The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods

by Hank Haney

  Tiger had driven the ball the best of his career in 1999 and 2000 with a 260cc steel head and a 43½-inch steel shaft. Although he’d eventually gone to a 360cc club, he’d resisted going to the largest head even as Mickelson and others had said he was missing the boat. He intuitively felt the new technology didn’t help him as it helped others. Every tour player gained distance with the combination of the 460cc drivers and the latest multilayer balls, to the point that more players than ever were reaching par 5s in two. Dominating the par 5s had always been one of Tiger’s main advantages, and it was lessened as other players got longer. Unfortunately, though many others retained or even increased their accuracy with the bigger heads, Tiger saw his ball flight become more crooked.

  The reasons are complex. First, the big head and new ball were distance-oriented and designed to produce less spin and thus less curve. That made it much more difficult for Tiger to hit his natural draw, a right-to-left shot that carries less backspin than a fade. With the new technology, Tiger found that a draw with his new driver would carry too little spin and “fall out of the air.” Indeed, the bigger the heads got on tour, the more players went from favoring a draw off the tee to going with a left-to-right “slider,” which had enough spin to retain its carry but didn’t lose nearly as much distance as a spin-heavy fade used to with the older drivers and balls. I wanted Tiger to go with that slider to help get him out of his habit of letting the shaft drop behind him on the downswing and coming into the ball on too much of an inside path. But the slider was a shot that Tiger had never grooved, and it went against his “eye” when he looked at the target from the tee. His swing was definitely draw-biased, and with the old equipment, he was used to a ball that would spin back a bit to the left even if it started too far to the right. With the new driver imparting so little spin, a ball that would start right would basically stay right. The result was that Tiger became statistically less accurate.

  After he switched to a 460cc driver, when Tiger wanted to hit a draw off the tee, he’d pull out his 3-wood, its 15 degrees of loft producing more spin. I eventually tried to persuade Tiger to increase the loft in his driver from 8.5 degrees to 9.5 degrees, but he didn’t want to give up the distance potential of the big-headed driver in certain situations. He finally tried more loft at the 2009 Memorial, and had one of the best driving tournaments of his career. He hit every fairway in the final round, and later told me that was the first time he had ever done that.

  Frankly, I thought Nike should have built a driver specifically for Tiger, something with a smaller head that would allow him to curve the ball more easily, even if it cost him a bit of distance. But such a design would have gone against the extra-power theme that sells new clubs in the marketplace. Instead, the reps would bring Tiger the latest models, with some relatively minor customizations. There was no doubt that Tiger would produce impressive readings on the launch monitor when he tested the new clubs. Unfortunately, he’d get seduced by numbers that showed distance gains, especially when he’d hit shots with a higher trajectory and less spin. Tiger knew he had a hard time achieving such a flight consistently in competition, but with each new club he hoped he’d be able to groove the high bomb rather than the low cutter. Except for very short spurts, it never really happened. Bottom line: the ball flight he adopted with me as his coach wasn’t ideal in terms of the physics of “laboratory golf,” but it was the best way for Tiger to play golf and avoid the big miss.

  Once everyone switched to a multilayer ball, Tiger still insisted on using a ball that spun more than any other on tour. Stamped with a star, it was not used by anyone else on the Nike staff and it wasn’t sold in golf shops. Tiger liked the soft feel and extra stop the ball provided for difficult shots around the green. But that ball was also the shortest on tour, the Nike guys telling me it cost Tiger at least 10 yards in lost distance. If Tiger had used a less spinny ball—and I always thought he tried to play with too much spin around the greens—he could have achieved some distance gains without going to the bigger head and longer shaft in the driver.

  Tiger’s power wasn’t best reflected in his distance off the tee. While Tiger was long, I never considered him “monster” long in the way Hank Kuehne was as a young player or Bubba Watson and Gary Woodland are today. But what Tiger could consistently do that other players couldn’t was call on his power to hit special, extremely high-skill shots—getting an extra 25 yards out of a 3-wood from the fairway to reach a long par 5, or sending a long iron over impossibly tall trees when others would have to go under or simply chip out into the fairway. One of the best such shots I ever saw Tiger hit came in the final round of the 2009 WGC Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone. A stroke behind Padraig Harrington on the par-5 sixteenth hole, Tiger drove poorly and had to lay up his second shot 176 yards from an ultra-firm green with a front hole location cut perilously close to the pond. The whole round, players hadn’t been able to get sand wedges to stop by the pin, but Tiger powered an 8-iron sky-high that landed behind the hole and spun back to within a foot. It was that kind of shot, not his drives, that other players conceded they simply didn’t possess.

  In the early years of our work together, improving his driving was just one item on Tiger’s checklist for future improvement. Our hope was high, and his work ethic and attitude for learning were exceptional. Tiger never really asked me how long it was going to take before he got comfortable, and it was a question I wanted to avoid because putting a time limit on swing changes is counterproductive. They take the time that they take, and the pressure of a deadline often makes it take longer. So to head off any impatience from Tiger, I used the feel-good moments after Doral to say, “You’re doing better all the time. In about two and a half years you’re going to have something really good.”

