The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods (8 page)

The importance of swing plane was especially true at the highest level, where players do so many things right and are trying to address the very few things—or even one thing—they do wrong. I found that getting a tour pro’s club on the correct plane got them hitting more good shots, but more important, made their bad ones better. There are very few perfect shots hit in golf, even by experts. It’s above all a game of managing misses.

Briefly, my concept is this: The plane of the swing is established by the angle of the clubshaft in the address position. When the shaft retains the angle of that plane as it moves through the swing, a player has the best chance to hit good shots.

I’d gotten the idea of the correct plane in the early 1980s after years of studying videos of the best players in history executing their swings. Not all of these players kept the club on plane throughout the swing, but the best and most versatile ball striker among them—Ben Hogan—did. Jim Hardy was hugely influenced by Hogan, always talked about him, and even swung a lot like him. I’d read Hogan’s classic instruction book
Five Lessons
many times over but had never quite understood all of it. In the book there is a famous illustration in which Hogan is pictured at address with an imaginary pane of glass that tilts from the ball and rests on his shoulders, with a hole in it for his head to poke through. It was one of Hogan’s tenets that the club should always stay under the pane of glass and never break it.

But as I looked at the illustration, the angle of the plane seemed too upright because the club wasn’t on that plane at address. I thought the correct plane should go more through the sternum, at least at the start of the swing. The breakthrough for me came around 1981, when I was at Pinehurst. For probably the hundredth time, I was studying Hogan’s 1964 match against Sam Snead at Houston Country Club on
Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf
, when both of them were 52 years old but still incredible swingers of the golf club. Hogan’s swing was so correct, with no mid-swing compensations, the club seemingly grooved inside a tilted wheel that went from the top of the swing to the finish. I started making lines on the video screen, and the constant tilt of that wheel followed the angle of the shaft at address. Hogan’s swing, and the shots it produced, were my proof that I was correct with my unifying principle. The next year, when I met Mark on the range at Pinehurst, I had the opportunity to try out my ideas to change his too-upright swing, and I found that they worked.

When the proper swing plane is achieved, the shaft of the club is always swinging on, or parallel to, the angle the club established at address. At the top of the backswing, the club should point straight down the target line when it is parallel to the ground. A small but important distinction is that it should point not at the target itself, but parallel to the target line that goes through the ball to the target. When the club points at the target, especially if it has not yet reached parallel to the ground, it is actually “across the line.”

For me, the club is either on the plane or off the plane. This was the biggest difference between Butch and me when it came to Tiger. As Tiger explained to me, Butch believed a correct plane could exist within a range, a gray area with about 10 percent latitude above or below what I considered the ideal plane. I believed the goal should be more precise.

When Butch began working with Tiger, there is no doubt that at the top of his swing Tiger’s club was above his proper plane. Also, when his club reached parallel at the top of his swing, a view of him from behind and down the target line would reveal that the shaft was pointed to the right of the target. Tiger, as a right-handed golfer, was indeed “across the line.” Meanwhile, the leading edge of the clubface when it reached the top of the swing did not match the plane angle of the shaft, with the toe not pointing down sufficiently. In this position, the clubface is closed relative to the swing plane, or “shut.” So in golf parlance, Tiger was “across the line and shut.”

It wasn’t much. Tiger had obviously accomplished a tremendous amount playing from that position, as have other players who’ve been across the line. When his timing was on, as it was when he won by 12 strokes at the 1997 Masters, he could completely neutralize the flaw. But when it wasn’t, he hit too many shots that were either far off-line or went the wrong distance. Although many top players, from Bobby Jones to Fred Couples, have played their entire careers from “across the line,” Tiger’s habits made him particularly prone to dropping the shaft “under the plane” on the downswing, creating an approach to the ball that was too much inside the target line—rather than along it—to be optimum. Tiger’s incredible eye-hand coordination could save a significant number of “stuck” swings, but the across-the-line position put a big demand on even Tiger’s gifts. When he was off, he’d usually go wide right with the driver out of fear of hitting a hook, and long and left with the shorter clubs because of the closed clubface. Either way, the misses were too often bigger than even he could manage.

