[johnnyhusker82]

back in the swing of things
After more than 20 years of covering everything from election campaigns to the Olympic Games, Robert Lusetich has turned his focus to writing about his first love — golf. He is the author of Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season.

PRINT RSS 134 comments »Updated Aug 26, 2010 9:42 PM ET
Looking like a man who decided that this would be the first day of the rest of his life, Tiger Woods put the turmoil of 2010 behind him and shot his best round of the year to take the early lead at The Barclays. In his first tournament since his divorce was finalized, Woods made seven birdies against a lone bogey to shoot 65 Thursday on a rain-softened Ridgewood Country Club.

More impressive was that he hit 13 of 14 fairways and 15 greens in regulation, by far his best ball-striking display since returning to golf in April.

"It's exciting to hit the ball flush like this again," Woods said later, "It's something I've been missing all year."

Not that he wasn't happy with just his third score in the 60s in 22 rounds, but Woods was determined to remain on a more even keel.

Perspective, when it comes to him, is elusive.

When he was asked if he felt like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, Woods shrugged.

"I can't really say that's the case," he said.

It was the answer of a man who's still grieving over the loss of his family.

"As far as golf-wise, it was nice to put it together," he added.

And that's all that Woods can do now: come to terms with the realities of his family life, move forward and play some good golf, as he did Thursday.

That's not to say that he hasn't tried to play well throughout this year. The difference on Thursday was that he wasn't fighting his swing.

Back in Orlando, one could forgive a smile breaking out across the face of Sean Foley, the 35-year-old Canadian swing coach who's been working with Woods for the past few weeks.

Foley's a maverick kind of thinker — he'll quote Voltaire and cites among his heroes men as disparate as John Wooden and Malcolm X — and he's also become the hottest swing coach on the Tour with a stable that includes Hunter Mahan, Sean O'Hair and Justin Rose.

Last week, Foley, who got the SOS call after Woods finished next-to-last at the Bridgestone Invitational earlier this month, had the world's No. 1 player hitting balls for two hours in his bare feet as part of a training regimen he's designed to wean Woods out of his bad swing habits.

"If you're hitting in bare feet, when you get to the top, you can't have a violent change of direction. You just can't or you'll fall over. So instead of having me say that, why not have him feel it?" Foley told me.
Foley's tried to make three major changes in Woods' swing: not letting his head sway off the ball in the backswing, turning his shoulders steeper, more toward the ball, and not tilting backward on the downswing, which causes the "stuck" feeling Woods has often complained about.

"We need to get rid of excessive movement and get the body in the right positions," Foley says. "The goal is to hit it more consistent with less (dependence on) timing."

Woods hasn't completely climbed aboard the Foley Express — which, to be clear, isn't a watered down version of the Stack'n'Tilt — just yet.

"I know it's going to take a long time," Woods said of what would be the fourth major swing change of his career, "That's the reason (for) the hesitation."

"I just haven't quite figured out which way I'm going to go with it yet."

In Foley's favor is the fact that Woods felt like he's grasped the principles well enough to fix his swing after a bad warm-up on the range.

"If I had the same warm-up at the PGA (two weeks ago) I wouldn't have known how to fix it because it was too new," Woods said.

Though he hit some stellar shots — the drive on the short par-4 fifth to 15 feet stands out — it was his consistency that was most impressive.

Give Woods enough looks at birdie and he's going to drop more than his fair share.

Foley, who was working on the range with Parker McLachlin in Florida while Woods was playing, isn't sure how the story will end.

"I think at its core, Tiger's swing's pure," he says.

"What I've got to do is to get rid of all the counterintuitive moves that were introduced in order to offset something else that didn't need to be there."

Golfers, Foley thinks, get "un-taught" out of their natural instincts by teachers who try to fit the proverbial square pegs into round holes.

"You want to know what I want to do with Tiger? I'm not saying it's a great movie or anything, but there's that scene in (The Legend of Bagger Vance) where Bagger Vance says, ‘You've got to find your true and authentic swing'," he says.

"And that's what we're going to do. We're going to find his Tiger Woods swing again."

Whether they do or not, Foley's quite sure that Woods is far from finished as a golfer.

"It was always for him about being the best ever and I don't think that's changed," he says.

"When he gets some clarity in his mind again, who knows, I'm wondering if maybe we haven't even seen the best of him yet?"

[mNhhh]

[johnnyhusker82]

mNhhh, on 27 August 2010 - 05:37 PM, said:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Bewbies.