  He looked at me hard, obviously startled at that time frame. I’m sure he would have guessed something a lot sooner. The fact is, I made up that two-and-a-half-year period. There was a chance he could have mastered everything in a month, but I wanted him to stay engaged with learning. I’d observed that he got his best work done when he knew he had a lot of work to do. It was when he was most determined, least questioning, and most focused. But the moment he perceived that he was just refining—that was when his focus and work rate went down and the experimentation went up. As Butch found out, “maintenance” was the wrong theme. Tiger thrives on the chase.

  This is my answer to people who question why Tiger continually changed his swing. Beyond the actual technical improvements, the biggest value of the process is that it kept him interested. As a prodigy, Tiger ran the risk of early burnout, and he needed more stimulation and variety than the average pro, who preferred maintenance to makeovers. Also, with every change, Tiger had gotten better. The improvement might have come at a significant cost of effort and time, but to him it had been worth it.

  I also believe Tiger intentionally overstated how much of a change he was undertaking. It helped his mind-set to believe he was doing something major. But the truth is, in many ways I was continuing much of what Butch had given him. Butch and I differed slightly in our conception of the correct swing plane, and I made a big adjustment to Tiger’s grip. But mainly my work with Tiger was repackaging what he had worked on with Butch. Tiger’s were far from the biggest swing changes ever made by a tour player. But thinking of it all as very dramatic helped him put in a lot of work.

  A big swing change had the added benefit to him of lessening outside expectations and giving him an excuse if he happened to play badly. At close quarters, I began to understand just how intense a pressure cooker he lived in and how he devised ways to escape it or turn down the heat. He didn’t really talk about it, except for a stray comment like, “With me, nothing is ever good enough.” When I’d complain to him about getting slammed by writers and commentators for my teaching, he’d chuckle and say, “Hank, welcome to my world.”

  Tiger hit a lull after his win at the 2005 Doral. He didn’t play great at Bay Hill, beginning with a popped-u
p 3-wood opening drive that went only 200 yards. He never broke 70 and finished tied for 23rd. He played worse at the Players Championship, tying for 53rd while making four double bogeys. Over my time with Tiger, the best he ever did in that tournament was eighth in 2009. Although he’d won the tournament in 2001 and the U.S. Amateur there in 1994, the TPC Stadium Course definitely made Tiger uncomfortable. There were at least four tee shots that gave him trouble, the par-4 fourteenth and the eighteenth holes in particular, where the water hazards cut tightly on the left always seemed to produce a big block to the right. Of all the architects, Pete Dye seemed to create the designs that were the hardest for Tiger to negotiate. Pete really knows how tour pros think, and he is very good at punishing those who play away from the big miss.

  Tiger left the Players with his game in no shape to win a major championship. But over the next six days at Isleworth, he went into emergency-preparation mode. It was extremely fulfilling for me, because Tiger was always into it before majors, at his most receptive as a student. With me, the only majors where he didn’t reach that mind-set were the 2006 U.S. Open right after Earl died and the 2010 Masters. This time, I think he sensed things were coming together, and he stayed on plan.

  So much so that I began to mentally label our daylight hours at Isleworth as “Tiger Days.” He would begin a typical one by waking at six a.m. and working out until eight. After he showered and ate breakfast, we would meet on the practice tee at nine for 90 minutes of hitting balls. From 10:30 to 11 he would practice putt, then play as many as nine holes on the course until noon. After a one-hour lunch break, we’d meet at one p.m. for an hour of short-game work, followed by another 90 minutes of hitting balls. From 3:30 to 4:45 he’d play nine holes, and then return to the putting green until six p.m. This would be followed by an hour of shoulder exercises before retiring for dinner at seven. If he had a week off from tournament play, he’d start all over the next day.

  Tiger respected practice. It was sort of his church, the place he made the sacrifices that would lead to success. He believed in the old-school ways, putting in time, taking a step backward to take two forward, putting his faith in the old Hogan line about “digging it out of the dirt.” Even when his mind wandered to places that led to swing experiments, in our first few years together, I never once saw him hit a careless shot in practice.

  Watching him in action, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Tiger disagreed strongly with the idea that champions are born, not made. “You’re a product of your environment,” he said, giving credit to his father and mother for providing the conditions that let him fall in love with the game and devote himself to it.

  I’m not sure if such focus was an effort. Off the course, Tiger freely admitted that he was easily distracted and restless and needed to constantly be in motion. When I was at the house, he might suddenly go off for a workout at the gym, go for a run, or get on a video game, sometimes excusing himself by saying, “My ADD is kicking in.” But he was almost always calm and poised on the course or the practice area. There, he was in his element—and observing his comfort there, I could see that he truly loved hitting a golf ball.

  He enjoyed the details. He never hit a shot without knowing exactly how far his target was, so he always had a yardage in mind with every shot he hit. He’d pull out the range finder before hitting at a flag on a practice range. When he switched targets, he’d pull out the gun and figure out the new yardage. He never failed to do this.

