Twenty-two year old pro golf phenomenon Jordan Spieth won the Hyundai Tournament of Champions yesterday at Kapalua, Hawaai. He leapfrogged the stellar field of all of the PGA Tour tournament winners last year, winning by eight whopping strokes. He joined Tiger Woods as the only two players since WWII who have won seven PGA Tour tournaments by the age of twenty-two, yet two of those wins for Spieth were majors. Thus, the pro golf analysts are beginning to compare Jordan Spieth with Tiger Woods. Jordan says that’s a stretch and that its too early to do that. Indeed, Tiger was amazing in winning one third of the PGA Tour tournaments he entered for quite a while. Spieth has now won seven of the seventy-seven Tour tournaments he has entered. Yet the humble Texan talks often about trying to get better. But he doesn’t talk about getting better by changing his swing.
That’s what Tiger Woods did. He was always talking about monkeying around with his golf swing in an effort to get better. That worked for Nick Faldo, and somewhat for Ben Hogan, but it is very rare. I think Tiger already had perfection and that he only needed to get control of the speed of his swing, which he did. Thus, Tiger should have taken a lesson from Jack Nicklaus, since Tiger was trying to beat Jack’s all time record of 18 major wins. Jack always said he was only trying to maintain the swing he had. And Jack had a great golf swing that I always thought was underrated by the swing gurus. Jack’s swing instructor from the time he took up the game at age ten was Jack Grout. Grout pretty much would only tell Nicklaus if his swing was getting off kilter compared to its normal. Grout had told Nicklaus from the very beginning to swing upright and hit the ball as hard as you can. Grout also made sure Nicklaus’ head didn’t do the dipsy doodle in his swing.
Hey, you can’t improve on perfection. That’s what I thought Tiger Woods had when he turned pro. I thought he had the best golf swing I had ever seen. Yesterday, while watching Jordan Spieth win the televised event, they showed Tiger Woods swinging the club during his early years on Tour. On his backswing, Tiger moved his upper back back and then moved it well forward on his forward swing. That was a powerful swing with a big transfer of weight. That’s what you do in other sports, and I think that’s the best way to swing and the way Ben Hogan did it. The two great players who swung the club with the most transfer of weight were, first, Walter Hagen, and, second, Ben Hogan. Lee Trevino may come next.
But when Tiger Woods left his swing instructor Butch Harmon, that doomed The Tiger. His head has been bobbing up and down ever since, like bobbing for apples. That’s what you don’t want to do. Its fine to move your head back and forth when you swing a golf club, but not up and down. There have been some great players who dipped their head on their forward swing as they made contact with the ball, such as Byron Nelson (but not always) and Johnny Miller. But during Tiger’s post-Harmon days, he dipped his head a lot starting at the beginning of his downswing and then raised it about when he made contact and thereafter. Thus, he wasn’t moving back and through with his upper body, like a piston in an auto engine. He was even bobbing up and down while chipping. That caught up to him last year when he chilly-dipped a few chip shots, such as here in the WM Phoenix Open when he shot 82. All of this was a recipe for disaster and thus losing the great swing that he had.
As for Jordan Spieth, there’s only one thing in his swing that I don’t like. When he makes contact with the ball and thereafter his left elbow can be bent forward somewhat, therefore resulting in a “block action.” Sometimes under pressure, that blockiness causes him to hit the ball to the right. But the good thing is that he doesn’t continue it into his finish, making the left elbow stay ahead of his hands and left shoulder. He sort of slows that elbow down and thereby lets his hands catch up. So he doesn’t finish with that “chicken-wing” on the upswing that I often had. Ben Hogan once told me not to do that. Right. It gave me a sore neck. Players often do it to keep the ball from going left.
So, hats off to the youthful-looking, friendly Jordan Spieth, a member of the PGA Tour Bible Study, for starting the year off by continuing to dominate the best golfers in the world.
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