I’ve been watching Tiger Woods since he was 5 years old. The majority of what I’ve seen has been really impressive. Lately, however, that’s not the case.
One thing I’ve learned from coaching tour players is that only the player and coach know what’s wrong with the player. The media can only speculate, which happens a lot when Woods is involved. Improvement rests in Tiger’s hands, which is one of the several cool things about golf.
Someone asked Butch Harmon, a former Woods instructor, if new teacher Chris Como, a biomechanics guy, is going to help Woods. Harmon replied that he didn’t know much about biomechanics, if anything at all. Perhaps a better word is organics, or what a player derives out of who they are in terms of mind, body and spirit and how that applies to the golf swing and the best way to play the game.
I often think of how players learn things. Are they learning to get better because they’re seeing it on video, because they have a machine spitting out numbers or because they’re actually feeling or sensing things? The beauty of our game is if you don’t see it and sense it, you can’t do it. And if you’re coaching that way but your player doesn’t get it, even the best technology in the world or most thought-out biomechanical theory isn’t going to help.
Organics is the art of using the tools you have to get players to do the things they need to do to get better. When coaching tour players, better means winning or being successful all the time, and I think TrackMan helps in that regard. I believe in it, and the numbers are 100 percent accurate. From my standpoint, if I can’t tell the player where the club is going, how it’s being delivered and how the ball is flying without a machine or watching ball flight, I shouldn’t be doing that.
Someone once told me that before TrackMan, players only used a couple methods to determine where the downswing should be. But the data they were getting from TrackMan showed that it was different.
In our current world of technology, there are still too many golf pros that take the swing and analyze it from TV or the Internet. The analysis doesn’t take into account if it was a good shot or a bad shot or whether the player was successful or not. The only people who know what the player is doing are the player and the coach, so long as the player is forthright with the instructor.
What’s the matter with Tiger Woods? I don’t know. But I have a feeling he’s going to figure it out. He figured it out once; he should be able to figure it out again.
Hopefully, he and his coach have a game plan to get him back and playing well. It’s doubtful he can reach the pinnacle he once ascended to but, after watching him all these decades, I wouldn’t put anything past him. But it’s up to him, which is one of the main reasons he’s trying to iron out the kinks of his swing at home in Florida and away from the prying eyes of speculators.
One thing I do know is that, at the end of his career, everybody who has been in golf since Woods came along has made more money and been more successful because of his impact. Woods has grown the game like no player has done in our generation. He wasn’t completely alone doing that, but he was definitely the driving force.
