There, in frame 64, did you notice that flash on the grassy knoll? Who am I kidding, it's Florida, there isn't a knoll, grassy or otherwise, for hundreds of miles.
Noted swing coach consultant Brandel Chamblee had this favorable review:
Shack quotes these longer comments from BC on GC:
What one will learn in studying the biomechanics of great ball-strikers is that there must be a lateral shift off of the ball in the backswing and a corresponding lateral shift into the ball on the downswing. This is imperative and very much what Tiger was doing until 2010.Staying centered or hanging left at address causes the club to want to go inside abruptly off of the ball and it takes great effort to avoid it. Hanging left robs a player of width in the backswing and flow and rhythm in the downswing. With Woods’ phenomenal hip rotation speed, hanging left caused him to get stuck - coming too much on an inside path - on the downswing and hence his sometimes overexaggerated over-the-top move to counter this tendency. With the driver, more often than not his clubhead path was way out to the right with excessive forward shaft lean, and to offset this his spine tilted away from the target to the point of pain.If Como understands the way the bodies of the best players of all time moved and applies those principles to Woods, then his pupil has a very good chance of playing uninjured for the rest of his career and a very good chance of achieving his career goals.
You mean 19? I'm sure the bosses at GC want you to make nice with Tiger, Brandel, but can we agree that there shouldn't be any tongue involved until at least he wins something.
Sean Martin, who's known Chris Como for twenty years, posts this interesting profile at PGATour.com:
It’s been inspiring, and fun, to watch his career progress, like watching that band make it
Como (r) with Dr. Young-Hoo Kwan. from the local bar to the Billboard charts. His sacrifices have been plenty -- moving around the country to work under top instructors, taking night classes for his masters in biomechanics while working full-time and going into debt to buy his first Trackman.It’s all paid off.
He's told me many times that golf instruction has never felt like work. He didn’t make the sacrifices to become rich and famous; he was just pursuing his passion. Each golf swing is a puzzle, played out over three dimensions and influenced by innumerable variables, that he wants to solve. It's constant stimulation for a curious mind.
Actually, it's as much a profile of Westlake Golf Club, a 5,000-yard muni outside LA as it is of Como, but well worth a minute of your time.
Elsewhere, Tiger is receiving support from a somewhat unlikely source, spurned lover coach Sean Foley:
“Tiger called me and we had this very heartfelt discussion. We know what we went through together. I know the state I found him in and so does he,” Foley said. “We came to a point where we weren’t communicating as well as we needed to anymore and we didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship. I love TW. We still talk back and forth. That’s one thing I’m very proud of. We handled the situation in a very classy way. That’s the only way we would.”
Stick with the mutual break-up story if you must, but be aware that everyone has seen that Seinfeld episode.
But wait, there's more:
“He’s done so much for the game of golf and yet he continues to get torn down by all this bullshit. Let’s hope 20 years from now they’re talking about all the kids he’s helped, about him raising millions and millions of dollars through his foundation and sending kids to college instead of how doesn’t tip – which by the way is more“They can talk about how he doesn’t tip or whatever but it’s just more bullshit. I’ve seen him tip caddies at local clubs $400 so I don’t know where that comes from,” he said. “Seriously, saying he doesn’t tip? How come he (Jenkins) doesn’t mention Tiger raising $300 million for kids? Tiger is the epitome of the double-edged sword. Anything he does great doesn’t get mentioned. Anything he doesn’t it’s all over the place. Can you even imagine what the fallout would be if it was him and not Mickelson who called out Tom Watson at the Ryder Cup?”
Oh, did Jenkins do a piece on Tiger? But again one has to ask why Tiger and his acolytes keep bring up that piece? We might have moved on if you'd, you know, let us.
And are you. like me, curious as to where the name Hero World Challenge originates? John Strege points us to this DNAIndia item on the sponsorship:
For Pawan Munjal, the CEO of the Hero Group this is big stuff. Despite all his scandalsand controversy Tiger Woods remains a superlative athlete and associating with him will mean a blockbuster branding exercise. Tiger recently posed with Hero bikes on a Golf course. Having launched their bikes recently in Bogota, Colombia last week, Hero is accelerating plans to expand in the US. By 2020 Hero aims to be in over 50 countries with 20 plus assembly facilities globally. A golfer lover himself this effort to engage with Tiger Woods is strategic and not just a show of support for the sport. This is a branding exercise into carve the Hero brand in minds of Americans. He is looking to pick on American fantasies for two wheelers given how few they are in that country. If the target is to sell 1.2 million bikes internationally then all efforts will remain in new markets to extend the brand and the bikes.
OK, so I'm guessing that brand is the key word here. Then there was this:
So this is the Hero World Challenge and Tiger Woods is making a comeback for the year to play, returning from his back injury. The $3.5 million tournament leaves a full million dollars for the winner to cream.
Well, a cool million for four-days work would have that effect on me as well...
Meanwhile, Alan Shipnuck writes a gauzy nostalgia piece about the five-year anniversary of the....ummm...how to put it....let's just call it the most notorious fire hydrant in the world:
All of that changed in the dark hours following Thanksgiving dinner in 2009. Woods’ carefully cultivated family-friendly image was subsequently shattered by a parade of bimbos with tales to tell, text messages included. A life’s work was reduced to a series of tawdry headlines on the front page of The New York Post. The greatest golfer of all time spawned the biggest sex scandal of the media age.Woods, 38, has soldiered on. It is inarguable that he is no longer the player he was pre-scandal. He still has time for a triumphant final act but nothing will bring back the lost years in what should have been the prime of his career. The scandal and its fallout are the root cause of much of what ails Woods today, but it’s easy to forget the freighted events that preceded it.
First, is this really the biggest sex scandal of the media age? If so, that might be the saddest commentary of all. Second, exactly what lost years are we speaking of? Tiger made it back to the Masters that following April, and the linkage of the scandal to his diminished success is an interesting, albeit highly speculative, conclusion. As Shipnuck himself notes, Y.E. Yang and Heath Slocum predate the fire hydrant...
And for those that can't get enough of this subject (and you might want to see someone about that), Golf.com has a gallery here. Wasn't that a time?
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| It was a good time for NY Post circulation. |
Lastly, the Tour Confidentialistas took on the question of what to expect from Tiger this week, and this Alan Shipnuck response was par for the course:
A good week for Tiger is to complete four rounds injury-free and to look somewhat explosive and supple. A great week would be to hit more than half his fairways and not miss any putts inside four feet. I've stopped trying to predict what will happen next with this guy, so let's just sit back and enjoy the show.
But it's Joe Passov, as usual, that gives me a reason to get up in the morning:
This seems like deja vu all over again. Hasn't this question already been asked and answered several times in 2014? Hey, there are only 18 players -- though they're all world-class. A top 10 would be nice. I would consider it a good week if Tiger played pain-free and finished all four rounds. I could also see a Top 5 here. There's no pressure, as there are no FedEx Cup points up for grabs, and few know the Isleworth course as well as Tiger does. I'm rooting for him. Golf needs him back.
Sheesh! The man is chasing immortality, but thank God he can relax because there's none of those life-changing FedEx points in the balance. Joe, how much is your retainer from Commissioner Ratched?
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