I agree with the theory too. What I’m still baffled by is how essentially no tour pros use the parallel plane swing. Almost all of them swing along shoulder plane.
Not many people know that Tiger was being influenced by Hank well before they began working together, via O'Meara. Look up Tiger in 2000 in Thailand warming up for that event. Even then he was taking his arms up, rotating them clockwise and trying to lay it off.
@@heyblondie28 Really? So you saw Hogan and Nicklaus, then? And Nelson? Or is this one of those "can be best ever only if it occurred since I've been watching the game" things? You wanna take a guess at how many years Woods led the tour in GIR or proximity to hole with various irons? He was the greatest overall player of his generation. Excellent with irons, yes. Unbelievable in the short game, and that's what people don't appreciate. And I agree a whole lot of people who don't know a thing about the game seem to rag on Haney for no reason whatsoever, and absolutely do not appreciate his work with Woods or anybody else. But on what basis was he "best in history" with the irons?
Great video. Tiger talent no question. But to get an older broken tiger to still win...need a coach. Read Haney’s book. It was really difficult for Hank. “The Package!” Had its flaws.
What made him worse off the tee mainly was going at it too hard and dropping his entire posture and head down a full 6-7 inches, then standing up through the ball and getting ahead of it. It's too bad, but he just couldn't resist going at it too hard too much of the time. If you'll notice, no matter which teacher he was with, the weeks when he hit the ball best was when that noise was at a minimum. His best with the driver and long clubs specifically was when he wasn't going full out. Same for the short irons, actually. Watch how far down he goes here at 1:11 (spot it against the tree in line with his cap): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qOr3tm8Bx94.html You just cannot tell me that a guy can _always_ make the right set of adjustments for a head that is driving downward as much as 7 inches or more. Not when the upper part of the spine is moving _that_ much. Obviously he did so many things so right, and he adjusted well most of the time. But I guarantee he would've hit 15% more fairways if he could've accepted 10-15 fewer yards and just not gone quite that hard at it. You could always see the changes when he was trying to kill one. So many players do the same things when they're getting really emphatic. There were times when his back was bothering him that he'd back off a little and actually hit it better. Watch the difference here where he's just making a swing for the camera (you'll have to use a finger or the cursor or something -- no reference points in the background): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ctl-aI-R_pM.html I don't really see where he was laid off with Hank, although he might've looked like it if it wasn't a full backswing. If you're short but on plane, you're going to look laid off when you're not. Here's 2000, and not laid off at all with driver: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-v8ORRvlV7W8.html
Hank in his book actually tried to get Tiger to not dip his head so much, especially before the 2010 Masters when Tiger was hitting the ball so bad. He held Tiger’s head to stop his head from moving so far down, and he said it worked on the range. And he said for most of the time when he was working with Tiger he never missed a shot on the range, he said Tiger was the worst he ever saw in taking his range swing to the course, he said he was that good on the range if he brought that swing to the course he would never lose.
Dead-honest truth, but the counterargument is that no matter how much talent you have and how adept you are at adjusting, developing a swing with the lowest number and degree of necessary adjustments is a good idea.
@@jacobr4558 if your point is that some players are going to do well even with swings that have flaws and compensations, that's true, of course. I'm just saying that on balance, the more compensation-free your swing is, generally the better a striker you'll end up being. But 1) if you've got something that's working well enough to make a living and win tournaments, you probably ought to ride that horse as far as you can; and 2) swing perfection isn't even close to all there is in the game anyway. Woods dominated not only because of soft (albeit talented) competition, but also because he was honest to God one of the best around the greens in any era of the game. I don't know how people miss that point. They act like it matters whether you hit a 6-iron 200 instead of 170, when actually it was his ability to get it up and down and make a million five-footers that separated him from the pack more than anything.
@@JonathanPoto Kind of like how somebody who's on a shooting streak in basketball really makes a lot of shots. I mean, it's self-defining ("on" weeks). The truth is that under either guy, he hit a lot of great shots, quite a few terrible shots, but cleaned up his messes better than anybody else. If you want to look at his "on" weeks, look at chipping and putting. It was unbelievable. There were weeks when he missed between zero and two putts from inside five feet in 72 holes, and made a ridiculous number of six-to-ten-footers. Both Harmon and his father understood the value of converting out to 10 feet. Those are the putts you have for par if you're having a shaky day, and they keep you in the tournament. If you're having a great day with the irons, those are the putts that give you the low scores. If you're going to miss them, you might as well have hit it to 50 feet and two-putted. I don't know that anybody in the game during his era understood this more and was more on-target with his practice with regard to this specific thing.
Tiger could have won as many or more majors by sticking with his first swing, or his butch swing, or even his Haney swing. Because it wasnt the swing theory that made tiger great. It was Tiger. His ability to will any shot he needed whether it was driver, iron, short game shot, or putt. He wasted time and stressed himself out trying to get used to and trust every new swing he fell in love with. Then eventually he would trust it again and win because he was Tiger effin' woods. I blame him for all the joy he cost me during those years he spent starting over learning another golf swing.
