Tiger Woods explained why he often doesn’t pay attention when he hits.
to YouTube
Maybe you were as confused as Scottie Scheffler was about two years ago when TaylorMade cameras caught him talking to Tiger Woods and the 15-time major winner confessed a strange fact.
“When I flush it, I don’t take over” Woods told Scheffler while on a freeway during a day of shooting commercials at TaylorMade. Scheffler had seen that Woods’ swing seemed to have barely moved any ground, even after Woods got several iron shots off the ground.
“What’s going on with no partitions?” Scheffler asked.
“Why do you need to do a split,” Woods replied.
“I don’t know, I’m asking you,” said Scheffler, desperate for a legitimate explanation.
Woods was “sorting it out,” he said that day, eventually landing on the quote above. When he is fried it, he does not get divot. Scheffler was puzzled. We were all puzzled. And because Woods doesn’t make many public appearances these days, it was hard for us to know what he meant. Early in his career, Woods says he was more “zero” which meant he wasn’t cutting the ball too much and wasn’t too steep with his swing. He was “wide and wide,” he saidmeaning he had a wide backswing and ended up wide through contact.
But even with all of that in mind, is it really possible that the best irons player who ever lived could barely interact with the terrain, even in these later years when he was taking it within driving distance? Enter golfer on YouTube Grant Horvat and a video he recently made with Woods. Finally, the sequel we’ve been waiting for.
Horvat is a TaylorMade golfer and was enjoying one of the perks that comes with his equipment deal: getting one-on-one time with Woods, a TaylorMade employee himself. In the middle of a little tee box lesson — where Horvat was working to develop height with his woods and consistency with his driver — the two broached the subject of interacting with the terrain.
“I think you threw everyone for a little spin when you said you weren’t participating.” Horvat said in the video below.
“Well it depends on what shot I’m playing,” Woods interjected.
“Well, you said when you hit it best, you don’t accept any provisions.”
“Well, it’s true,” Woods said. “It is true. When I’m hitting my best. But if I have to hit a batter, I’m going to hit a grounder. I will tilt the shaft. I’m going to get ground. Now, if I’m here rinsing it, no smell, no, I don’t take it … it depends on how the smell is.
“Now, if I’m in that range, I’d feel that wind in me a little bit, I’d start to rely on it. Now, if we had no wind, and I’m hitting shots with no consequence or distance – I’m just sending it – yeah, I don’t get much ground. I delete it.”
Finally, a context we’ve all been waiting for. (Okay, maybe everyone else had moved on.) When Woods is warming up and taking swings with no real purpose other than making hard contact, he won’t be worried. It can serve as good advice for the amateurs out there who are endlessly focused on tilting the shaft forward and catching the ball in the grass. There is a time and a place for that, and it may not be as frequent as you think.
Woods went on to say that his moments of interaction on the course are mostly chip shots, not pars, which also makes sense. The two must be different, as a cut involves an out-to-in swing path, and the further that swing path moves, the steeper the attack, the more ground the club will cut. Likewise, the swing path of the draw – inside-out – has all kinds of room for the club to move, allowing the angle of attack to be shallower and not automatically catch the ground.
One thing is clear when you listen to Woods: every single swing presents a unique opportunity, and each of those opportunities is imbued with context that determines the impact he’s trying to create. Even a slight breeze in his face on the driving range sends Woods’ brain into firing mode. But if there’s not much wind at all, you might not even know it was there…washing it away.
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