[johnnyhusker82]

Tiger struggles in Round 2 at Barclays
Tiger didn't have the same kind of success in Round 2 as he did Thursday at The Barclays.

Aug 27, 2010 6:29 PM ET
PARAMUS, N.J. (AP)
Tiger Woods was poised to take control at the Barclays on Friday. Instead, he went the other way.

Woods missed a 20-inch putt for one of four bogeys over the last eight holes and shot a 2-over 73. The difference from the rest of the year is it only cost him the lead, not a chance of winning.

Jason Day, the 22-year-old Australian who won his first PGA Tour event earlier this year, made three straight birdies late in his round and finished with a good par for a 4-under 67 that gave him a one-shot lead.

Day was at 8-under 134, one shot ahead of Kevin Streelman (63) and Vaughn Taylor (70).

Woods was four shots behind going into the weekend, and confident he could make up the deficit.

''You play around here and post good numbers, you'll move up the board,'' he said. ''The guys aren't going to be tearing this place apart.''

Two years after narrowly missing a playoff at Ridgewood Country Club, Streelman ran off six birdies in a seven-hole stretch for a 63 that will put him in the final group Saturday.

Stewart Cink raised his Ryder Cup hopes with a 69 that put him in a group at 136, while the pack another shot behind included Adam Scott (71) and three-time major champion Padraig Harrington, who had a 68.

Europe's Ryder Cup team will be decided Sunday evening, and Harrington can only hope to be one of three captain's picks.

''The last thing I wanted was to come here and miss the cut, or play poorly here,'' Harrington said.

Paul Casey, also hopeful of a Ryder Cup pick, shot 69 and was in the group with Woods that also included Zach Johnson.

Woods at least will keep his No. 1 ranking for another week. Phil Mickelson missed the cut, then left The Barclays through a side door without speaking to reporters.

Woods wants to play on the U.S. Ryder Cup team as a captain's pick - the American selections won't be announced until Sept. 7 - and the desire alone makes him a worthy candidate. His game is starting to show plenty of promise, too.

Woods went to 8-under par when he hit his approach to 5 feet for birdie on the 18th. Heading to the front nine, the easier of the two nines at Ridgewood, he had only 93 yards to the hole and a wedge in his hand. Woods went 40 feet long, left his first putt 6 feet short and made that to escape with par.

That set the tone for the rest of his round.

Posing over his tee shot on the par-3 second, it sailed over the green and left Woods a tough chip. As he started his swing, a photographer took a series of pictures. ''Not in my swing,'' Woods said as he made contact, sending it 25 feet long for his first bogey.

The real damage came on No. 5, the 291-yard hole where Woods hit driver to 15 feet in the opening round. With the pin close to the front, he would have had to take something off a driver, so he opted to lay up. The plan worked fine until Woods putted to just inside 2 feet from the fringe, then missed the par putt.

''Ball was sitting in a hole,'' Woods said. ''I could see it. I was trying to hit up on it and hook it like I normally do. I didn't do it.''

He made bogey on the next hole with one of his few poor iron shots that came up short, then missed his only fairway of the day on the ninth hole and made one last bogey.

Throughout the day, the problem was putting. On three straight holes on the front nine, he ran putts some 4 feet beyond the hole and had to work for his pars.

''I didn't have the speed at all on the greens,'' he said. ''I was leaving it way short or blowing it by the hole. And it caught up with me.''

Woods has failed to break par in 15 of his last 19 rounds, although at least this time he's still in the game. Making the cut was the priority, and now he needs a strong weekend to set himself up for the other three playoff events. He is No. 112 in the standings, and the top 100 advance next week to Boston.

''I didn't hit it bad at all,'' Woods said. ''I hit it really good. As I said, I didn't putt really well. I hit it as good as I did yesterday. If I don't make putts, I don't score.''

[johnnyhusker82]

Tiger struggles, still working on swing It wasn't just the first hole; Tiger Woods struggled all round.

After more than 20 years of covering everything from election campaigns to the Olympic Games, Robert Lusetich has turned his focus to writing about his first love — golf. He is the author of Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season.

Aug 28, 2010 11:15 PM ET
PARMAMUS, N.J.
It used to be that taking Tiger Woods or taking the field at a golf tournament was a more or less even proposition.

But while Woods searches for his game, sometimes successfully, other times not very, the field isn’t treading water along with him.

