What is young Tiger Woods working on in this interesting old video?

When it worked (and it did often) he would hit drives impossibly far. But later he spoke of his younger swing being heavily dependent on timing. When things would go wrong, his hips would spin too soon and leave his arms stuck behind him. That would send them way out to the right, which would cause high hooks or blocks.

“It’s a product of being a junior golfer, trying to hit the ball far,” Tiger says.

Tiger used to call it his “ole’” golf swing. You can hear him talk about it in his famed GOLF Channel Academy segment below:

Which brings us back to the initial video. To prevent Tiger’s arms from getting stuck and flying out to the right, Butch is holding an obstacle in his way. That keeps his arms moving more to the left, keeps them from flipping as much, and prevents the blocks and high hooks that would happen when his ole’ swing went wrong.

“A big thing we’ve worked on is getting Tiger to feel like his arms are more in front of him on the downswing,” Harmon says.

An interesting insight into the best before he reached the pinnacle, and a good reminder for the rest of us: Even the best golf swings require fine-tuning.

Luke Kerr-Dineen

Golf.com Contributor

Luke Kerr-Dineen is the Game Improvement Editor at GOLF Magazine and GOLF.com. In his role he oversees all the brand’s service journalism spanning instruction, equipment, health and fitness, across all of GOLF’s multimedia platforms.

An alumni of the International Junior Golf Academy and the University of South Carolina–Beaufort golf team, where he helped them to No. 1 in the national NAIA rankings, Luke moved to New York in 2012 to pursue his Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University and in 2017 was named News Media Alliance’s “Rising Star.” His work has also appeared in USA Today, Golf Digest, Newsweek and The Daily Beast.