The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (17 page)

What was maddening was that most of Tiger’s three-putts came when he charged low-percentage birdie chances in the 18- to 30-foot range. Usually the aggression would occur after he hadn’t converted a few good iron shots, leading to impatience that would result in a missed six-foot comebacker and a bogey. When he was just trying to two-putt from a greater distance, he was one of the best lag putters ever. It was one of the big reasons he was so good at holding leads. When all Tiger needed was solid pars, he knew he didn’t have to try to hit the ball close to the flag. He was confident he could two-putt from distance, not a given for many players under pressure. I believe one of the reasons Phil Mickelson has been prone to making mistakes with a lead is that he doesn’t trust himself to make four- and five-foot par putts, so he takes chances from the fairway to get his approaches into an easier two-putt range. It wasn’t written about, but I think Tom Watson hit an 8-iron rather than a 9-iron to a back pin on the 72nd hole at the 2009 British Open at Turnberry because he knew that, though the 9-iron would never go long like the 8-iron, it was more likely to leave him a long putt from the front of the green that would be nerve-wracking to get down in two. Conversely, when Jack Nicklaus won the 1986 Masters, he took going over the green out of play on the 72nd by hitting a 5-iron that left him an uphill 50-footer, which he lagged to within a foot. Behind him, Greg Norman faced the same situation but tried to stuff a 4-iron that went long right and led to a killing bogey.

Both Steve and I walked away from Pinehurst feeling it was a major that Tiger threw away. To be honest, now that Tiger was getting comfortable with our plan, I began feeling that way after most of the tournaments he didn’t win. Some of it, I’m sure, was bias and emotional involvement, but looking at all the factors, I can honestly conclude that Tiger was simply that good. He did so many things better than anyone else—whether it was generating power, being precise from the fairway, scrambling, putting, or clutch finishing—that I didn’t see anyone with enough game to beat him over 72 holes. In about a year, he’d get to the point where all he had to do was play his regular game and he’d win. He wasn’t quite there in 2005, but he was trending.

At his next tournament, the Western Open at Cog Hill, Tiger was in a developmental sweet spot. The swing was still in discovery mode, but in the fun late stages where progress starts coming fast. And a very big major, the British Open at St. Andrews, was coming up.

On the Cog Hill range and putting green, Tiger put in the most productive week of work that we ever had at a tournament site. I especially recall our session following his opening 73 on Thursday morning when, after he emerged from lunch, we practiced a solid six hours until dark.

He was a bit upset at what he’d shot but channeled that into incredible determination. That’s Tiger’s ideal attitude: quiet aggravation and a goal. For me it was perfect because I love to grind. That’s the way I’ve always been, and it’s probably my greatest asset as a teacher of good players. I’ve actually never had a student outwork me. There were times when Mark almost did, and a few times when Tiger got close. I just have a lot of patience for work, and the more I recognized that as a key to my success, the more my capacity increased. When I was the golf coach at SMU, I convinced our guys to stay on the practice range until every other player in the tournament had left. It might be dark, but we’d be the last team there, no matter what. It increased our mental toughness, became a point of pride, and eventually led to more victories.

I believe in Thomas Edison’s dictum “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” To me, the essence of Tiger Woods lay in a photo I saw of him with Butch, taken on the practice tee in the gathering dark after the third round of the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla. That was the time I was envious of Butch Harmon as a teacher. Not just because Tiger was so talented, but because Butch had a student with that much talent who was willing to put in so much effort. At Cog Hill, Tiger reenacted that scene, and my conscious thought as it was happening was
This is incredible. This is as good as it gets
.

The main thing we were working on was getting Tiger to stand tall on the downswing and allow his head to turn toward the target in the manner of Annika Sörenstam and David Duval. It was a classic “opposite” correction for his habit of lowering his body and tilting his head back through impact. Though it was a big change, it was the right one, and Tiger took to it well and got immediate results. He also put in a couple of hours on the putting green. We didn’t leave until after eight p.m. with dusk falling. After that session, Tiger knew he was on the road of earned success.

At Cog Hill, Tiger drove the ball beautifully. Although he didn’t win, finishing second to Jim Furyk, he was obviously excited afterward. We went straight to Isleworth, where he continued in his ideal-student mode, working hard and listening. He was very consciously peaking, which is more difficult to do in golf than other sports. But it’s an art Tiger had begun to master as a boy preparing to win his age group every year at the Junior World.