A new generation of golfers, young men not scarred from defeats to Woods, are leaving him behind. After 27 holes at The Barclays, Woods had the lead at 8-under-par. With three rounds completed at sylvan Ridgewood Country Club, he has fallen to 3-under, nine shots out of Martin Laird’s lead and, more to the point, with 21 golfers ahead of him on the leaderboard.

And the majority of them, significantly, are twentysomethings.

Woods started his third round on Saturday with a pull hooked 3-wood that sailed out of bounds over left field.

“Ended up probably costing me a chance to win the golf tournament,” he later bemoaned of his opening triple bogey.

Actually, probably not.

Even if he had made par for the hole, he’d be six off the lead and in need of either a round in the low 60s — minimally, the 64 Dustin Johnson shot on Saturday — or a collapse at the top of the board.

Laird, who climbed from the pay-to-play mini tours to winning on the PGA Tour in Las Vegas last year, didn’t look like he was going to fall apart after carding a 6-under 65 Saturday, his third straight round in the 60s.

The 27-year-old Scot, who played at Colorado State and now calls Arizona home, reeled off four straight birdies after his opening par, added two more on the back nine and kept a clean card.

Johnson rebounded after the disappointment of Whistling Straits, when he was penalized for grounding his club in a poorly-defined sand bunker on the 72nd hole, and has thrust himself again into contention.

His 7-under round left him three off the lead.

“If I can play like I did today, there’s not too much out of reach,” Johnson said.

He shrugged when reminded of the two-shot penalty he was assessed at the PGA Championship.

“There’s really nothing to put behind me,” he said, “I mean, I played good golf. Unfortunate situation. It’s not very hard to let go, though.”

Justin Rose, a two-time winner this year, barely made the cut and thrust himself into the conversation with a clean 65 to get to a tie for fifth.

“I feel actually thankful just to be here,” said the Englishman, who’s looking to impress Colin Montgomerie as he ponders his Ryder Cup picks on Sunday. “I didn’t play particularly well the first two days and had a fortunate chip-in and holed a wedge to survive the cut.

“Having got through the cut line, I felt like I was a little freer out there. I figured that 65, 65 the weekend would go a long way towards winning the golf tournament.”

Jason Day, a 22-year-old Australian with tremendous upside, had four birdies and an eagle but also five bogeys to shoot 70 but is still in the running at 9-under. Adam Scott, who’s hitting it beautifully, is a shot back at 8-under.

Woods, meanwhile, shot over par for the second straight day. His 71 was a mish-mash of good and bad.

He complained about his lack of touch on the greens on Friday, and while he was better with the putter on Saturday, his ball-striking wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as it was on the first two days.

The out-of-bounds swing off the first, he said, came because he got stuck between his old swing and his new one.

“Strictly lack of commitment,” he said. “I wasn’t focused on exactly what I should have been doing, what I’ve been doing on the range, what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks, and it backfired.”

He was pleased, he said, with how he “sucked it up and got it back the rest of the day when it easily could have gone the other way.”

“Hitting a ball like that can derail you, and it didn’t. I got it right back,” he said.

But did he? Woods had a bogey and 10 mostly scrambling pars over his next 11 holes. He just wasn’t hitting it close enough.

He did birdie both par fives on the back nine and hit his best approach of the day into the last, setting up a seven-foot birdie.

But it wasn’t nearly enough. Not when his rivals are shooting in the mid-60s.

Maybe this was never meant to be his week?

He is, after all, just learning a new golf swing under the direction of Sean Foley.

“I’m very excited about what I’m doing, how I’m hitting the golf ball,” Woods said. “But I have to think of the swing because it’s not natural yet.”

As any golfer knows, playing “golf swing” rather than golf is a futile exercise.

Foley, reached at his home in Orlando, said he was proud of Woods for trying.

“The guy’s got big balls to go out there and play ‘golf swing’ like he is,” Foley said. “But, look, the reality is that it’s going to take time for him to make these changes natural. It’s not going to happen overnight.

“When he shot that first round (at the Barclays), I heard all these people saying, ‘Here he comes. He’s back.’ First of all, he’s Tiger Woods. He’s capable of shooting 6-under on any given day, but secondly, we’re dealing with neurological patterns here. He may have the ability to learn things faster than most people, but it’s still going to take a lot of reps.”

Not that Foley says it’ll necessarily be long before Woods wins again.

“I don’t think it’ll take him a lot of time to win again because he’s won a million different ways without flushing it.”

It just won’t happen this week.