The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (7 page)

I’d been to Tiger’s house a few times with Mark. It would eventually be photographed from the air as often as O. J. Simpson’s house, and a lot of people have been surprised that it wasn’t more of a set-apart mansion. Even though Tiger went on to build such an edifice near Palm Beach, I never sensed that he cared that much about opulence. Outside, his Isleworth house didn’t stand out. Inside, the decor was more functional than luxurious. There were a lot of TVs, and his trophies were prominently displayed.

When I drove in, I was startled to see him right there in the driveway swinging a club, wearing shorts and appearing very relaxed. His bag was on his golf cart, which had spinner wheels with a TW logo, a stereo system, and a top speed of 28 miles per hour, factory altered to go about twice as fast as a normal cart. Tiger certainly spent more time in his golf cart than in his street car, so these improvements weren’t really extravagant.

Whenever I saw Tiger, I had a dual reaction. On some level he was still that kid who was originally self-contained and standoffish but who gradually let down some of his guard. But he was also a worldwide icon, maybe the most famous athlete in the history of sport. To me, he always remained more of the first guy. Even when I was around him off the course in places like New York or Las Vegas and all around us people were agog and doing everything for him and it was all very A-list, he was never quite that other guy. Probably, I thought, because he really didn’t want to be.

As I got out of the car, he came over to greet me, but there was no welcome-aboard hug. It was as if I was still primarily Mark’s coach and we were just meeting before another practice round. But when I opened the conversation by saying, “I’m looking forward to working with you,” Tiger went into boss mode. Starting with the words “OK, now,” he wanted to be clear that there were a couple of things he’d observed me teach Mark that he didn’t agree with.

The first was my idea of limiting his head movement to the right on the backswing, which would never get completely resolved. He also reviewed the moment on the eleventh hole at St. Andrews where into a hard left-to-right wind Mark had demonstrated how to hit an iron shot on a low trajectory with little spin so that it didn’t balloon in the wind. Tiger said that the method was too foreign to what he was used to. I’d eventually win him over on that one.

His objections almost didn’t matter. I realized that he was marking his territory, showing the new dog that he was the alpha. That was fine; I wasn’t going to argue with him. He didn’t yet know enough about what I teach or the plan I had to help him achieve his best golf.

I told him I understood his concerns, and that we’d work on those things in different ways. I realized right away that he was going to be a difficult student, that he wasn’t going to just accept everything I said. I knew his trust would have to be hard-earned, and that there would be tests ahead. But I was also thinking,
I like this. This is going to be a challenge. This guy is different, and that’s part of why he’s great. This is going to be an incredible learning experience
. I felt energized.

We got into the cart and drove across the street to the more secluded corner of the range that Tiger favored. On the way over, he spelled out an overall goal. “I want to get more consistent in every phase, so I have the kind of game that at majors will always get me to the back nine on Sundays with a chance,” he said. “I don’t want to just have a chance on the weeks when I’m hot. I want to have a chance all the time. Always putting yourself in the mix, that’s the only way you can win a lot of them.” Helping him build that kind of game, one that he could keep at a high level even when he wasn’t at his best, became my mission.

We continued our discussion as he hit balls. It was clear his big priority was ridding himself of “getting stuck” on the downswing. This position occurred when—for a combination of reasons—Tiger got his lower body too far ahead of his arms on the downswing, causing the club to drop behind his hands. From that position, he couldn’t simply let his upper body rotate and carry his arms along to effortlessly square the clubface at impact. Instead, the only way to become “unstuck” was to compensate with some quick arm and hand action. Tiger was very adept at saving shots in this manner, but it was not a reliable way to achieve consistency.

From the stuck position, Tiger’s most common tendency was to leave the ball to the right, a shot that could be identified by the way his right shoulder finished high as a result of a too-late effort to overuse his upper body and arms to square the face. It was also possible from the stuck position for Tiger to use too much hand action and hit a hook to the left, but this was a shot he abhorred and avoided.

