I've deleted my post about Tiger so that I could present a newer, edited version incorporating all the new bits of knowledge I've gleaned from Brian's recent posts:
Tiger is an elbow planer—Always has been.
He always has had steep shoulders—a low right shoulder—through the ball.
This is a mismatch for anything but an aim left cut/push, or a slinging draw. No problem, he has won majors with both shots working.
Ok, so that's easily visualized--elbow plane approach with steep shoulders and steep eventual plane, more rightward path with a face with a relatively high closure rate for the slinging draw.
Butch tried to get the eventual sweetspot path-plane more steep. Probably get the right shoulder higher as well. This could really work, and obviously did when he was "in the middle" of it all.
Ok, so this would seem to really work by getting Tiger's hand path to get more outward by feeling the right shoulder is staying higher (moving more outward, less under which moves the hands less steeply and more outward)--so path more left with a face whose closure rate is relatively faster than before so the face is probably pointing more left than before. So basically Butch was trying to move the face and path incrementally from right to left, closer to zero?
But an elbow planer will always have a problem with the feel of a steeper eventual plane, ask Phil.
If they make their natural shift with a steeper eventual plane then whereas before the shot was a slinging draw it has now turned into a hook and if the feel of the steeper eventual plane makes the player resort to "holding off" the face, which wasn't what was happening before with just the steep (but less steep than it is now) eventual plane, you've got yourself a push fade and you're dreading being stuck.
So, Haney had early sucess with Tiger allowing him to down shift to his natural elbow plane.
So Butch overcooks the high right shoulder idea in the sense that Tiger is no longer making his natural shift to the elbow plane and Hank let Tiger make this natural shift.
But Haney's backswing forced Tiger to over drop, and Tiger had never been so laid off—two rights+the weaker grip. And a pink slip.
Tiger over drops, under plane and unless he has a strong enough grip or get his eventual sweet spot steeper (like Butch wanted but hard to do with a grip weaker than Butch liked) he's back to the same problem he had with Butch--right-to-right. Tiger could play really good golf under Haney when he could steepen his eventual sweet spot enough. A good example of this was in 2007 when he won Bridgestone by 8 shots then backed that up by winning the PGA the following week. Here are some pictures from the 2007 Bridgestone tourney:
Check out this SwingVision analysis by Kostis from the 2007 PGA where he talks about how Tiger does a good job of "swinging his hands and arms past his body"--this was during the second round where he shot a record-tying 63 (with a lip-out putt on 18 for 62):
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Brian noticed the same changes Kostis was referring to:
Fighting a below plane start down, which even someone with Tiger’s strength can’t get “back on top of”...He has made some fairly noticeable changes since the (British) Open Championship a couple of weeks ago. He was standing closer to the ball, swinging more upright with less left arm rotation going back, and had much less of the Hogan-esque reverse swivel finish.
When Tiger was at his prime with Butch in 2000 he was talking about making the eventual sweet spot steeper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PplQjd6ZP88#t=5m06s
Tiger, when he was with Butch and Haney, also used the image of "shaking hands with the target":
One of my main keys to hitting the ball farther and straighter is full extension down the target line. Reminding myself to "shake hands with the target" gets me in the right position
From:
Tiger Tips: Extend for power and accuracy: Golf Digest
That quote came during the time he was working with Hank but Butch teaches the same idea:
After impact, your arms should extend toward the target. Think of it as shaking hands with the target using your right hand. Once you're holding a club, you will get it pointing down the target line with the toe pointing up. This is a good way to hit the ball straighter.
From:
Pocket Tips : Best Teachers in Your State | Golf Digest | Find Articles at BNET
This is also a position that Brian demonstrates in the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZOwIHeV-xw#t=6m28s
Sean's desire to have Tiger leftward, makes him HAVE TO have his right shoulder even lower, and there is a serious concavity in his hand path.
I'm taking leftward to mean getting Tiger to do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSxRYzWWGKQ#t=51s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jiQG4LMTtA#t=27s
Regardless Tiger's attempting to execute a swing with a combination he never really has per this post by Kevin:
He's fighting a lifetime and a million shots with a certain feel.
