The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (26 page)

After his press conference, Tiger called me from his plane. In the most appreciative tone I’d ever heard from him, he said, “Hank, man, we really did some great work this week.” That meant a lot.

Still coaching, I wanted to leave him with the thought that what he accomplished at Torrey Pines could provide him with the key to his future improvement. In his determination and in his patience, he’d demonstrated a level of mental strength that I thought was historic, as great or greater than Ben Hogan’s comeback victory at the 1950 U.S. Open at Merion after nearly dying in a car crash. “Think about it, bud,” I said. “See, when you are like this, how good you can play?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he told me the year was over. “I’m shutting it down,” he said. “I’m going to get my leg fixed.”

A week later, on June 24, Dr. Rosenberg performed ACL reconstructive surgery in Utah. A couple of days before the surgery, Tiger had called me to ask for a list of things I thought he should be working on in his swing. I didn’t send it, telling him there would be plenty of time, but I liked the way he was thinking.

Still, looking back on Tiger’s victory, I began to wonder about the cost. Because of his decision to have surgery to repair cartilage damage after the Masters, Tiger lost the chance to compete in two majors at a time when, despite a torn ACL, he was playing at very close to his peak. If he’d delayed his cleanout surgery until after the PGA Championship, he would have played in all four of the 2008 majors instead of two. And while he surely would have been in more pain at Torrey Pines than at the Masters, it’s doubtful it would have approached the level that he eventually had to endure. Based on what he accomplished at Torrey Pines with a physically compromised game, I now think there was a reasonable chance that Tiger without surgery could have won all of the last three majors of 2008.

There’s no telling what kind of long-term damage Tiger did to his knee joint by playing with the stress fractures, but it’s arguable that the recurring leg problems he’s had since Torrey Pines would be fewer without the trauma of that week.

The biggest cost may have been psychological. Tiger knew he was climbing the biggest mountain of his career at Torrey Pines, and it inspired him to an incredible achievement. Afterward, Tiger had finally congratulated himself. But what if the satisfaction he’d gained took the edge off his hunger? What if it meant he wouldn’t be able to find a higher mountain that he wanted to climb?

Perhaps he’ll be able to imagine such a mountain if and when he gets to the verge of Nicklaus’s major-championship record. But even Tiger’s reserves aren’t unlimited. History might prove that he was never again able to dig as deep as he did at Torrey Pines.

I saw Tiger only once while he was recovering, when I was in Orlando on some business and stopped by briefly to say hello. He was stuck in a knee brace with his leg elevated on the couch, he’d complain in occasional text messages of a lot of pain and boredom, but he’d also say that he was looking forward to getting back. Once the world had been informed about the extent of his injury and the recovery before him, I’m sure he wanted to shock everyone again by coming back better than ever.

Finally, in mid-October, Tiger got clearance to begin swinging a golf club again. Dr. Rosenberg recommended that he begin with easy sand-wedge pitch shots, and progress by going to the next longest club each week. I thought following that program would take Tiger too long to get to the longer clubs. Instead, I set up a plan based on a fixed clubhead speed for all of the clubs. Tiger began swinging at 35 mph, which produced about a 40-yard pitch shot, while the driver traveled about 80 yards without getting off the ground. After the first month, Tiger was able to swing at 65 mph while hitting an increased number of balls, the driver traveling about 150 yards. Finally, by early February, he was swinging at full speed and getting his ball count up to nearly normal, while once again producing drivers in excesss of 300 yards.

The exercise had a lot of benefits. Because he was swinging so slowly, Tiger avoided favoring the injury and getting into bad habits. The slow swing with the longer clubs also made him more conscious of correct technique and really ingrained the moves we were working on, just as had occurred when Tiger had filmed the Nike commercial in slow motion, but to a much greater extent. As far as he knew, he was the only player who’d ever used such a program to come back. It was different and special, and he always thought that gave him an edge.

Tiger wasn’t quite as diligent in working on his short game, which was disappointing to me because it would have been the most productive use of his time while his leg wasn’t yet at full strength. Tiger’s short game was one of the game’s best, but there was still room for improvement, and he knew it. I worried that not taking that on was a sign that his drive was beginning to wane in the same way it had early in 2007.

