The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (31 page)

For six years, I’d adapted to the way Tiger chose to be, even when I found him difficult. I had much to gain. I wanted to be part of golf history. I wanted to better understand what it took to be great. I wanted to contribute to greatness.

I also genuinely cared about Tiger as a person and knew his life wasn’t easy. I sensed that despite the assumption that he’d followed his dream, he hadn’t chosen his life as much as it had chosen him. Giving himself over to golf instead of a more normal life had many advantages, but being a well-adjusted, fulfilled person wasn’t one of them. I admired tremendously the way he held up his end of the bargain to produce excellence. But I’d seen close-up the cost of so much single-mindedness, and I wondered,
As much as Tiger has gained in wealth and glory, is it possible that he feels used?

In that moment I realized that a big part of the emotional exhaustion I was feeling was Tiger’s concept of friendship. I always thought of Tiger as my friend, and he often referred to me as his friend. Mark Steinberg would often say that Tiger considered me one of his best friends. But Tiger threw the term around so liberally, using it to describe his relationship with people he barely interacted with, that I had to reassess what “friendship” really meant in my case. An old confidant of mine, Sam Ainsley, once asked me during one of our discussions about Tiger, “Hank, was friendship even
available
?” And the hard truth was—even after his treatment—it wasn’t.

This whole interpersonal calculation was feeding into my desire to resign. There was also a pragmatic side to consider. I’d seen slippage in Tiger’s commitment to practice even before the scandal, particularly in regard to his short game and putting. There was also the possibility that his injuries would be chronic. Although I believed—and still believe—that Tiger could come back to be great again, I sensed that because of the new complications from the scandal, the road back would be difficult. And I realized that I didn’t want to take it.

I also couldn’t deny the possibility that Tiger’s behavior at this Masters was a sign that he wanted to fire me. I always knew that day could come. I’d observed from afar the way Tiger had ended relationships with ex-caddie Mike “Fluff” Cowan and my predecessor, Butch Harmon. In both cases the process had been dragged out, with Tiger being vague in public statements and seemingly constitutionally unable to cut things clean. I wasn’t willing to be left hanging in a similar way.

But even as I was contemplating my exit, part of me stayed in coaching mode. Time in the warm-up was running out, but I encouraged Tiger to literally restart by again hitting his shorter clubs and trying a fresh approach. On a couple of occasions when he’d had bad warm-ups in the past, I’d suggested this, and it had worked. But this time Tiger’s attitude was worse and his ball striking didn’t improve. Steve, who rarely said much when Tiger hit balls, offered some encouragement, but it didn’t improve Tiger’s mood.

After Tiger had finished his range work, I followed him as he wordlessly headed to the putting green for a final few strokes before teeing off. I realized that despite everything, he still had a shot at winning this Masters and once again making golf history. I wanted to leave him with a positive thought, so after he hit some putts and got ready to go to the first tee, I said, “You know what we talked about. Do that, and you’ll be all right.” He gave me a nod, and I said, “Good luck.” It was the last contact I’d ever have with Tiger on a golf course as his coach.

I stayed to watch Tiger hit his opening drive, not feeling good about the prospects. I was worried about him succumbing to his issues with first-tee drivers, but it was the negative attitude from his warm-up that really left me uncertain. Sure enough, he pulled his drive a good 80 yards, a shot far more crooked than anything he’d hit on the range, the ball nearly going through the adjoining ninth fairway. Because I knew he still had a shot from over there, and because of all my conflicted feelings about Tiger, I wondered if he was conspiring against me. Did he want to establish that his Hank Haney swing was so bad that his only chance to win would be to rescue himself with an improvised fix? I’d eventually dismiss such thoughts, but that they even occurred told me a lot about the dysfunction in our situation.

Tiger’s round was tumultuous. He bogeyed the first hole after a poor chip, and was three over par after five holes, seven shots behind the leader. Then he miraculously holed an 8-iron from 160 yards on the seventh hole for an eagle, and he birdied the eighth and ninth holes to get back with a chance. On the par-4 fourteenth, Tiger missed a seven-foot birdie putt and then rushed the 20-inch tap-in, the resulting bogey effectively ending his chances. He eagled the fifteenth and birdied the eighteenth to play the last 12 holes six under, but after a 69 he still finished five strokes behind Mickelson.

