such a “wuss” shot. But he also noticed that I almost never missed the fairway.

The shot served the further purpose of not requiring him to straighten his knee to keep the club from turning over. What he’d done with superaggressive lower-body action he could now do with the path of the club. It cost him a bit of distance, but it helped preserve the knee.

I also implemented an opposite fix for his head movement. I suggested that he let his head turn toward the target on the downswing so he was not even looking at the ball as he hit it. It was the signature move of Annika Sörenstam, one of the straightest drivers in history. Annika had picked up the habit from a drill her teacher, Henri Reis, gave her as a teenager to essentially keep her from getting stuck. She found it helped so much that she put it into her competitive swing. A lot of good drivers had a similar move, including one of the perennial leaders in driving accuracy and greens in regulation on the PGA Tour, Joe Durant. Not looking at the ball had helped me conquer my driver issues by reducing anxiety, and I thought a less drastic variation would help Tiger.

I knew I was taking quite a risk in giving Tiger so many compensations. The golf world was expecting me to make changes that would bring him back closer to perfection, and here I was, at least temporarily, giving him a swing that was going to look less than classic—a little flatter and closer to his body, with a bit of a quicker tempo. Of course, once it became clear I was coaching Tiger, people thought that I was imposing my version of the ideal swing on him. I wasn’t. I know what textbook looks like, and that was my ultimate goal for Tiger. But in the short term, with a slightly unorthodox technique, he would be better off hitting more spinners into the right rough, even though it would tag me as the guy messing up the world’s greatest player. I began to think of the popular notion of Tiger as the perfect player—who was sure to display his awesomeness if not tampered with—as the Tiger Trap.

What nobody else knew was that if Tiger looked more orthodox—more upright, less laid off, and employing his old hip release—he wouldn’t perform as well. In his time with me, whenever he’d start to do things that made him look more as he had with Butch in 2000, the worse he hit it. That might sound absurd, but swings are about more than how they look. They change in imperceptible ways over time, often internally more than externally, and what has always worked begins to fail and needs adjustment. My opinion is that the accumulated pressure Tiger played under began to make it difficult to use a swing that required the compensations he had relied on as a younger player.

I believed in what we were doing, and so did Tiger. Gradually the wild drives started to lessen, but the process was going to require steps through the different levels a touring pro faces. First there would be fewer wild drives on the practice tee at Isleworth, then in practice rounds at Isleworth, then on the practice tee at tournaments, then in practice rounds at tournaments, then in practice sessions before competitive rounds, then in competitive rounds, and finally in competitive rounds at majors. That’s a tour player’s progression, one of the hardest things about the profession.

After the Masters, Tiger finished tied for third at Charlotte on the Quail Hollow course, which is demanding off the tee. It was a good sign, but at his next tournament in Dallas, I decided to try to install one more significant change. The setting was right because I was at home and Tiger could work with me in private at Vaquero. (Though the media had found out about our practice round with Mark there, no one asked about this session.) Tiger had played well in the first two rounds, shooting 65-67 to take the lead. Normally, I wouldn’t have tried to show him anything new at such a juncture, but I knew Tiger would be in a good mood and I felt an inspiration, so after Friday’s round I asked him if he’d put in some practice with me at Vaquero.

Tiger was staying at the Four Seasons at the golf course, so he followed me in his courtesy car the ten miles to my place. On the way I had to decide how to introduce the idea in a way that he wouldn’t immediately dismiss. I’d heard his quote about throwing out 90 percent of what he heard from teachers and keeping maybe 5 percent, so when we got to Vaquero, I said, “Tiger, I want you to try something that I think might make that five percent you hear from teachers that you actually keep.” He laughed, and his good mood seemed to continue as we drove a cart out to the back of the range.

Basically, I believed Tiger would be better off with one more safeguard against the big miss. I’d found that pros who suffered from driver wildness invariably held the club more in the fingers. In my own case, I’d altered my grip so that the club was more in the palms. I had gotten the idea from studying Moe Norman, a Canadian whose competitive career had been hampered by his autism but who was legendary for the repetitive accuracy of his shots. Norman’s simple swing was notable for its relative lack of hand action.