It was why Tiger asked Butch to implement some fairly big changes shortly after that historic Masters win. Butch improved Tiger’s plane, making it slightly flatter and less across the line, while getting his clubface to rotate more clockwise, or open, on the backswing so that it was closer to being parallel with the plane at the top of his swing. He also shortened Tiger’s backswing with the driver, which gave the appearance of the club not “crossing the line.”

But in his practice rounds with Mark, Tiger was seeing an approach to the plane that went even further than Butch’s teaching, and they occasionally discussed the theory of the correct plane during practice. I got included in the conversation in early 1999 at Isleworth when, at Mark’s urging, I told Tiger his backswing was too upright. Mark told me later that Tiger took the observation seriously and soon adjusted his backswing accordingly. My guess is that the change merely accelerated what Butch had in mind for Tiger, but there’s no question that he was ready for it. Beginning with the PGA Championship of 1999, Tiger won five of the next six major championships.

After curtailing his work with Butch in 2002, Tiger continued to work on his swing plane. But though he wouldn’t admit it, he got a little lost and actually regressed, producing, by his standards, a poor year in 2003. With me, Tiger would again have a plan. My goal was to get Tiger into a position at the top that would allow him to return the shaft more “in front” of his body, rather than behind him, which caused the stuck position.

I would later be criticized for “overfixing” Tiger into a “laid-off” position in which the club actually pointed to the left of the target at the top of the swing. It’s true I wanted Tiger to err more toward having the club point to the left rather than the right. That was because Tiger was much less likely to get “stuck” from a laid-off position than from across the line. The laid-off position also guarded against a miss to the left and allowed Tiger to play with the comforting thought that he could eliminate one side of the golf course.

After Bay Hill, Tiger played better but still not well enough. He tied for 16th at The Players Championship on the tight TPC Stadium course, where he’s won only once. He then spent most of the next week at Isleworth, where we prepared for our first major together, the 2004 Masters.

I quickly sensed the extra effort and focus that Tiger gave a major championship. In his professional career, his emphasis has been on being totally ready four times a year, and because of the way the schedule was constructed, he had more preparation time for the Masters than any of the other majors.

It was not a great week at Augusta. Tiger opened with a 75 in which his short game was sloppy, came back with 69, but another 75 in the third round took him out of it. He finished tied for 22nd, 11 strokes behind the winner, Phil Mickelson, who won his first major championship. Though Tiger hadn’t hit the ball near his best, I felt good that his ball striking was not really the problem at the Masters. Probably all the work on our swing changes had taken some time from practicing his putting and short game, and those areas hadn’t been sharp. In the big picture, though, I felt he was building.

It was also at the Masters that I saw Butch for the first time since I’d begun working with Tiger a month before. In fact, it was at Augusta that Butch for the first time publicly acknowledged that he was no longer Tiger’s coach, although whether Tiger was working alone or with a new coach remained unknown to the public. At the Masters, I’d made a point of working most closely with Mark on the practice tee, though there were times when Tiger would be working right next to him.

When Butch saw me, he gave me a warm greeting and took me aside for a moment. He knew that I’d succeeded him as Tiger’s coach and graciously congratulated me. Then he said, “Hank, good luck. It’s a tough team to be on. And it’s harder than it looks.” His voice was sincere, from one swing coach to another. His words didn’t chill me, but they did give me pause. Tiger and I hadn’t had any success yet, and I hoped there was a long road ahead. But even with success, I was starting to realize that it was never going to be easy.

Certainly, the difficulty didn’t lie with the other members of Tiger’s team. I’d known one member, physical therapist Keith Kleven, for almost 20 years through Keith’s association with Mark O’Meara. Keith, who’d worked with many top athletes, including former heavyweight champion Larry Holmes, is a sweet soul who would show his devotion to Tiger many times, never more than when Tiger overcame a torn ACL and two stress fractures in his left leg to win the 2008 U.S. Open.

