Tiger’s Golf Swing Coaches – A Reflection
One more Masters is in the books and Charl Schwartzel is the big winner. (Whoever he is) And one more major goes by without a Tiger victory. Are his days of dominance over or is he still working on his new swing? Only time will tell.
Jack Nicklaus had one swing coach for 39 years, Jack Grout. Grout believed in self-sufficiency, that a golfer had to be charge of his own swing. Only by being self reliant could a golfer achieve his full potential.
Tiger is on his third swing coach. His first, Butch Harmon, believed in using a players existing swing and correcting any problems, a Grout like approach. His second, Hank Haney, teaches a specific swing system that took Tiger 18 months to fully adopt.
Hank claims he quite on his own last May. He talked about the constant pressure from Woods to watch every single shot in every single tournament so he 
would be ready to answer any question Tiger may have on any particular shot. After each major he would lay awake at night trying to figure out how to make Tiger a better golfer. That type of pressure can last only so long so he took Tiger’s personal problems as an opportunity to quite.
Tiger’s newest coach, Sean Foley, also teaches a specific system. But his system is completely different and Sean has not made a secret of his disdain for Hank Haney.
Some quotes from Sean on Tiger’s Haney swing include “There is nothing about what he was doing in his previous swing that made any sense to me” and “Let’s be honest about this. It’s not like he was flushing it with Hank.”
Let look at Tiger’s performance under the two coaches. Under Haney he won 6 majors and finished in the top ten in 85% of the tournaments he entered. Under Sean he has zero major wins and zero wins period. While his swing is still a work in progress, until Tiger achieves some success, Sean ….just shut up!
As always, keep’em in the fairway.
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