I wasn’t in Orlando a lot during this period, but I tried to be there enough to keep Tiger on track. After President Obama was elected in November, Tiger was invited to be a guest speaker at his inauguration, joining a dozen or so other prominent Americans. He didn’t say anything about the invitation to me, and I didn’t know about it until I saw him on television before a podium in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The next time I saw him, I complimented him on the honor and his speech and asked, “What was the president like?”

“He’s a nice guy,” Tiger said, and didn’t elaborate. He’d been quoted as saying his father would have been moved to tears at seeing an African American elected president, and that as a multiracial person he, too, was gratified. But Tiger never said whether he’d voted for Obama, and his speech was only about his appreciation for the military, making no reference to the new president. As I heard his speech, I imagined that he’d made sure it couldn’t be construed as a political endorsement.

Tiger was impressed by very few people. Outside of sports figures, I can’t recall him ever talking about a person he particularly admired. Earl had made a big deal about Tiger feeling a kinship with Nelson Mandela when the two met in South Africa, but I never heard Tiger mention Mandela. If Tiger liked a movie, he’d never single out one of the actors for a great performance. He wasn’t a wannabe musician like a lot of athletes, and from what I saw, he didn’t pal around with those who performed at his Tiger Jam charity concert in Las Vegas, like Jon Bon Jovi or Glen Frey. Tiger was more likely to be friendly with artists who played in pro-ams or showed up at tour events, like singer Darius Rucker, who sang at Tiger’s wedding, or comedian Kevin James. Tiger once took me to watch Kevin perform in Orlando. We went backstage afterward and had a nice chat with him, but I never heard Tiger say anything that indicated a curiosity about the comedian’s craft.

Among athletes, Tiger had great respect for Michael Jordan, though they spent less time together when I was Tiger’s coach than they had earlier in his career. Among contemporaries, Tiger had the most admiration for Roger Federer and Lance Armstrong. Tiger and Federer had been brought together by Nike and had become friends. Tiger didn’t know Armstrong well and didn’t cycle, but he was impressed by the way Lance had come back from cancer and how mentally tough he had to be to keep winning the Tour de France. In the case of both Federer and Armstrong, what Tiger most related to was their dominance in an individual sport.

But from what I saw, Tiger still didn’t let any of these figures close, even when they reached out. My sense was that Tiger would be more likely to engage someone he admired if he thought he could learn something from him or her. Once at Isleworth another tour player, Grant Waite, approached Tiger on the range and introduced him to motocross champion James Stewart. Tiger didn’t know who he was, but after Grant gave him a rundown on how James was one of the best in the world at his sport, Tiger showed some interest and started asking James how he trained. Tiger listened and then asked what he ate before competition. James said, “Oh, nothing special. A Coke and a Snickers.” That answer told Tiger that James wasn’t in his league as a serious athlete, and he quickly ended the conversation and went back to hitting balls.

During his rehab, Tiger seemed more committed to his new training regimen than he was to his golf. Because Keith was in Las Vegas and Tiger needed to work out near his house, he hired a new trainer, a chiropractor and physical therapist named Mark Lindsay, who was renowned for his postoperative work with elite athletes such as Alex Rodriguez and sprinter Donovan Bailey. Mark specialized in the same kind of soft-tissue manipulation that Keith is expert in.

Lindsay also brought in Bill Knowles, a strength coach from Vermont who was known for helping skiers recover from ACL surgery. According to Corey, at Tiger’s urging Bill’s workouts included Olympic-style lifts like the clean and press, designed to develop explosive power. Keith had avoided giving Tiger these kinds of exercises because they invited injury and because they opened the door to other strength training routines from football and similar power sports that Tiger was only too eager to try.

I knew the programs were helping Tiger’s recovery, and the medical checkups he was getting confirmed he was ahead of schedule, but I worried that Tiger might revert to his pattern of overdoing. He tended to believe that if three sets were prescribed, six would be twice as good. I warned Bill that he was basically giving Tiger a new toy, and that he might get carried away. Sure enough, right around New Year’s Day, Tiger hurt his right Achilles tendon—doing Olympic-style lifts, according to Corey. Tiger would later say that he hurt the Achilles running sprints while testing new shoes for Nike. Shortly after, I received an e-mail from Bill Knowles telling me that I’d been right, and that he was curtailing Tiger’s Olympic-style lifting.