The big picture? Considering the mental load Tiger was carrying, his performance was phenomenal. But he was in no shape to see it that way. The crowd was cheering loudly for Mickelson coming up the 72nd hole when Peter Kostis of CBS interviewed Tiger a few yards behind the green. Rather than take the opportunity to be gracious and win friends and support, he was curt. Later, Tiger told reporters, “I had another terrible warm-up today. I’ve got to be able to shape the ball both ways. I felt very uneasy over every shot I hit out there.”

I didn’t wait around to see him. Suzanne and I walked back to the hotel along Washington Road, which was still crammed with traffic. We could overhear people celebrating Phil’s victory and wondering about Tiger’s future. A couple of people recognized me, one saying, “Nice try, Hank.” We stopped at a Subway to get a couple of sandwiches for the road, and after checking out, headed to Hilton Head, 350 miles away, where I was going to spend several days at my junior academy.

Before long we were on moonlit, tree-lined country roads in the middle of South Carolina, which put me in a reflective mood. “Holy shit,” I said out loud. “Am I crazy?” There were tears in my eyes, but both of us were laughing. Then I turned serious again and said to Suzanne, “Maybe I am. But I just can’t do it anymore.”

Filled with that thought and knowing it wasn’t the right time to talk to Tiger, I decided to call Mark Steinberg to air my feelings. “Mark, I’m finished,” I said. “I’ve had enough. I’ve put everything into this. I’ve been a good team player. But I’m just done.”

Mark and I had talked often about the pressure of serving Tiger, the constant scrutiny and criticism from the media, and Tiger’s moody ways. He knew the effort I’d put into getting Tiger ready for the Masters, and how disappointed I’d been that Tiger hadn’t come away from therapy an easier person to work with. So I doubt Mark was shocked that I was unhappy. Still, he reacted strongly.

“Hank, you can’t do this,” he said. “You can’t do this to him. This is the toughest time of his life. You’re one of his best friends. You understand him. He needs you. Whatever you do, don’t abandon him now.”

I’d never heard my role valued quite that much, and it made me pause. I told Mark that I was too emotional to make a decision at that moment. I told him I’d think about it and call him in the morning.

By the time I called back, I’d calmed down and taken Mark’s pleadings to heart. If Tiger truly needed me as much as he said, quitting now was not the right thing to do. I told Mark I’d delay my decision and see how things developed. “I won’t leave him hanging,” I said. “I’ll be there for him.”

Four days later, I’d gotten more comfortable with the idea of continuing to coach Tiger. I sent him a five-page e-mail—with a cc to Mark—that critiqued his Masters performance and proposed a plan for his game going forward. The e-mail was more extensive and candid than anything I’d written to him since 2005. I felt I had nothing to lose and got some things off my chest.

The e-mail included the following passages:

You have great knowledge of the golf swing and the parts of the golf swing, but at times you are all over the place with what you are working on. It is as if you are doing what a lot of people do that don’t know anything, looking for the secret. I mean, in the weeks leading up to Augusta it seemed like you had musical swing thoughts going on. First I heard it was get the club more inside and around, then it was get the left arm up, stand closer, posture through the ball, some kind of release I hadn’t seen before and the list seemed to go on and on. Corey says it is sometimes like you have swing ADD.

I thought your attitude on the golf course was incredibly good. You were so great with the fans, and I truly believe it had a positive impact on your preparation and ultimately on how well you did in the opening round. I know you will kind of laugh at that last notion.

Sunday was not a good day from start to finish. In your warm up … it didn’t seem like you gave yourself much of a chance to get something going because you were so upset and negative about how you were hitting it. This to me is a waste of energy and talent. One of your greatest attributes is that you can figure things out, you can come up with something that will work, but when you get so upset it really makes it hard to get something going.

