Wednesday, July 18, 2001
Can Tiger get back in the swing of things
By Joe Logan
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England — Tiger Woods clearly was not
in form at the U.S. Open. At
the Buick Classic and the Western Open in subsequent weeks, he
looked completely out of gas.
However, to hear the No. 1 player in the world tell it on
Tuesday, he is back. Woods is rested
after a leisurely, weeklong fishing trip in Ireland with his buddy,
Mark O’Meara. With the aid of his
swing guru Butch Harmon, he has also fixed the minor glitch in
his swing that compounded his woes in
the U.S. Open, the Buick, and the Western. Now, with mind, body,
spirit and swing refreshed,
Woods says he is ready to go about the business of defending his
title this week in the 130th British
Open.
“I am hitting the ball better, yeah, definitely,”
a confident, relaxed Woods said Tuesday.
Woods has never been one to boast or publicly revel in his
domination of the game. We have all
seen what he has done.
If the British tabloids are to believed, Harmon, Woods’
coach and confidant, is back with a
vengeance. In Tuesday’s Sun, Harmon is quoted as proclaiming
that Woods could win this week
wearing a blindfold.
“He is that good and in a different league from the rest,”
the Sun quotes Harmon as saying.
Whether Harmon actually uttered those words or not, he will
not get any argument about the state
of Woods’ game from Thomas Bjorn, the talented Dane who raised
his profile considerably in March
by outdueling Woods on the final hole to win the Dubai Desert
Classic. After playing a 6 a.m. practice
round with Woods on Tuesday, Bjorn came away shaking his head.
“And he looks like he is right back where he is at his
best,” Bjorn said afterward.
Bjorn has some perspective. During their first few rounds
together, Bjorn said, he stood
intimidated and awestruck as Woods pulled off one impossible shot
after another.
“He is capable of doing things that no other man on the
planet can do with a golf club,” said
Bjorn.
Paired with Woods during the first two rounds of the U.S.
Open, Bjorn could see that he was not
on his game. It’s not that he was completely out of sync;
he was just not his usual self. Now, with
Woods’ work on his swing in the past few days, Bjorn can
see a difference.
“I see some changes in his game since then,” Bjorn
said. “His strike looks a lot better. And he
looks very confident. He looks very relaxed. When he is like he
is right now, he is very difficult to
compete with. He looks very, very good at the moment.”
At the U.S. Open, where Woods got off to a balky start and
never got on track, one theory was
that the tight, tree-lined Southern Hills course simply was not
suited to his brand of power game.
Woods did not buy into that theory then, and he did not Tuesday.
“For any player, I don’t care if it is a short course
or a long course, if you are playing well, you
are going to score well whether it sets up for you or not,”
Woods said. “Unfortunately for me, I was
not really hitting the golf ball that well at the U.S. Open. Consequently,
I was not able to contend
down the stretch.”
Afterward, Woods did not take the time to work out the kink
in his swing. He went directly to the
Buick Classic, a tournament staged by one of his major sponsors,
and shot an opening-round 75. The
next week, instead of working on his swing, he went fishing in
Alaska. When he headed to Chicago
the following week for the Western Open, he spent Monday and Tuesday
staging a youth clinic and
hanging out playing video games with his pal Michael Jordan. The
result was an opening-round 73.
Only in recent days, after the fishing trip to Ireland, has
Woods begun to truly concentrate on
repairing his swing. Tuesday, on the range at Lytham, he was studying
the tinkering to his swing on
video.
“I’m working on this swing plane and my left arm,
trying to get that a little bit better, my left wrist,”
Woods explained. “The top, then my rotation of my wrist and
hips on the way through.”
That may sound like golfing gobbledygook to most of us, but
to Woods, who generates 130
m.p.h. club-head speed with his driver, it all matters and it
all makes sense.
Whether Woods is truly back in form will be revealed over
the coming days of the Open. Not
even Woods himself seems to know for sure. Tuesday, listening
to all the questions, comments and
analysis from reporters, fans and even swing gurus, Woods could
only shake his head and chuckle.
“I have come to the understanding that no matter what
anyone says, whether it is friends of mine
or the press or anybody, no one is going to hit the shot for me,”
he said. “Whether the things you write
are good or bad, it doesn’t matter. There is not one single
comment that has ever hit a shot for me.”
© 2001, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Visit Philadelphia Online, the Inquirer’s World Wide
Web site, at http://www.philly.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
Send the URL (Address)
of This Story to A Friend:
|