I’d noticed that when I held the club out with just my left hand, if the grip was in the fingers, the club head would quiver and shake with any change in grip pressure. But when I held it in my palms, the club was much more stable and would barely twist.

Grip changes are huge decisions for pros, because in the short term they’re uncomfortable and greatly affect feel. So I told Tiger, “Look, I just want to show you something. Just keep an open mind and try it for me, OK?”

He looked at me skeptically. I demonstrated the grip I wanted him to try, then put his left hand on his 5-iron and showed him how I wanted him to hold the club more in his palm. He immediately said, “I can’t do this.” I quickly said, “Yeah, I know it feels weird, but just try it.” He took the new grip, placing his right hand also with more of his palm, and waggled the club. “There is no way,” he said. I repeated my urging, putting a ball in front of him to hit. He got over the ball and complained, “I can’t even cock my wrists.” I said, “Just hit one.” He stood over the ball for a longer time than usual, then swung.

The sound of the impact was distinctive. Tiger’s shots always made a great sound, but this was even more “flush.” The ball flight was ideal as well. Tiger was visibly astounded that he’d hit such a perfect shot with such an uncomfortable feeling. He looked at me and said, “Show me that grip again.” I put his hands on the club and he once again said, “I can’t hit the ball with this grip.” I answered, “You just did.” He flushed two more shots solidly and went, “Wow.” After about a dozen more balls, he looked at me and said, “I’m going with it.”

And just like that, he did. He used the grip the next two rounds at Dallas, and though he shot 70-69 to finish in a tie for fourth, he never complained about it. It was the fastest Tiger accepted any change I ever proposed to him, and the astounding thing is that it was probably the biggest change we ever made. Even though it was a grip that cost him some distance because it slightly restricted his hand action, Tiger never complained about the sacrifice and continued to hold the club more in the palm the entire time I coached him. The whole weird way it happened remains improbable to me and is a good example of how Tiger was simply different. I can’t imagine another player adjusting to a grip change so quickly.

Off the course, I was also getting to know Tiger better. I stayed at his house about thirty days in 2004, the amount I’d average per year while we worked together. I tried to be a low-maintenance guest. I obviously knew by now that Tiger was allergic to people who even faintly crowded him, so I demurred on all things except his golf game.

Probably the least satisfactorily answered sports question of the last twenty years is, “What’s Tiger Woods like?” The reason is that even for those who are actually around him a lot, never mind his millions of observers, he is very hard to know. There is a lot going on behind those eyes, but very little is shown.

I saw Tiger in many modes. He could be very gracious in public when he chose. But when the mood struck him, he could be coldly aloof with media, autograph seekers, or even officials. In private, I found that he could either be good company—conversational and intelligent in a way that made you wish he’d allow that side of himself to come out all the time—or completely distant.

As I’d learned from being around Tiger before coaching him, his public persona forced him to operate in a very tight box. Whereas some athletes and celebrities could actually enhance their images by behaving badly, Tiger could never do any wrong in public without it being pointed out that he was betraying the ideal Earl had promoted and that his endorsement contracts were built on. It made him wary of being in public or engaging with people other than the few in his inner circle. Whenever I was with him in a restaurant or a hotel or a casino, he was eerily good at avoiding eye contact. He acted impervious to his surroundings, but it struck me that he wished it could have been different, and that on some level he resented his situation.

I never sensed that Tiger wanted to be treated like a king. He never had a big entourage. He never bragged about what he’d won or how much money he had. Tiger didn’t big-time. The most entitled I ever saw him act was when he drove around Orlando. It wasn’t that he favored fast cars. He owned a McLaren and a Porsche that were basically race cars, but they stayed in the garage from what I could tell. Mostly he just drove his Escalade, but in a way that reflected an impatient guy who wasn’t going to follow the silly rules of regular schlubs. He’d go over the speed limit, but not by a lot. Mostly it was rolling stops, turns over double lines, parking in a restricted spot—time-saving stuff he thought was worth the risk. When I was in the passenger seat, sometimes I’d say “Nice” after one of his illegal moves. That would draw a smile from Tiger as he enjoyed the rare feeling of breaking rules. But I never saw him get a ticket or even get pulled over.