Butch Harmon on Tiger

[Gxgolfer]

Excerpt from his book in Golf Digest

Golf Digest Link

One of the reasons I believe Tiger felt he needed to change his swing was to increase his driving distance. When he first turned pro, Tiger drove it past everybody by a healthy margin. Davis Love III and John Daly were close, but no one consistently hit it as far and in as many fairways as did Tiger. When he needed to blast it past an opponent, he had that ability. Then, in about 2001, players started catching up with him. Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh all started hitting the ball close to, if not as long as, Tiger, and occasionally those players and others hit it by him. He never admitted it, but I believe that bothered him. He knew he generated more clubhead speed than anyone else out there, and he had gotten even faster since he'd started working out in his mid-20s, so being challenged off the tee was not something that was supposed to happen. When it did, I think he decided he needed to make some changes.

I believe that Tiger's perceived loss of distance (or the fact that the rest of the tour started catching up to him in the distance category) had more to do with his equipment than his golf swing. He insisted on staying with a 43 3/4-inch steel-shafted driver with a smaller head, while his fellow-competitors were playing 45-inch graphite shafts and jumbo titanium heads.

[ultra45]

All i ever hear tiger say his reason for change is he needs to get better... if he's not getting better he's falling behind... if he's not one of the longest guys anymore he doesn't have the advantage he had and he's losing ground on the field... he wouldn't have driven that 360 par 4 with that short little driver.... it took a launch monitor and scientific data to finally make him switch to a big driver...the only problem now is when he's attempts to hit the driver he's trying to hit it stupidly far just because he can although he's still way better than average on tour hitting 3 wood off the tee... perfect example is the british.... was it 1 driver all week??? guys like him, daly, watson, etc.. would probably finish a lot better hitting their 3 woods past their competitors drivers and have more drives in play and less big numbers on the card.... maybe this year its improve distance with the driver... next year he'll work on keeping in the right area code...