This morning on Tuesdays with Bob on SiriusXM’s PGA Tour Network, host Bob Friend asked me about the state of the game of Tiger Woods after having watched him for two days at the PGA Championship. Obviously, I wasn’t very complimentary. Missing the cut by six and having a career-worst finish in a major might inspire that kind of pessimism.
The thing that caught my eyes from watching Woods and ears from listening to him is that his swing is unpredictable – even to him. Woods suggested that in his Friday comments are slamming the trunk.
“I showed signs that I can hit the ball exactly how I know I can. And unfortunately I just didn’t do it enough times,” Woods said.
Fair enough. When Tiger was nailing it, there was a clear increase in distance on his shots.
“I have way more compression now than I ever have, so the ball is now coming off cleaner, faster, and I’ve got to get used to that,” he said.
Perhaps, though, that added distance comes at the peril of losing his ability to work with modern golf ball in the same way he could with other incarnations of his swing. In each of his two August starts, Woods indicated the not cut or draw the ball in the same fashion with the Foley method.
“I’ve played for years a certain way, and I’m going to have to kind of get my sight lines where I feel comfortable with it,” he said Friday.
He added, “The cut in this model is different so I’m going to have to get used to that. And again, the ball is not curving as much. I have a hard time aiming it, so it’s a strange sight.”
On the good to great shots, that’s absolutely the case. But Woods is not immune from hitting a downright stinker – especially since the stinger seems to have disappeared. There’s nothing pejorative about ditching the low, boring shot, but rather the colossal miss Woods used to have has changed. Instead of hitting an enormous fade – power fade, if you will – Woods has moved on to a sort-of trap hook, or so it appears.
That shift came up in a discussion with Hank Haney on Twitter earlier this season. (Follow the guy, he’ll help your game in 140 characters.)
What put that change into better perspective is the professional experience of Friend. The PGA Tour player said that a major advantage pros have over amateurs of any kind is that they have the best idea of any player as to what their go-to miss is. Not only do they have a repertoire of shots that work for them, but a standard miss that is predictable and can be managed even when things don’t go well.
Right now, Woods appears to have lost that go-to miss, hence cuing up Shooter McGavin references to David Hasselhoff. When Woods can round that part of his game out and adjust, even his bad shots get a whole lot better.
