Tiger Woods announced yesterday on his website that he and his current swing instructor, Sean Foley, were ending "...our professional relationship." During his professional career, Tiger Woods has had three swing coaches: Butch Harmon (1996-2003), Hank Haney (2004-2010), and Sean Foley (2010-2014). Tiger's performance on the PGA Tour has been declining since his time with Butch Harmon (see the record here), but he has also been through an infidelity scandal and a long list of injuries. But, golf at the level Tiger Woods has played is a big time sport and, in the words of the Golf Channel's Brandel Chamblee, "...if Tiger Woods were a football team and Sean Foley were the coach, he'd have been fired a long time ago." And now, the speculation starts about who will be next.
Paddy Power, a bookmaker based in Ireland, put together the odds (listed above with more analysis here) on who might take over as Wood's next swing coach. The even odds go to Butch Harmon and the 500/1 odds go to Elin Nordegren, Wood's ex-wife, with slightly better odds on Wood's mother, Kultida Woods at 300/1. One name in the middle of the pack at 33/1 caught my attention and that was Steve Stricker.
Stricker has already given Woods putting advice, pictured above at the Doral Country Club practice green (with Sean Foley looking on). Steve Stricker's career on the PGA Tour is winding down (he is a few years away from eligibility for the Senior tour) and he has joked in the past (here) about offering his services to Woods. Of all the people on Paddy Power's list, Stricker is the only one that has played head-to-head with Tiger Woods and, if Woods were to take Lee Trevino's advice (I can't find this quote, but I know I heard it from Trevino) "Never take lessons from someone you can beat". Trevino's advice would rule everyone on the list out except Stricker.
So, just to have some speculative fun, what would coaching from Steve Striker look like? Stricker himself staged a spectacular comeback after playing miserable golf in the early 2000's and finally loosing his tour card (playing privileges on the PGA Tour) in 2005. In 2006, he was voted "Comeback Player of the Year" on the PGA Tour and was then ranked 14th in the World. How did he do it?
In Ben Hogan's words, Stricker "dug it out of the dirt" (read the full story here) or more literally "the snow". Stricker spent his Winter practice time in an open-ended heated trailer at the far end of Cherokee Country Club's practice range in Madison, WI. Stricker's long-time golf coach is his father in-law, Dennis Tiziani, head pro at Cherokee. Exactly what role Tiziani played in Stricker's swing makeover is a little unclear, but it seems that Stricker mostly worked it out by himself.
For me it's hard to believe that Tiger Woods does not have the necessary golf knowledge to work out, by himself, the swing changes that he needs. Many well known and excellent players from prior generations (Hogan and Trevino stand out for me) had no swing coaches. But attitudes have changed. It's now believed that the best players have to be coachable. The counter argument to the current conventional wisdom is PGA instructor E. A. Tischler's contention that you need to Own Your Golf Swing. When you're out there in the middle of a competition and things aren't going right (as they have often done recently for Tiger Woods), you have to figure out what the problem is and pull things together. Your swing coach can't be out there giving you advice. You have to own what you are doing.
Needless to say, E. A. Tischler was not on Paddy Power's list but Tischler's concept is very important. Steve Stricker owns his own golf swing. So did Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino. They dug it out of the dirt, knew what to do when it wasn't working and had great golf careers. My fantasy is that Steve Stricker would say to Tiger: "Come to Wisconsin. Spend the Winter in the trailer. Dig it out of the snow. Everything you need to know is in your head. Find it."
NOTE: A small cottage industry has developed criticizing Wood's time with Sean Foley. Here are a few videos to give you the flavor of the criticism. The final video provides another speculation not on Paddy Power's list. The Sean Foley left-side dominant swing (in E. A. Tischer's system) is often described as being close to the Stack & Tilt Swing. A criticism of Foley's work with Woods (in the first video) was that Woods was trying to hit a fade which is not suited to the Foley swing. The Stack & Tilt swing is a draw swing (one of it's potential weaknesses) but would actually suit Woods better if he wanted to continue with the left anchor swing.
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