Tiger Woods Loses to Rory Mcilroy – Says Struggling with Sean Foley
Both Tiger Woods and Rory Mcilroy were mic’d up for this pay-per-view event from China where Rory nipped Tiger by 1 stroke. Both scored well, but Tiger continues to struggle with his ball striking and revealed a very telling statement about his struggling with swing coach Sean Foley.
From the Golf Channel:
“They talked swing changes. On the 10th hole, Woods admitted to “struggling with Sean (Foley),” his swing coach, saying, “I’ve been hitting my short irons so (expletive) far.” He went on to explain how he rarely took a divot with his short clubs under former coach Hank Haney, but now, though, “all of a sudden, I’m thinking divots.”
In a rare moment of openness about his golf swing, Tiger admitted he has been struggling with Foley’s own version of a “stack and tilt” golf swing.
Tiger has shown his typical moments of brilliance this year with his short irons while also hitting horrible wedge shots, often in the same round of golf. While I haven’t seen any recent Trackman data on Tiger’s shorter irons, it is obvious that he is approaching the golf ball at a much steeper angle of attack.
This steep angle of attack is inherent to a “stack and tilt-ish” swing if the “hip thrust” maneuver is not performed to shallow out the swing by pitching the spine to angle back away from the target at impact.
This is due to the steepness created by the hanging of the left side and having little to no lateral movement during the backswing, which inherently shallows out the golf swing.
Because of the backswing position at the top, the spine does not lean away from the target unless a “jumping” motion is performed to create enough secondary axis tilt to avoid sticking the club in the ground and coming down too steeply.
It seems that Foley has not had Woods work this component into his swing, and Woods is struggling with having his hands too far ahead of the ball at impact and too steep an angle of attack.
So, the question is, will Foley add more “stack and tilt” components to Tiger’s swing, or will Tiger leave Foley (it’s now been 3 years) to return to a more conventional golf swing that won lots of majors. Time will tell…
If YOU are tired with coming down too steeply on the ball, you need to understand the importance of “axis tilt” in the golf swing and how it avoids this common swing problem.
