While Tiger Woods’ current and former coaches duke it out in print and on Twitter over their famous student, the golfer himself is engaged in a far more massive overhaul of his golf game than previously advertised.
Start over. “I have to change everything,” Woods told reporters on the eve of this week’s Cadillac Championship at Doral’s TPC Blue Monster. “It’s the whole release pattern. How I release the putter, how I release the short game, how I release irons, drivers, they are all related. You just can’t have one swing and not have another; they are all interrelated.”
That’s a whole lot of revamping, especially for a golfer who could always count on his short game even if other parts of his play went sideways. That’s clearly no longer the case for the world’s No. 5, who has watched his stats sink along with his ranking. Woods was tops in scrambling and 23rd in putting two years ago. Now he’s 94th and 146th, respectively.
No wonder his self-assurance is waning. "I've been through periods where I've hit it bad. And, yeah, is your confidence not where it needs to be? Of course," Woods said -- last August, before the 2010 PGA Championship and after his worst performance as a professional at the Bridgestone Invitational. "I've been there. We've all been there."
He reiterated Wednesday that he was still not exactly brimming with bravado, which is understandable given his one-and-done outing at last month’s Match Play Championship.
Stripped down. What’s difficult for us mere mortals -- and apparently former mentors Hank Haney and Butch Harmon -- to figure, is what compelled Woods to strip his entire game down to the bone. Indeed, the two guys who tutored Tiger back in the day were taken aback by his admission that he was undergoing such an extreme game makeover.
"I never instituted any change to his putting or for that matter his chipping or his pitching," Haney told CBSSports.com’s Steve Elling.
It was also news to Harmon that instructor Sean Foley had Woods employing the same stroke from driver to putter. "Did he really say that?" Harmon asked Elling. "I am surprised to hear that."
Should be an interesting week at Doral.
Woods will tee it up Thursday and Friday with long-time rival Phil Mickelson and one of the world’s hottest golfers, Graeme McDowell. Read how GMac has the edge in the contest of golf’s Nos. 4, 5, and 6.
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