Tiger Woods Swing Secret?

Tiger learnt his golf swing from his dad and his dad learnt golf from...

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Ben hogan
• Tiger Woods
• Golf

[KOC]

The rest is in rest...

[jpsartrean]

If the 'secret' is how to miss the fairway, I think I've already got it... :-(

[earthshine2k]

@emncaity well, as he stood on the 72nd tee of the '06 Open, I thought Phil had finally exorcised the demons. Funny how that tee shot on 18 destroyed the cocoon of confidence he'd been enveloped in since the '04 Masters. After he putted out for a championship losing double, it was back to the same 'sheepish', apologetic approach to majors until this year at Augusta.

[earthshine2k]

@emncaity .....he knew he had a once in a lifetime chance and he went for it. came up short, but he certainly didn't implode while trying to focus on his routine.

[earthshine2k]

@emncaity yeah, i'm not a big fan of the 'focus on the process, not the result - it's just another round of golf' mentality that's so en vogue these days. I think Dustin Johnson succumbed to that and so did Nick Watney. I think you have to embrace championship opportunities and feed off of them. Nicklaus certainly did. Woods does. Why try to fool yourself. I think Rocco had the right approach...

[earthshine2k]

@emncaity  i'm a 'Tiger guy' (the off course bs is another conversation) precisely because of what you've described. For the same reason, I'm a Nicklaus guy. I'm not a front runner, but, I have a tremendous appreciation for preparation, athletic intelligence, and an innate ability to execute under pressure. I think there is something to be said for the athlete who, even though he's favored, can still make it happen. The 'underdog' has it easy. ie Rocco and the 'nothing to lose' '08 Open.

[emncaity]

@earthshine2k

Re taking care of technical flaws before they kill you: That's one of the things I admire about TW's game, even while finding him disgusting as a person. He really does work his ass off, and despite critics, I think it's usually on the right things. Right now, though, he's getting back into that huge down-move with his head and upper body that make him wild when he really goes after a shot, and it's gonna be really hard for him to play well for four straight rounds with that.

[emncaity]

You're right; Norman's lapses were consistent. In his case, these were manifested in a technical flaw that he just never bothered to fix--which is just another way of not being _quite_ at the level of a Hogan or Nicklaus, whom you could not IMAGINE doing such a thing ("eh, I'll just leave that alone and maybe it won't come up").

And btw, that's not the same thing as saying the lapses were CAUSED by the technical flaw. More like the other way around.

[emncaity]

@earthshine2k

...and, it does seem like that's kind of a defense mechanism sometimes. You can always say you lost while trying to hit that 40-yard cut with a 3-wood around the trees and over the lake "because I was trying to win the tournament, dammit"--when a smarter play would result in an 80% chance of a tie and an 18% chance of a win, with only a 2% chance of a loss. Or whatever. Even Tiger could use a little more of that Jackish mentality at times, but mostly he's got it.

[emncaity]

@earthshine2k

"Chronic habitual failure is rooted in something far deeper than swing flaws and bad breaks.  Some guys can handle the pressure, others can't.."

True, but the reasons for not handling it differ. I do think, though, that the problem is really similar with Mickelson and Norman. They have sort of a second track running in the background all the time, the need to project some kind of "bold player" image, rather than having winning as literally the only purpose....