Not only does your head tilt with the longer clubs but it drops way down in the downswing and hangs back. If your head drops your posture changes, and if your head lays back your body has no chance to move in sync together. You have got to fix that mistake. IF YOU WOULD COMMIT YOURSELF TO FIXING THAT MISTAKE YOU WILL BE THE GREATEST BALL-STRIKER OF ALL TIME.

One last thought. Every time you get done with a round and talk about how terrible you hit the ball it is a direct knock on me. I know you are frustrated, and rightfully so. I also can take it, but I could take it a lot better if I really felt you were committed to the things that I believe in that I think would really help you. I know in my mind I have helped you learn more about the swing and playing the game, and I know that the best of your golf is yet to come. You have had a terrible time in your personal life and have handled it in a manner that I totally respect you for. As I have told you before, you are on the climb back up now and not the slide down and I am always on your side. Hang in there and get working on your game.

As usual, Tiger didn’t respond to my e-mail. Given that I’d just spent fourteen days in a row with him and that Mark had probably told him that I’d threatened to quit, I thought that this time he might get back to me right away. Instead, more than two weeks went by before he called me the night before the first round of the Quail Hollow Championship in Charlotte, which I didn’t attend.

He didn’t acknowledge receiving the e-mail and opened the conversation as if everything was normal. He greeted me with a customary “What’s up?” and went on to talk about the NBA and baseball and even the weather. For the 20 minutes we talked, he didn’t mention golf. When I brought up his game, he changed the subject. He told me he hadn’t slept well and was considering withdrawing. He admitted being worried about a woman who was claiming that he’d fathered her child. He said the claim couldn’t be true because the timeline was wrong, but he knew it was going to lead to taking another hit in the media. At the end of the call, I asked him how he was doing overall, and he said, “I’m hanging in there.”

That call turned my mind back toward leaving Tiger. The lack of acknowledgment of my e-mail or any of the subjects in it bothered me, because if he’d actually read it, it would have been impossible not to notice that I’d given it a lot of time and thought and that the tone carried some urgency. If he
hadn’t
read it, that obviously told me something, but if he
had
and decided to blow it off, that was revealing as well. I realized he was under a lot of pressure and had a lot on his mind—soon he would miss the cut at Charlotte with scores of 74 and 79—but at a time when I needed Tiger to acknowledge some things about our partnership, he just didn’t.

Tiger played the following week at the Players Championship, which he hadn’t asked me to attend. At his Tuesday press conference, he told the media, “Hank and I talk every day, so nothing’s changed. According to the press, I’ve fired him five times by now.”

He lied. That pissed me off, because we
didn’t
talk every day. We had talked once since the Masters, and not about golf. I was getting the feeling that Tiger wanted to string me along, keep me as his coach mostly to take the blame for his “bad” swing but listen to me less and less.

Tiger’s first three rounds at the Stadium Course left him eight strokes back. He called me on Sunday morning before the last round. It was mostly 20 minutes of small talk. His main concern was his neck. He said he feared he had a herniated disk. In what I took as a passive-aggressive suggestion that my swing instruction might have been the cause of his pain, he said, “It’s weird. It only hurts when I play golf.”

When we hung up, I’d made up my mind. I’d been giving my exit a lot of thought and had prepared some statements and even what I would say to Tiger when the time came. I intended to resign on Sunday, but when Tiger withdrew on the seventh hole because of his neck, I thought it might seem like piling on, and I also didn’t want to take attention away from the final day of the tournament.

As if I needed any more reasons to quit, Johnny Miller took a shot at me during the NBC telecast of the final round, saying of Tiger, “This might be a little harsh, but I really believe he needs to, every night, watch the U.S. Open in the year 2000 at Pebble and just copy that swing and forget the Haney stuff. That was the best golf anybody has ever played in history.” Just as it was with Tiger, it seemed that whatever I’d accomplished as his coach was never going to be good enough.

On Monday morning, I called Jim Gray, who had been a friend and mentor at ESPN but who now worked for the Golf Channel, to tell him I’d be resigning as Tiger’s coach. Because I also had a contract with the Golf Channel, I felt an obligation to give them the news first. I sent Jim a prepared statement and asked them to wait a few hours before breaking the story.