Eventually I would see that getting stuck was simply one of Tiger’s individual tendencies, so ingrained that he’d always have to fight to keep it suppressed. His goal was to get rid of getting stuck forever, but though I thought that was worth trying for, I knew the probability was that the tendency would always lurk, ready to come back when he didn’t take specific measures against it, especially under pressure. That’s golf, even at the highest level. Every player has his or her set of chronic mistakes that are as personal as a fingerprint. Teachers don’t give players these mistakes. Their role is to provide ways to control them.

The other priority was preserving the health of Tiger’s left knee. I’d already known this from talking to Tiger in Park City, Utah, in late 2002, the day after his clean-up operation had revealed that his ACL was damaged. I’d later overhear him complain to Mark that he’d hurt the knee by following Butch’s advice to snap it straight at impact when he wanted extra distance. There was really no way of knowing if the damage had been caused by that action. A lot of players hyperextend their lead leg and never suffer knee injuries, which are actually pretty rare in golf compared to hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder injuries. Part of me thought that blaming the knee on Butch was a way for Tiger to justify leaving him for other reasons. Still, there was no doubt that the knee was a problem, and protecting it was of great importance. “I’ve got to do everything I can to make it last,” Tiger told me at Isleworth.

As he hit balls, my first lesson was fairly gentle. I wanted Tiger to get his eyes to stay “level” throughout the swing. When Tiger let his head move to the right on his backswing, he had a tendency to simultaneously let his chin tilt to the right. Then on the downswing, he’d tilt his chin back to the left. This would help him drop his head behind the ball, which contributed to his getting stuck. I was sure that if he recognized this action/reaction move and corrected it, it would make him better.

I was focused on Tiger’s progress, but I also had moments—especially when we first started working together—in which I’d just admire how good he was. Beyond his technique, his swing was mesmerizing for displaying the sheer grace that only the most special athletes possess. But besides exhibiting impressive coordination and explosiveness, even in practice Tiger had a focus and intensity that were beyond anything I’d ever witnessed. I could feel his love for what he was doing: his thrill at controlling the ball, his enthusiasm for learning how to do it better.

Tiger was a receptive student for the two days we worked together before I returned to Dallas. I stayed in his house with him and Elin, to whom he was engaged and was scheduled to marry in October. I’d met Elin when she and Tiger started dating in 2002, and I’d gotten along well with her. I gave her some golf lessons at Isleworth even before I began working with Tiger, and she was a good athlete and careful listener who improved quickly and was capable of breaking 90. She had a nice swing, and Tiger had fun helping her with it. They both really liked tennis, and they enjoyed occasionally going to tournaments to watch their friend Roger Federer play. Elin is naturally quiet, but her personality became more outgoing and feisty when she played sports. She could hold her own against Tiger in tennis, Ping-Pong, and even running. She even liked to talk trash, saying stuff like “I’m going to take you down,” and celebrating with a yell when she won a point. I know Tiger really liked her competitive streak, and seemed to enjoy treating her like one of the guys, needling her and even telling raunchy jokes around her, which Elin didn’t seem to mind.

But as life became more complicated, I thought Elin changed. By the time she and Tiger married, she remained friendly but had become more guarded, even in her own home. She and Tiger developed a calm, almost cool relationship in front of other people, and conversations with them tended to be awkward and strained. I never saw them argue, but they weren’t openly affectionate either.

I went home on Wednesday. In Thursday’s first round at Bay Hill, Tiger shot a 67 that left him only a shot out of the lead. When he called me that night, he was excited, saying he’d really hit the ball well and believed that what we’d worked on had made a difference.

However, he followed with three poor rounds of 74, 74, and 73. As we talked after each round, he said he was still getting stuck with the driver, missing wide right a lot, worried about missing left, and generally putting the ball in places off the tee from where it was difficult to hit an approach shot close to the hole. Without saying he’d worked with me, he told the media that he’d been “so excited about the things I was working on Tuesday and Wednesday.” He said that 90 percent of his game was good, “it’s just the other 10 percent that is off the charts.” When he got pressed on where the problems were, he gave the sort of answer that was meant to maybe create a humorous sound bite, but which would also close the subject. “Yeah,” he said, “the takeaway, the backswing, and the downswing.”