  Another idiosyncratic trait was the way he’d take small breaks. He’d seldom hit more than 25 balls in a row before stepping away. He might sit down in the cart and just stare out silently for a few minutes. I didn’t say anything the first few times, but I finally asked, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m just thinking about what we just did.” Because what we were working on would usually be something that was uncomfortable, he was making sure he understood where he was in the process and where he was going. To me, it was an example of a great performer doing what Geoff Colvin in his book Talent Is Overrated calls “deliberate practice.” It’s the most difficult and highest level of practice because it requires painstaking focus on weaknesses. A lot of players hit a lot of balls but focus only on their strengths. The great improvers are willing to get uncomfortable and make the mental and physical effort to correct a flaw, which often involves difficult “opposite-oriented” remedial learning. But that was Tiger in major-championship preparation mode.

  At these times, the dynamic between us was peaceful and attentive. Our voices were soft, and even the occasional laughter was kind of muffled. This learning atmosphere was the way both of us liked it. With Tiger and me, there was not a lot of talking. I didn’t want to be a big explainer. I wanted to make a few points, then let him digest them and see if he could find the solution for himself. We might stop if he got a little confused or had a question, but usually things would be pretty wordless until he felt he got it, which was when he might ask, “How’s that?” Almost always, my answer would be, “That’s it.”

  One way I helped Tiger impose some structure was by instilling the idea of Nine Shots. It was simply a distillation of the nine ways a ball could be moved based on three curves (straight, starting left/moving right, starting right/moving left) and three trajectories (low, medium, and high), yielding nine combinations. In practice, Tiger wanted to be able to deliberately hit the nine shots with every club, and he’d do so in a structured way. He’d usually start with a sand wedge and work his way through the bag, although, tellingly, the exercise didn’t extend to the basically draw-proof driver.

  The Nine Shots did a lot for him. First, it gave him a mental leg up. He knew other players didn’t practice that way, and he believed that such an elaborate and demanding practice template gave him an edge. His thought was, “I’m better, so what I do has to be different and better.” It matched his self-image and satisfied his ego.

  In practical terms, it helped him believe he could hit the proper shot under the gun. And the right shot wasn’t just the one that gave him the best chance to get close to the pin. More important, it was the shot that let him most easily play away from trouble either on or around the green. If water guarded the left side of a green and the pin was cut on that side, Tiger could come in with a draw that started well to the right. If there was heavy wind, he could come in low. If the greens were particularly firm, as they were at majors, he could come in high with a lot of spin. He just wanted the fullest toolbox possible.

  With the tools at his disposal, he became a more thoughtful shot maker and thus a better course manager. He steadily began eliminating mistakes because he almost always had the right percentage shot for the situation. As a younger player, Tiger might have forced shots at the pin, but as he gained more ways to work the ball, he could start it at the middle of the green and move it toward the pin. It’s the shot that allows the most room for error because it reduces the chance of missing the green on the “short side” of the pin, from where a recovery is almost always more difficult. By being able to vary trajectory, he gained better distance control, especially in the wind. Tiger found himself “pin high” more than ever, which is the hallmark of good iron play.

  Having more control got Tiger away from trying to blow fields away. When he had fewer shots in his arsenal, he played more aggressively. When he was “on,” it could lead to double-digit victories, but more often it led to mistakes that cost him wins. The Nine Shots helped Tiger understand that he was good enough to never really take a chance and still win. It would mean he’d be much less likely to win by 10, but he’d be more likely to simply win. It was Tiger becoming more of an expert at “getting the W.”

  The Nine Shots also helped him understand better than ever the exact causes of different ball flights—such factors as club path, clubface angle, angle of attack, and clubhead speed. It gave him the knowledge to diagnose and fix himself more efficiently on the course. And he really valued having those assurances. To him, being able to make the right corrections
during a round was the true measure of a real player.

  In essence, the Nine Shots were Tiger’s acid test. When he had mastered all of them, he could effortlessly put his swing into “neutral”—perfectly on plane, with no built-in tendency. That wasn’t always the case, but it was always his goal, because he understood that the more he moved off neutral, the more shots he wouldn’t be able to hit. Some days, he had to accept that neutral wasn’t attainable and that the wisest course was to play with what he had. Those would be the days when he gave the pin a wider berth and focused more on avoiding mistakes than on making things happen. He had confidence that he could figure it out before the next round, and that helped him be more patient.

  The Nine Shots were also fun. Tiger was a natural worker of the ball; he liked creating shapes and spins. It was something he’d done with his dad, playing “call shot”—Earl requesting a specific shot and Tiger delivering. It was kind of an old-school way of playing, when the less aerodynamically sleek golf ball could be moved around a lot. Such a style was rewarded in the week-to-week modern game because the hole placements on the PGA Tour had gotten so close to the edges of the greens. And the benefits were even more evident in the firmer conditions of the majors. Even when softer conditions didn’t really reward shot-making versatility, the style kept Tiger’s interest up. But most important, the Nine Shots allowed Tiger to access his artistic abilities in a structured way, and I believe it eventually made him the best iron player of all time.