That's the feel of steep shoulders. When he was the Tiger we all knew:
Tiger's fighting the feel of steep shoulders on the downswing--look at this iron shot taken from a practice round at Accenture last week:
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Here's what Jack Nicklaus wrote in "Golf My Way"--maybe Tiger should pay attention to this if he wants to get back to being the old Tiger and if he wants to beat Jack's record:
If he is a good player, his swing is obviously finely controlled. Yet there is often about it an element of abandoning of freedom, in the way the club releases through the ball: almost as though it were whistling along of its own volition. Over-all, to me, this open-to-closed type of golfer makes the game look graceful, physically "easy"--sometimes you might say, almost symphonic. There rarely appears to be much stress or strain about this manner of striking the ball. The relatively difficult way to play golf, as I see it, is with a swing in which the clubface habitually closes (turns counterclockwise) as it goes back and opens (turns clockwise) on its return to find squareness at the ball. Again, these movements may not be excessive, but to me the resulting complex swing often looks more contrived, forced, less natural. I associate this kind of swing with a flattish plane, a restricted arc and either a blocked or chopped-off finish.
Jack's words were prescient and were echoed by Kevin here:
The better the player the more hands and arms are in use.
And this is supported by scientific findings:
The following are two of the findings in our Project 1.68 study.
• The path of the "grip point" (identified as the point on the grip underneath the overlap location of thehands) in many golf swings, should reach its lowest point near the right leg, well before impact.
• Approximately 70-75% of the work the body does in the golf downswing, goes into moving the body. Meaning only the remainder actually goes into the powering the golf club.
The Pivot is spending 70-75% of its power moving itself.
The shoulder complex, arms, and hands are way more responsible for power than we were told to believe.
So where's Tiger at now? According to Jack, playing golf "the relatively difficult way". Tiger is trying to swing according to Foley's model, and unlike with Haney, Tiger is no longer laid off. Tiger is opening the clubface with a concave hand path and low right shoulder from a position that is much closer to being across the line than he used to be under Haney. Furthermore, since starting his most recent swing change Tiger does seem to be using a "chopped off"/sawed off finish frequently:
Nick Starchuk, who posts videos on YouTube under the name "smartergolflessons", used to work with Sean Foley at Glen Abbey (
A day with the Sean’s | Nick Starchuk | CanadianGolfer.com) and seems to be "in the know" about what Tiger and Sean are working on--in fact, he has a video on what Tiger still needs to work on:
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At about the :53 second mark you will see the following text flash across the screen:
"Right shoulder too high"
Isn't that interesting? If optimal means matching the eventual sweet spot plane with the appropriate shoulder rotation then Foley's preference for a flatter eventual sweet spot plane would call for shoulders that were less steep (i.e. a right shoulder that was higher rather than the lower position exhibited in players matching a steeper eventual sweet spot plane with steeper shoulders). I think what Starchuk is recommending (which may be what Tiger and Foley are working on) is to get the shoulder rotation less steep but making the suggestion differently. What Brian refers to as a high right shoulder socket position Starchuk refers to as a low right shoulder on a golfer that has not extended early--Starchuk thinks that Tiger's "chest extended early" (per the text seen at around the :44 second mark of his video). All in all it seems that Tiger's probably on the right track towards optimizing his swing towards the Hogan model, which is a move combining components in a way Tiger has never before done and is probably not natural for him--unbelievably difficult and impressive. As Kevin stated:
Tiger grew up and dominated golf with a slightly strong grip, outward hand path, wide arc and a steep downswing shoulder plane.
If he makes the changes he's apparently making work to the point of dominating again (we know he'll win again, he always does), it will be the most impressive thing ever.
If you take the above components and change the width, hand path, tilts, etc its like making Fred Couples into Nick Faldo. Not being critical at all of the changes but it just dawned on me how difficult that would be.
If he can make the change in shoulder rotation and straighten out the concavity of his hand path, he'd probably be more optimized component wise than he ever has. He looks, dare I say, "close" here (from the same practice round at Accenture):
As Brian stated here:
It is obvious to me, Tiger and Sean want the shoulder higher.
Ala Sergio, Hogan, Fowler, Rory....
If he can do that....watch out!
However, that raises an interesting, perhaps philosophical, question. Is utilizing components that come unnaturally to a golfer optimal? We'll just have to wait and see if (when?) Tiger is able to make all of these technical changes. If he can't, we may be seeing more of this:
