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In this analysis video, we discussed the member question, why can't Tiger hit a fair

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way with the driver?

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So Tiger has had a better than expected season.

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He's doing great with his iron plate, his putting is really come around, but he still

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seems to struggle with the driver.

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In this video, I'm going to talk to you about one or two ideas that might contribute

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to why Tiger struggles so much off the tee.

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Whenever I'm addressing consistency, there are three main factors that I look for.

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One is the low point control from the face-on video, we're basically looking at the

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height of the club down at the ground.

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Here you can see he's got the club close to the height of the golf ball for a relatively

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long period of time.

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So low point control might not be the biggest reason why you would struggle with the driver.

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For many amateurs, it will either come down from a too high position or it will come up

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too quickly leading to topping the ball or hitting it really low on the face.

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The second area of consistency that I look at is the swing plane or the rough path of the

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club.

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Now, a estimate you can use is if you take the swing to impact and then freeze it, you can

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draw a line up the shaft and that will roughly give you the shaft plane to impact and then

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you can kind of see how close he is with the hands and the club on both sides of the

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ball.

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You'd have to have the perfect camera angle but you can see from this view that the path

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does appear to be slightly into out and it appears to be following a relatively good path

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as it relates to the driver.

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So it doesn't look like low point, it doesn't look like path or is main issues which

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lets us think that possibly the third one is going to be an issue.

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The third main issue is looking at the face to path relationship and basically looking at

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the timing of how he rotate the club face.

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So now if we get him to roughly shaft parallel here, the club face is not in an overly

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position or overly open position and it's not in a terribly close position.

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You really can do a lot from where the club is here.

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But now as we come down, you can see through these few frames through here, the club is

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still pointing well out to the right of the target which many more consistent drivers

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the golf ball would have the club face pointing a little bit closer towards the golf

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ball or towards the target and not have to rotate it quite as fast down at the bottom.

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So one possible reason Tiger struggles off the tape is he struggles with closing the club

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face to late in the downswing.

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Most of the amateur who I work with who have this pattern and many pros who have this

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pattern do struggle with bigger misses off the tee and often struggle with two way

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misses.

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Now the next question I always get is why is that a bigger problem with the driver than

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it is with the iron?

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But before we investigate that, let's take a quick look at his iron play.

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Okay, so now over on the right we have a swing vision from the memorial tournament and

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we will compare me to a driver from roughly around the same time of the year.

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So now if we get him down to that chef parallel check point with the iron, you can see

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that the club faces in a little bit more closed or turned down position.

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That by itself isn't going to make us more consistent.

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But it could mean that we don't have to close it quite as aggressively late.

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And now if we get the club to about the same distance before impact, so somewhere kind of

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in this zone here, you can see that the club face is pointing more at the golf ball or

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closer to the target than it is over here with the driver.

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Now we don't know what shots he's hitting with these two.

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But if you look at some of his swings with the driver throughout the years, you will see

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that this is a common pattern here where the club face is open late.

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With his iron play, this is more of the common pattern.

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He tends to get it close a little bit sooner.

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Now we just have to speculate as to why that happens.

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Perhaps it's the way he swings at it harder with the driver that causes the face to get

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open.

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Perhaps it's a waiting of the club and his hands that he feels when in order to swing up on

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the ball, he has a hard time doing so with the club face feeling closed.

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Who knows?

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But this would certainly be one area that he could investigate since it does contribute

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to the fact that he struggles more with hitting fairways off the seat.

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Now let's say you have this position here with an iron as well as a driver, but you

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mainly struggle with accuracy problems with the driver.

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Well that can happen for a couple of reasons.

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One, it's often easier to close the club face late by straightening the trail arm and

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kind of flipping the wrist and it's often easier to do that if you are a little bit ahead

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of the golf ball or swinging down on it because of a little bit of a forward lunge.

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That pattern of hitting down with a little forward lunge tends to be more repeatable with

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iron than it does with driver.

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The second answer could be just the fact that the club is longer and when the club is longer

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it has more resistance to change because it will be moving faster.

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And when the club has more resistance to change, it's easier to control if you can get

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it squared up sooner.

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I use the example of a magic newer playing badminton and instead of playing badminton with

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a normal racket which is quite light and which you can square up with just a little flick

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of the wrist.

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Imagine if I gave you a badminton racket that weighed, let's say, 10 pounds.

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It would change your strategy of how you have to play.

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You have to get in position earlier so that you could have the badminton racket going

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on the path that you wanted with a face pointing in the redirection because you wouldn't

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be able to change it so quickly down at the bottom or right before impact.

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It's one of my theories based on talking with a few golf science guys that that becomes

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more of an issue when you're swinging along your club like a driver than it does with

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a shorter club which leads to why a lot of golfers who have a club face that's open

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a struggle more off the tee than they do with their iron play.

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One thing that I've noticed is that golfers who tend to swing at it with a little bit

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eat more ease or rhythm tend to be able to recover better from that open club face position.

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Now just so you can see that this is not something new in his game.

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Here we have two swings, one from 2008 over on the left and one from 2013 over on the right.

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You'll see he has the club face a little bit more closed in this one than he does in

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that one.

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As we start to approach the golf ball you can see the club face is still well right

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of where the fairway is there and you can see that this one will not quite as dramatic

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is still pointing more off to the right than it is currently.

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The seems to be a pattern that he has struggled with which could explain why he struggles

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more off the tee but it's hard to mess with anything when you are one of the best iron

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players have the great short game and the mental game to win as much as he had even with having

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an accuracy deficiency off the tee.