The Game Of Risk

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When Woods phoned his coach, Butch Harmon, after the 1997 Masters and told him he wanted to rebuild his swing, Harmon was confident his star pupil could pull it off. But he cautioned that results wouldn't come overnight--that Woods would have to pump more iron to get stronger, especially in his forearms; that it would take months to groove the new swing; that his tournament performance would get worse before it got better. Both men were aware of how such an apparent slump would be depicted by some golf commentators and fellow pros jealous of Woods' early success and fame. The Masters was a fluke, they would say; Woods was a flash in the pan. But Woods didn't hesitate. He and Harmon went to work in a kaizen sequence of 1) pounding hundreds of practice balls, 2) reviewing tapes of the swing, and 3) repeating both the above.

The changes were intended mainly to tame Tiger, who had arrived on the tour swinging full bore on most shots. He would violently rotate his hips and shoulders on his downswing, which produced prodigious tee shots. But sometimes his arms couldn't keep up with the rest of his body, and he'd yank the ball into the rough. Harmon had Woods restrict his hip turn and slow the rotation of his torso on the downswing. He weakened his grip slightly, turning the back of his left hand more square to the target. And as he gained more strength in his forearms, Woods held the clubface square to the target line--with his left wrist slightly bowed--for a crucial split second longer through impact. That produced more consistently straight shots than the old swing, in which Woods rolled his wrists earlier.

The new swing is so efficient that Woods can hit the ball as far as before--when he needs to. But one goal of the makeover was to help him control the ball better, even when he dialed down the power. That payoff didn't come quickly.

Woods won only one Tour event during the 19 months between July 1997 and February 1999. He often got frustrated and angry--at the thick rough where his shots often landed, at the press, at the demands of his fans and sponsors. Each time he lost, he declared that he was "a better golfer" than when he was winning in early 1997. "Winning," he said, "is not always the barometer of getting better."

Woods says he first knew he was coming out of the tunnel on a cool evening in May 1999 on the practice ground at the gated Isleworth community where he lives, outside Orlando, Fla. He was preparing for the Byron Nelson Classic near Dallas, and had worked his way up from wedge shots to the middle irons. Then suddenly, on one swing, he sensed--for the first time in a year--that he had done exactly what he had been trying to accomplish. The motion felt natural and relaxed, and the contact solid. The ball flew high and straight.

Excited, he rolled another ball into place but didn't make the same swing. Another ball. Didn't get it. Another ball. Didn't get it. Then he hit another pure shot. A couple of misses. Another pure one. And another. The good swings and shots began coming with greater frequency, like a bag of popcorn taking off in the microwave. "I was able to hit them with different clubs," Woods recalls, "and different shapes--fades, draws." What's more, each shot with the same club flew at the same trajectory and the same distance. He phoned coach Harmon at his Las Vegas base and said, "I think I'm back."