Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon (3 of 7)

Part 3 of 7 of the Classic Golf Channel Interview with Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon

PETER: …watch a play from earlier from this year. Butch, it’s all yours.

BUTCH: Well, what we’ve got here is this is at Firestone, last August. Its the World Championships which Tiger won on Saturday afternoon. I think you sunk 52 this day didn’t you? Seems to knock it stiff every time. We worked very hard on trying to get the left wrist bowed at impact and really bring the trajectory down. We look at a setup position; the ball is kind of back in the sand here a little bit. Let’s go ahead and run this tape and we’ll talk a little bit about it. Take away, you can see the club going up at a nice angle – the top of the swing.

TIGER: This is something that we’re trying to work on now is not to my head to lower quite as much.

BUTCH: Then you’ll see a difference in the pedal in the beach one. This is the reason that divid’s going to be a little steeper. Let’s start the club down, as we get halfway down when we get the left arm parallel to the ground you can see can still maintain a good angle right here with the shaft. Weight is transferred to the left. We come down to impact…you can see the size of the divid. The beautiful bow of the left hand, we really worked hard on this and ever since he got stronger, you’ve been able to do that with no problem. If we go on to the finish, you can see the left arm pulling across – Tiger’s laughing when he looks at it – then you’ll see a big difference now. When we talk about this left arm problem across, this is so there was no way this club could release. This was just going to put the bow on the left hand and carry it all the way through. And he knocked a stiff probably 90% of the time every time he hit it.

PETER: [voice incomprehensible 1:30 -1:32]

BUTCH: Now, here we are on the 15th hole in Pebble Beach. We’re going to see a better posture for the position at the top – he’ll take this club back. See how he stays up taller at the top of his swing. Swing a little bit shorter here with the Wedge played then we would we…

TIGER: Would have had 96 yards to the hole…just a little chip pitching wedge.

BUTCH: Now, as his club starts down – watch the hands and arms just fall. The club never gets behind him. Same position there.

TIGER: The difference is also my head has stayed up a little bit taller.
BUTCH: That’s exactly right. The head hasn’t gone down. Now we come to impact. We don’t see near as much divid. Beautiful footwork, both feet are on the ground – which is important. Here’s the hips – see what we’re talking about – totally cleared out of the way. Now as we go on into the follow through, we don’t see so much of a left arm pulling across. He’s gone ahead and let the carbury release but without letting the toe go over. Two different ways to play Wedge Shots: one last year that worked very good. This is a product that we’ve seen in all the work that Tiger’s done and now it’s even better.

PETER: We come back from this little break fellows, we got an internet question related to some part of your game, we’ll find out what that is in just a moment. Don’t go away.

NEXT: Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon (4 of 7)

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