It wasn”t all that long ago that he was arguably the best golfer in the world. Every time he teed it up, whether it was in a regular event on one of the world tours or at a major championship, he was on the short list of favorites to win. And win he did. While his greatest golfing moments occurred at such historic venues as The Old Course at St. Andrews and Augusta National, he played so totally top-notch that he accumulated wins in bundles.
True, he was never a very accurate driver of the golf ball. Earlier in his career, he was known for being a feel player. He got up to the ball, hit it, and pulled off one miracle shot after another. His short game was nothing short of brilliant. He got up and down from the most improbable of places, seemingly made every putt he needed to make, and was the toast of the golfing world.
He also had a major impact upon golf from well outside the ropes. He was a true ambassador of the game, and many of the young stars of today attribute their introduction to golf based on watching him win a memorable major championship at one of the game”s noted shrines. He was colorful, demonstrative and overly emotional on the golf course. People paid to see him play. He was the face of his circuit. People took up the game because of him. They turned on their television sets when he was on the weekend leaderboard. Yes, it wasn”t all that long ago that he was the best golfer in the world.
But then things started to go south. He had nagging injuries. He started to listen to all the whispers about his natural golf swing. He started to seek out swing gurus. While all of them had reputations of note, they seemed to compound his struggles. His misses were more profound. The putts didn”t drop with the frequency that they once had. He started missing cuts and began to post scores that were way too high. He was in his mid-30s and his rock-solid golf game was a mere memory. He was lost.
He had been on golf”s center stage since he was a teenager. He had won his first major as a 22-year-old and had been the people”s champion for close to 15 years. Then it all went away with too many swing thoughts, too many missed putts, too many injuries, a divorce, and too much chaos in his life.
Sound familiar? It should, because I”ve been recollecting the ups and downs of the golfing career of the late Seve Ballesteros of Spain. He was a young phenom, almost winning the British Open as a teenager, capturing his first British Open title as a 22-year-old, and receiving international acclaim as the savior of European golf well before the time he reached his 30th birthday. Yet by his mid-30s, he had lost the naturalness of his golf swing and his golf game. He doubted his swing, he enlisted various coaches to assist him, and he fell further and further down the Order of Merit and the World Rankings.
It does seem eerily familiar when one considers all that is going on in the career of Tiger Woods. Woods” swing is a total mess. He has revamped it during three different segments of his career, first in the late 1990s under the direction of Butch Harmon, some five years after that with Hank Haney, and now under the watchful eye of Sean Foley, a proponent of the stack-and-tilt method of the golf swing. It will forever remain one of golf”s big mysteries as to the thought process that went into Woods” desire to change his swing. He violated rule No. 1 on the physics of the golf swing, namely, if it ain”t broken, don”t fix it. I just can”t imagine Lee Trevino changing his golf swing after winning one of his six majors, and yet Tiger has done it three times.
Regardless of all the kudos Woods has received for his impressive power game, it was his phenomenal short game coupled with his mental toughness that made him the greatest golfer of his generation. His golfing highlight film features chip-ins and long, curling putts that fell at the most important moments in golf”s most important championships. It”s because of Tiger Woods that Sergio Garcia, Bobby May, Chris DiMarco (twice) and Woody Austin don”t own major titles. It”s because of Tiger Woods that Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els don”t have a few more major championship trophies on their mantles in their living rooms.
The million-dollar question is a simple one. Has Tiger Woods flamed out as a 35-year-old in much the same way Seve Ballesteros did, or is this a mid-career slump similar to the one Jack Nicklaus experienced in the late 1970s?
While only time will tell, I do contend that Woods is going about all this the wrong way. It”s not worth arguing the validity of swing changes and coaches. However, the only way all this will make sense is for Woods to play more, put his new swing on the line, and see how it holds up under pressure. Pounding balls on the range is not the solution. There are a lot of great range rats out there who can”t play the course.
Tiger should have played at Greensboro last week in an effort to get into the PGA Tour playoffs. Els and Padraig Harrington adjusted their schedules, played well at Greensboro, and moved up enough places to get into the first round this week. Tiger will be at home for the next four weeks because he didn”t qualify. Playing at the Donald Ross-designed Sedgefield Country Club would have been a fairer look at his development following the debacle of the PGA at watery Atlanta Athletic. Former champs at Greensboro include Sam Snead (eight times), Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson from golf”s past as well as Seve Ballesteros, Mark O”Meara and Steve Elkington from the modern era. Historically, Greensboro has rewarded great shot makers. Tiger should have played.
Woods should also consider teeing it up at Las Vegas, Disney World and even San Jose during the PGA Tour”s Fall Finish in October. Woods won at Vegas and Disney during his abbreviated rookie season of 1996. Otherwise, Tiger”s schedule at this moment calls for his return to the Australian Open in November followed by a possible captain”s pick at the President”s Cup the following week.
If Tiger Woods is going to return to golf”s center stage, he needs to get off his Howard Hughes kick and leave the Florida mansion to tee it up. He wants to win more majors than Nicklaus, but right now he looks more and more like a future version of Seve.