Keith tried to regulate Tiger’s workout schedule, but it became very apparent that he frowned on the intensity and style of some of the exercises Tiger was doing, especially the heavy weightlifting he favored to build up his upper body.

The point man for Team Tiger, agent Mark Steinberg, was Tiger’s closest confidant. In his days at the University of Illinois, Mark made the basketball team as a walk-on guard, and he still gives off the tightly wound vibe of an overachieving athlete. I understand that mentality, and I always got along well with Mark, who was supportive of me. Besides being very loyal to Tiger and a trusted advisor on business matters, Mark could read Tiger better than anyone else, especially when Tiger went into silent mode. I think Mark considered Tiger a good person trapped in a very complicated and demanding life, and he cut Tiger a lot of slack when he was being uncommunicative or stubborn. After I’d been Tiger’s coach for only a few months, Mark would make a point of telling me that I was one of Tiger’s best friends. That always took me aback a bit, because though I felt a bond with Tiger over our obsession with golf, I always sensed he wanted me to stay at a distance. But as I was beginning to figure out, Tiger really didn’t let anyone in. It was interesting that Mark also advised that when it came to Tiger, the best policy was “Don’t get too close.”

I suppose the compensation I was offered as Tiger’s coach could be considered stingy, but I was thrilled at the opportunity. The truth is I probably would have paid Tiger just to teach him, it meant that much. I knew from a
USA Today
article that Butch had been paid $50,000 a year, so when I was offered the same thing I wasn’t surprised. Considering that I’d end up spending more than 100 days on the road a year with Tiger, either at his home or at tournaments, plus talking to him on the phone another 100-plus nights, it wasn’t a lot. But I also received a $25,000 bonus for every major victory, and I thought Tiger could win quite a few of those. I was doing fine financially with my four golf facilities in Texas, and I knew that my reputation and brand would be enhanced by my connection with Tiger. I’m sure that, from Tiger’s perspective, that residual success would be my main compensation. I figured if things worked out, the contract would improve over time. I never spoke to Tiger about the arrangement, but I always felt that he was generous to give me the chance to be his coach, and I was happy with the deal.

I knew I’d be more appreciated if I stayed under the radar with my public profile. There had been rumors that I’d been working with Tiger since Bay Hill, but no one asked me about it directly until the fall. A lot of that was because of what Tiger told the media at the Byron Nelson in May, as he wove a pretty elaborate and believable fib at a press conference that went like this:

QUESTION
: Could you clarify your relationship with Hank Haney? Is he a friend? Is he a teacher? Is it Mo’s [nickname for Mark O’Meara] guy who happens to look at you on the range at Isleworth or here?

TIGER WOODS
: Well, he’s my friend. He’s always been a friend ever since college golf, actually [back when he was] the coach at SMU, it was a time I was still in college playing, and Hank and I were talking about the golf swing—I love picking guys’ brains, whether it’s Hank or Butch or Lead [David Leadbetter] or anybody. I love Bob Torrance [a Scottish swing coach], always got good stories about the golf swing from him. It’s always nice to be able to pick someone’s brain about the golf swing, and Hank has always been that since college for me. There are different ways of looking at the same things. That’s one of the things that you get from all the different teachers. They’re trying to accomplish the same thing in a different way of wording it, and it was nice to hear something that Hank said about my golf swing … some of the stuff I throw out, some of the stuff I’ll try, and it either works or I’ll throw it out later.

Q
: This labeling him as your so-called new teacher is inaccurate?

TIGER WOODS
: No, no. I will bounce things off of him, I’ll bounce things off of him. Cookie [John Cook], he’s at home all the time. We’re always asking questions. Whether or not we actually go ahead and use it is a different story. One of the things I’ve always said, even when I was working with Butch at the time, ninety percent of the things I hear, I’ll throw out. Five percent of the things I hear I’ll try and throw out, and then five percent I’ll try and I’ll use. It’s just one of those things where you try to get a feel for what’s going to work. Some of the things Butch and I would work on, I would say, “That’s not going to work,” and I’d throw it out. That’s not going to work on the back nine on Sunday.