I would soon learn that what Tiger told the media about his round was way different from what he’d later tell me in private or on the phone. In his television and press interviews, he mostly answered in generalities, usually putting an overly positive spin on how he’d played. Then when we talked, he’d go into detail about the real issues in his round, and was often quite self-critical. There were also times he would tell the media he hit it badly but then tell me he’d hit it well. I never knew what to expect after a round, but he was good at explaining how he felt on the course, and what thoughts or moves he felt he could handle or couldn’t handle under the heat of competition. I encouraged him not to talk about his swing changes with the media. It would just open up a new line of scrutiny, put him in a situation of always explaining, and set him up to be criticized. No previous player had ever undergone so much public swing analysis, and it wasn’t going to do him any good. It would likely mean my name wouldn’t get mentioned, and certainly for the short term, I was fine with that.

When we talked on Saturday, he said he wanted me to see him at Isleworth again on that Monday, to prepare for the next week’s Players Championship. Following what would become my routine, I met him around ten a.m. on the practice range, looking forward to putting more of my plan into place.

But Tiger was completely different than the first time we worked. When I arrived, he was already out on the range, fully warmed up, and he barely acknowledged me after I approached. As he proceeded to keep hitting balls, I commented on a few things I saw in his swing, complimenting him on doing better with keeping his eyes level, but he sort of ignored me.

I didn’t react, but inside I was shaken. I thought,
Man, this is weird. Am I getting fired before I’ve even started? Here I’ve barely told you anything, basically just given you a sugar pill to get off to an easy start together, and now you’re acting like I screwed you up?

It was my first test. The message Tiger wanted to send was clear: “When I play bad, when I don’t win, it’s your fault.” He was reminding me that his expectations were going to be incredibly high, and I thought of the motto of Al Davis, the owner of Tiger’s favorite NFL team, the Raiders: “Just win, baby.”

I stayed calm and made a decision that I couldn’t let him just run over me now. I felt I had nothing to lose, because if he truly didn’t want me, there was no point in going forward anyway.

“Tiger,” I said, breaking the silence, “I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but I guess you’re trying to knock me off my spot. I know what you need to do to get better. I know what your plan needs to be. So if you’re trying to knock me off my spot, it’s not going to happen.”

He didn’t say anything. I’d called him on the cold shoulder, but he didn’t acknowledge that in any way. He just kept the same blank expression while the wheels turned behind it. I proceeded to introduce some drills to get his club on a better plane, and he carried them out with full effort. Overall, we had a good session, and an even better one on Tuesday morning before he drove to Ponte Vedra.

As I headed home again, I felt more accepted, but I also realized that I was never going to be able to relax with Tiger Woods. He was going to be complicated, and he was going to surprise me with his moods. I was just going to have to adapt on the fly. We were just starting, so he’d probably cut me a little slack, but that wouldn’t be the case indefinitely. It was my nature to always be thinking about my teaching and my students, but with Tiger, I had a feeling that my mental absorption would be at a new level. And in fact, there wouldn’t be a morning in the next six years that I wouldn’t wake up thinking about how I could help Tiger Woods improve.

Throughout that time, I never lost any confidence in my ability to teach Tiger. I believed in my training, my ideas, and my ability. I also took strength from the fact that Tiger had picked me. He was comfortable with me as a person and my work ethic. He liked my low-key public style, appreciated that I didn’t bring people around to play show-and-tell and wasn’t going to take credit for his success. But more than anything, he was intrigued by what I taught, and he wanted that knowledge.

Underlying my instruction was a unifying principle: All good things in the golf swing flow from achieving the correct swing plane. I’d studied all the ways to correct ball flight, and it was that revelation that enabled me to make a giant leap as a teacher.