Noted sports psychologist Bob
Rotella has worked with Harrington and Baker-Finch and dozens of other top pros. He sees the willingness to fail as one of the keys to success. “A lot of guys are afraid to try new
things, so they never get better,” says Rotella. “Or they stay the same while everyone else gets better, so in reality they’re getting worse. When you try new things you end up going back- ward for awhile—it takes a lot of pa- tience and persistence to keep sticking with it because you don’t always know when the payoff will come. And if the payoff hasn’t come, when do you give up and try something else? Risk is part of the process.” With great risk can come
great rewards. Nick Faldo had won 11 European tour events by the time he was 27 but he was get- ting by with a handsy swing that re- lied largely on timing. Seeking more consistency and precision, he spent three years with Leadbetter building an ultra-modern action that relied on his core muscles to power the club. Faldo would win six major champion- ships with that swing, securing his place in the pantheon and embed-
Tiger Woods works with coach Butch Harmon at the Poppy Hills driving range before the 2000 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Woods enjoyed his most dominant stretch under Harmon’s tutelage.
ding in the golf culture the notion that even great players can reach an entirely different level by transform- ing their swings. Woods, as his wont, took it to the extreme. A few weeks after his epochal
victory at the 1997 Masters, Tiger was watching a replay of the tourna- ment, and he judged his swing to be “awful.” As he would later say, “Sure, I had played well at Augusta, but that was because I had a great timing week. I knew it would be very hard to play consistently well from the positions my swing was in.” So more or less on the spot, he decided to blow it up and start over. Take a moment to appreciate this. Here was a 21-year-old kid who had just summoned one of the most dom- inant and consequential performances in the annals of sport. History beck- oned, to say nothing of hundreds of millions of dollars. And he had the courage and foresight to risk ev- erything to get fractionally better, even though he was already the best. For the next two years, Woods labored under Butch Harmon’s tutelage, trying to master a swing that
Ian Baker-Finch won the 1991 British Open, but then decided to change his swing to add distance. By 1995, he was completely lost, missing the cut in all 24 events he played, and only breaking par in two rounds.
was compact, more on-plane and more repeatable. The naysayers were plentiful during Woods’ lull. “A lot of players were beginning to think he was really overrated, that the Masters win was part of a hot streak that had ended,” says Paul Azinger. “Tiger had hardly won in the two years since, and don’t forget, he was replac- ing Greg Norman at No. 1, and most players thought he was the most over-
hyped player ever.” For Woods, the
changes finally clicked one day at the 1999
Byron Nelson Classic. He whipped out his flip-phone and
left Harmon a famous message: “I got it.” Over the ensuing three years, he played as if in a dream, smashing both records and opponents’ psyches. Many knowledgeable observers believe that the turn-of-the-century Woods golf swing was the best ever. In 2003 he won five tournaments, the money title and led the Tour in scoring average— a standout career for most guys—yet
26 /
NCGA.ORG / SPRING 2015
PHOTO: AP
PHOTO: AP
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