Now Tiger again was in major-championship mode, his target the Old Course at St. Andrews. The week before majors, I noticed that Tiger wouldn’t hit the ball as well on Monday or Tuesday, almost as if he was holding back. He might even get worse on Tuesday. But he’d almost never take a step backward after Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, and especially Saturday, his ball striking would build to a climax.

Those moments, usually with just the two of us alone on the practice tee across from his home, were for me the pinnacle of golf skill. He would literally not miss a shot, lob wedge through the driver. People really have no idea how good professional athletes in any sport can be when they are in a groove without the pressure and irregularities of competition. I’ve been told that when former Boston Celtics great Larry Bird was shooting one ball after another in practice, he could make 300 free throws in a row and 95 out of 100 three-pointers. Tiger would get into the same kind of flow, and as I watched him, I had no doubt I was witnessing the greatest ball striking in history.

I know every era can boast its example. Jack Nicklaus says the greatest display of ball control he ever saw was by Byron Nelson at a clinic before the 1954 U.S. Junior Amateur. Years later Byron confirmed that he remembered that clinic because he had indeed never missed a shot. There are a thousand similar stories about Hogan or Moe Norman or Johnny Miller. I got to see a lot of Lee Trevino practicing, as well as Nick Faldo and Nick Price in their primes, and they were amazing.

But here’s the difference: In terms of power, those guys were all middleweights compared to Tiger, who’s a heavyweight. I would argue that no one who has hit the ball as hard and as far as Tiger has ever hit it so well. Jack was a heavyweight who certainly had tremendous control and probably hit more greens than anyone, but almost none of his contemporaries consider him the best ball striker of his time. I’m also pretty positive he didn’t have as many shots as Tiger. When Tiger would get lost in hitting the Nine Shots on those Saturday afternoons at Isleworth, I felt honored just to watch.

Sometimes Tiger would raise himself into that zone when he wanted to impress another player. It might happen at Isleworth when a fellow pro whom he didn’t see very often or maybe even didn’t like very much would stop to watch him hit balls. After briefly acknowledging the player, Tiger would shift into another gear. It was interesting to observe the player’s reaction. Sometimes a shot would draw an audible “Whoa!” but even when nothing was said, I could see that the player was leaving with a mixture of awe and discouragement. When we were alone again, I’d say to Tiger, “Sending a little message there, huh?” He’d just smile. The other guys Tiger liked to step it up for were television commentators who stopped by the practice tee at a tournament, particularly Miller or Faldo, both of whom had been critical of his swing changes. Tiger would know when they were watching, and if they walked in close, he’d say hello but then get back to work. But I know he’d bear down to show them they were wrong. Miller was particularly complimentary of Tiger’s Nine Shots, saying that he used to do the same thing and would try to go 9-for-9. “I didn’t do it that often,” Miller said. I know Tiger was thinking,
I do it all the time
, but he didn’t say anything.

Not long after that encounter, Miller approached me to say he thought he’d been a little too hard on Tiger on the air and that he was going to give him more credit. When I saw Tiger, I told him what Johnny had said and added, “I thought that was pretty nice of him.” Tiger looked straight at me and said, “I wouldn’t trust that guy for two seconds.”

When we got to St. Andrews, Tiger was in a great mood. He had positive memories of the Old Course from winning the tournament by eight strokes in 2000, but beyond that, he loved that he was in the place where golf began. He has always called St. Andrews his favorite course and “the coolest place on earth.”

He was very confident in his ball striking and hit just enough balls to keep his edge. What was different was the amount of time he devoted to his putting. The hardest Tiger ever practiced his putting at a tournament site while I was his coach was at St. Andrews in 2005. The Old Course’s greens are the largest in the world, and distance control is crucial. They’re also on the slow side, and Tiger has often said he’s best on fast greens. But at St. Andrews his speed was perfect all week. He was flawless in the must-make zone between four and eight feet, the length that is especially tricky at St. Andrews because so many putts look straight but almost always have a subtle movement. He three-putted only once, getting a par after driving the twelfth green on Saturday. At the end of the week I told him, “Tiger, the moral of this story is, you putt better when you practice.” I was basically calling him out about paying the price with the putter. I wasn’t surprised that his response was silence.