Not his first swing. He used to get stuck and he couldn't shape shots the way he needed to in order to consistently win majors. He knew it and Butch did to. It's why he switched and took off to a new level in 2000.
@@alg7096 no it wasn't. But it wasn't sustainable. Notice how with the swing change he won the US open by 15 and was the only guy under par. He won 8 majors after the swing change.
@@silverguard8105 yep and then a bunch of majors with another swing change so...hmmm wonder if it was the his mind or his first swing or 2nd swing or 3rd swing or 4th swing. fact is we ll never know what would have happened if he would have stuck with any of his swings. We ll never know how many years he lost learning one new swing pattern after another playing like crap inbetween all those different swings. Oh and how much damage you think he did relentlessly hitting ball all day every day trying to groove the next new swing. Had he stuck with his first swing he would have owned it sooner with less wear and tear hitting millions of balls learning the next swing. What we know for sure with tiger is the grass was always greener in pretty every part of his life so it makes sense he would have convinced himself that was true for every golf swing he had.
Tiger had the best swing in the history of golf around the 2000 era under Butch Harmon. Haney should’ve rejected his offer to be his coach and told him not to mess with it
Absolutely never had "the best swing in the history of golf," but it was awfully good, and he never stopped working hard to make it better even when he was dominating. Even people who aren't fans of Woods himself have to appreciate it.
@@emncaity Without question Tiger's swing in the 2000 era was by far the best swing in history. 9 wins in a year and 4 majors in a row including winning the us open by 15 shots. Name anybody who can touch that
@@joeldriver5356 LOL. You don't understand golf much do you? Maybe a golf swing but not golf. Golf is not how good you swing. It's how good you score. Tiger's main assets was mental toughness and getting the ball in the hole, and out working the field. Not his golf swing LMAO. Why do you think HE himself wanted to change his swing. Because the field caught up to him by learning from him. So if the field had the same mental toughness, the ability to get the ball in the hole, and worked just as hard as him, how do you raise above the field? You get a better more sound swing. No gray area. He hit more fairways and Girs under Haney than any other coach.
The thing is Tiger loved to practice and hit balls all day, so he needed to work on something to keep his interest, he was bored just doing maintenance on a swing. Plus he always thought that he could get better, but Hank said he never saw Tiger miss a shot on the range ever, until when he came back to play the Masters in 2010 after his cheating scandal broke and he had to take a break.
@@joeldriver5356 that doesn’t mean the swing was better. It means his overall game that week was on fire. Butch’s swing destroyed tigers left knee and Haney has the highest win percentage of all Tigers coaches so - read into that what you will. And also Hank told tiger when he first was working with him that he wanted him to win more tournaments by 1/2 shots. During that period Tiger won more and was more consistent , the trade off was that he won less tournaments by a massive margin because he gave up distance to be more accurate off the tee. And you also have to take into account that with the improvements in technology from the early 00’s other players had caught up to tigers distance meaning he was no longer playing from 50 yards further up than everyone else. Hence meaning he won less tournaments by huge margins
This "grey-area-theory" is so squishy. Playing pros have no idea of the golf swing, even Tiger which is interesting. He just did right because of his talent.
Maybe not quite "no idea," but it's absolutely true that they're players and not swing theorists. You really can't name an all-time-great player who got that way by getting superdetailed with mechanics. Even Hogan wrote his definitive book in less than a hundred pages, and a big chunk of that was illustrations. People who write books _based_ on his book go on for two or three hundred sometimes, then another two or three books after that, and 270 videos. One thing about Haney (in addition to being really solid technically -- I don't know why he catches so much grief from the Gankas-and-Foley-are-gods crowd, the millennial eejits) -- is that he really isn't complicated. He has fewer vids out here on YT than tons of guys who don't have nearly his creds or his quality, and his books are generally an attempt to simplify. You can be on the right plane, or above it, or below it. You can be too much this way, just right, or too much the other way. Too much inside (hardly ever), too much outside, or just right. Right plane tends to make other things work well but doesn't guarantee that they do. And so forth.
The stupidest thing Tiger ever did (besides cheat on the hottest wife in America) was change his swing from 2000. That was the best swing in the history of golf winning 4 majors in a row and 9 times in one season.
Hell no. The Foley decision in 2011 was super bad. Tiger could never win a major with Foley because of how foreign and improper the technique was for his natural talent.
He tried to keep it going for a while, didn't he? At the end of a killer 2002, he needed surgery on his knee. At that point, he wanted a change - or was forced to. Perhaps Harmon didn't see a need to change, so that was a problem between them. So, he looked for another method and liked the swing plane philosophy.... one taught by Haney (and really by Hogan if you want to go back farther). Go look at the early 2000 RU-vid video of Tiger and Butch Harmon talking about the swing changes made - the one where they are inside at Golf Channel learning center talking with Peter Kessler. It's right before winning four majors in a row. Amazingly, we see the swing flattening begin with that 2000 swing. We hear and see Tiger talk about flattening at the top, and getting the club in front. Hmmm.. kind of like Haney is explaining here, no?
