Monday, Aug. 14, 2000
How the Best Got Better: The Game Of Risk
By DAN GOODGAME
For a glimpse into the greatness of Tiger Woods, look past his runaway victory in theBritish Open at St. Andrews last month. Forget his triumph--also by a recordmargin--in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in June. And set aside his prospects forstomping the field in another major tournament, next week's PGA Championship at Valhalla. Consider, instead, what Woods did right after he dominated the 1997Masters. He studied videotapes of his performance: blasting 300-yd. drives, hittingcrisp iron shots right at the pins, draining putts from everywhere. And he thought, ashe later told friends, My swing really sucks.Now let's put that in perspective. Woods had joined the pro tour only seven monthsearlier, at age 20, and captivated the game and its fans as no rookie ever had. He had won four of the 15 PGA Tour tournaments he entered, earning $1.8 million in prizemoney and some $60 million in endorsement contracts from the likes of Nike andTitleist. At the Masters, against the best golfers in the world, he had virtually lappedthe field, winning by a record 12 strokes. He was being hailed as the next Jack Nicklaus, who is considered the greatest golfer of all time. And now, incredibly, Woods was going to risk it all by overhauling the swing that had brought him to this summit. He told his coach he wanted to make serious changes inthe way he struck the ball. The history of such efforts is not auspicious. Some finegolfers--Ian Baker-Finch, Seve Ballesteros, Chip Beck--have revamped their swingand never returned to their earlier glory. What was Woods thinking?"I knew I wasn't in the greatest positions in my swing at the Masters," Woods saidduring an exclusive interview last week. "But my timing was great, so I got away withit. And I made almost every putt. You can have a wonderful week like that even when your swing isn't sound. But can you still contend in tournaments with that swing
when your timing isn't as good? Will it hold up over a long period of time? Theanswer to those questions, with the swing I had, was no. And I wanted to changethat."In other words, Woods, already considered the best by many of his peers, wasgambling that he could get dramatically better--and was willing to do whatever hethought might help him someday surpass his idol Nicklaus as the greatest ever. Any accounting of the traits and experiences that have shaped Tiger Woods muststart with his physical gifts, his exceptional parents and his early start in golf under aseries of devoted coaches. He has become, over time, eerily calm under pressure andan obsessive student of the game who reviews videotapes of old tournaments forclues about how to play each hole. He works hard at building his strength and honinghis shots. But what is most remarkable about Woods is his restless drive for what theJapanese call kaizen, or continuous improvement. Toyota engineers will push aperfectly good assembly line until it breaks down. Then they'll find and fix the flaw and push the system again. That's kaizen. That's Tiger. It's also Tiger's buddy Michael Jordan, who worked as hard on defense as offense and in his later yearsadded a deadly fallaway jumper to his arsenal. No matter how good they say you are,Michael tells Tiger, "always keep working on your game." When Woods phoned his coach, Butch Harmon, after the 1997 Masters and told himhe wanted to rebuild his swing, Harmon was confident his star pupil could pull it off.But he cautioned that results wouldn't come overnight--that Woods would have topump more iron to get stronger, especially in his forearms; that it would take monthsto groove the new swing; that his tournament performance would get worse before itgot better. Both men were aware of how such an apparent slump would be depicted by some golf commentators and fellow pros jealous of Woods' early success andfame. The Masters was a fluke, they would say; Woods was a flash in the pan. But Woods didn't hesitate. He and Harmon went to work in a kaizen sequence of 1)pounding hundreds of practice balls, 2) reviewing tapes of the swing, and 3)repeating both the above.The changes were intended mainly to tame Tiger, who had arrived on the tourswinging full bore on most shots. He would violently rotate his hips and shoulders onhis downswing, which produced prodigious tee shots. But sometimes his arms
couldn't keep up with the rest of his body, and he'd yank the ball into the rough.Harmon had Woods restrict his hip turn and slow the rotation of his torso on thedownswing. He weakened his grip slightly, turning the back of his left hand moresquare to the target. And as he gained more strength in his forearms, Woods held theclubface square to the target line--with his left wrist slightly bowed--for a crucial splitsecond longer through impact. That produced more consistently straight shots thanthe old swing, in which Woods rolled his wrists earlier.The new swing is so efficient that Woods can hit the ball as far as before--when heneeds to. But one goal of the makeover was to help him control the ball better, even when he dialed down the power. That payoff didn't come quickly. Woods won only one Tour event during the 19 months between July 1997 andFebruary 1999. He often got frustrated and angry--at the thick rough where his shotsoften landed, at the press, at the demands of his fans and sponsors. Each time helost, he declared that he was "a better golfer" than when he was winning in early 1997. "Winning," he said, "is not always the barometer of getting better." Woods says he first knew he was coming out of the tunnel on a cool evening in May 1999 on the practice ground at the gated Isleworth community where he lives,outside Orlando, Fla. He was preparing for the Byron Nelson Classic near Dallas, andhad worked his way up from wedge shots to the middle irons. Then suddenly, on oneswing, he sensed--for the first time in a year--that he had done exactly what he had been trying to accomplish. The motion felt natural and relaxed, and the contact solid.The ball flew high and straight.Excited, he rolled another ball into place but didn't make the same swing. Another ball. Didn't get it. Another ball. Didn't get it. Then he hit another pure shot. A coupleof misses. Another pure one. And another. The good swings and shots began coming with greater frequency, like a bag of popcorn taking off in the microwave. "I was ableto hit them with different clubs," Woods recalls, "and different shapes--fades,draws." What's more, each shot with the same club flew at the same trajectory andthe same distance. He phoned coach Harmon at his Las Vegas base and said, "I think I'm back." Woods shot a blistering 61 in the first round of the Nelson. Although he finished tiedfor seventh, he was thrilled because his swing felt so good. Now he could put his
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