Getting the right Achilles treated was the reason Dr. Anthony Galea was called in. Mark Lindsay had worked with Galea in Toronto, and Lindsay believed in Galea’s specialty—platelet-rich plasma therapy, or “blood spinning.” The procedure involved extracting a patient’s blood and putting it into a centrifuge, separating the platelet-rich plasma, and injecting it back into the problem area, promoting faster healing. Galea came to Tiger’s house the first time right around the Super Bowl in Tampa, where he’d been administering blood-spinning therapy to Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Hines Ward. I watched Galea treat Tiger and winced as he inserted a long needle into his Achilles tendon. The next day Tiger said his Achilles was less sore, and Galea would come back to Tiger’s house four more times in February and March to repeat the procedure—both on the Achilles and on an area below the left knee, where Tiger had persistent pain.

Later, Galea’s visits to Tiger became controversial after the Canadian doctor was charged with unlawful distribution of HGH. But as I’d eventually tell the Golf Channel’s Jim Gray, I never saw any evidence of Tiger receiving any treatment other than blood spinning, which is legal. For the record, I feel very strongly that Tiger has never taken any kind of banned performance-enhancing drug.

By this time, Tiger was able to hit balls full out. There was a difference in his action—his knee was definitely more stable through impact. While I’d never really noticed Tiger’s knee wobble when he hit the ball, even in the run-up to Torrey Pines, the before-and-after contrast showed that the joint had previously been compromised, even if it hadn’t slowed the force of his swing. It gave me hope that, to use Tiger’s words, “finally with a left leg to hit against,” the best swings of his life were ahead.

Although history won’t record 2009 as a great year for Tiger, I thought it was the year he made more good swings than ever before. It told in his consistency, as he won seven of 19 tournaments with sixteen top-ten finishes worldwide. It also was reflected in his improved driving, as Tiger finished 12th in the Total Driving statistic—which combines average driving distance with driving accuracy—by far the best he’d ever done with me as his coach. Coming off his knee surgery, he had a better body to execute proper mechanics, and even though he didn’t win a major championship, I could see real progress.

Tiger began his comeback slowly by losing to Tim Clark in the second round of the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, but his swing was much improved at Doral, and he finished tied for ninth. He won at Bay Hill with a great birdie on the 72nd hole, and looked primed to play well at the Masters.

He didn’t quite have it, and finished tied for sixth. I thought that once he got to Augusta, he showed less focus in his practice. He didn’t spend enough time on the putting green, and it told in the tournament, where he took 122 putts to finish 45th in the field, a statistical position that makes winning nearly impossible. I pointed out to Tiger that in the previous 32 PGA Tour events, the winner had finished in the top 15 in putting for the week 28 times and never worse than 33rd. I thought his stroke looked slightly off and that he just needed to devote more time to the practice green.

Tiger was also more moody than usual at Augusta, and he became more difficult as the week went on. After he bogeyed the eighteenth hole on Friday to fall seven shots behind the leaders, he came to the practice range angry. He immediately pulled out his driver, the club with which he never begins practice sessions, and between extra-hard swings vented his frustrations to me for five minutes.

He made up no ground on a third-round 70, and on Sunday he met me on the practice tee in a negative frame of mind. He’d later say it was “one of the worst warm-up sessions I’ve ever had.” He was paired with Phil Mickelson, who got off to a flying start. Tiger kept up with an eagle on the eighth hole, and when he birdied 16, it put him within two of the lead. But he pulled his drive on the seventeenth and made a bogey, then pushed his drive on the eighteenth to make another, his third bogey in four days on that hole. It was startling to see Tiger finish so poorly at the Masters, especially because in the 54 times he’d played the eighteenth hole before the 2009 tournament, he’d bogeyed it only three times.

Tiger was seething when he left the course, and told the media, “I fought my swing all day and just kind of Band-Aided it around and almost won the tournament with a Band-Aid swing.” Without mentioning my name, Tiger had taken a shot at me and made me a target for blame.