St. Andrews was where Tiger finally got off to a good start in a major, shooting 66 on Thursday. It was his lowest first round in a major since 2000, and the lowest opener in a major that he’d ever shoot with me as his coach. It was the main reason his five-stroke victory was the easiest of the six majors he won while I was his coach. He seemed to breeze around the wide fairways of the Old Course, free to hit his driver without a lot of fear. He averaged 342 yards off the tee to lead the field and also took the fewest putts, with 120. That combination on that course made him unbeatable.

On Friday, while Tiger was shooting a 67, Jack Nicklaus played his final hole in the British Open, making that great birdie on the eighteenth. It was a good omen. Every time Jack retired from playing in a major—the U.S. Open and PGA in 2000, the Masters in 2005, and now the British Open—Tiger won the championship. In 2000, they’d been paired together in Jack’s last round at the PGA, when Jack also had birdied his final hole.

They had a good relationship but a complicated one. Tiger always said all the right things about Jack, once saying that they understood each other without ever having to say anything. Tiger wasn’t too big on giving someone a lot of credit or hero worshipping, but when it came to Jack, he’d pay respect. One day we were noting Jack’s tremendous consistency in majors, and Tiger said, “How about those nineteen seconds.” When I first tried to convince Tiger to stop trying to blow fields away because he’d win more often if he was satisfied with winning by one or two, he didn’t really listen. But when he read that Nicklaus said the same thing, it got his attention and changed him into a more strategic golfer.

Jack has always been very complimentary of Tiger, often saying he had no doubt Tiger would break his major-championship record. Jack was his captain at the Presidents Cup in 2005, and I remember him affectionately patting Tiger on the cheek after a match. But as Tiger got closer to his record, I noted a competitive edge in Jack’s comments. Before the 2010 season, when the U.S. and British Opens were being held at Pebble Beach and St. Andrews, Jack said it was going to be a big year for Tiger if he was going to pass him, because Tiger “owned” those two courses, and if he didn’t win there, it was going to make things more difficult. That was a statement intended to apply pressure. I know Tiger noticed, because he reads and watches everything in golf, but he never mentioned it. Doing so would have been admitting it bothered him. But for all of Jack’s graciousness, Tiger understood that the Golden Bear—understandably—wanted him to come up short. Since then, my sense is that Tiger has looked upon Jack more as a rival than a friend.

On Sunday at St. Andrews in 2005, Tiger woke up with a two-stroke lead, and his warm-up on the practice range was freakishly good. He’d comment later that it was one of the best of his life. He hit the 50-yard sign four times in a row, the 100-yard sign three times in a row, and the 150-yard sign on his first shot. In the midst of it, I made him laugh when I said, “It’s always a good sign when you’re hitting shit.” I jokingly told Steve that on shots around 100 yards he should remind Tiger to aim right or left of the pin. Sure enough, on the third hole Tiger’s wedge hit the pin and bounced off the green. Tiger played a really controlled last round, and as he walked up the last fairway, he made a point of searching for me and holding eye contact. That was his thank-you, and it felt very good.

After finishing tied for second at the Buick Open, Tiger came to the PGA Championship at Baltusrol looking for his third major of the year. But he opened with a loose five-over-par 75 in which he had 35 putts, including two three-putts. It left him with too much to do, and three rounds in the 60s weren’t enough. He finished tied for fourth, two shots behind Phil, who won his second major championship.

Tiger didn’t acknowledge his first-round trouble, but I thought it was becoming an issue. I think the problem was that he began playing not to lose. He knew that, especially in majors, at the end of the tournament, players start to fall back, owing to the pressure and difficulty, so he was more focused on avoiding doing anything that would take him out of contention. He knew he was the best closer, but he started to perhaps over-rely on that skill. The result was that he’d play defensively on Thursdays, when, as the cliché goes, a good round won’t win you the tournament but a bad round will lose it. He ended up playing so tight that he’d stop making birdies, so that a couple of bogeys would result in an over-par score. It was particularly true at Augusta, where he never broke 70 in the opening round until 2010. Steve often made the comment, “We’ll be fine if we can just get past the first round.”