If It Ain't Broke

The pros love to tinker, but full-blown swing changes have failed more often than they have succeeded

Sean O’Hair in action during the Valspar Classic

Tiger Woods is a little boy lost. "I can see it in his eyes and the way he walks. I know it because I've been there," so sayeth Shaun O'Hair in a beguilingly revealing interview during the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Bill. O'Hair took five stabs at the PGA Tour Q-School before gaining his card and then winning the John Deere Classic in his rookie year. He looked to be a rising star, but after three more wins in the next six seasons, his game deserted him for a couple of years until he rose, Phoenix-like from the smouldering embers to lose a play-off in the recent Valspar Classic. What had gone wrong? In a vain attempt to get even better, he'd consulted gurus and experts who "think they know what they're talking about and they don't". In trying to improve, he got in his own way and "screwed up what I had". After two years of stressful misery, he realised what he had to do. He went back to playing the way he had as a kid. He took a bag of balls into the woods and practiced hitting around trees and through gaps in the branches. (Seve must've been purring on his harp-laden cloud). O'Hair started to 'see' shots again rather than worrying about where his club was at the top of the backswing. He learnt to 'play the game' again. His advice now to aspiring young professionals? "Do the things that are good and do them better.”

I've been walking the fairways and practice grounds of professional golf for over 25 years. That privileged turf has been littered with a legion of those well-meaning (and often highly rewarded) men and women who 'think they know better'. Lee Trevino was a brilliant player. He always questioned why he would take advice from someone who couldn't play the game as well as he could. Too often though, you see young men (and women) who were good enough to qualify for the Tour, being inveigled into seeking help from a 'guru' because they're told their game isn't up to scratch. One of the classic examples, at the top end, is Colin Montgomerie. The Anglo-Scot had already wrapped up Europe and come very close to Major triumph in America, but Augusta remained a mystery to him. Whilst desperate for a Green Jacket, he just didn't feel comfortable there. His ball flight was predominantly left to right and conventional wisdom has it that to succeed at the Masters Tournament you have to be able to move it right to left; something of a curiosity considering six-time winner Jack Nicklaus always favoured a fade. In 1998, Monty finished tied eighth, six shots behind the champion, Mark O'Meara. I remember Colin telling me afterwards that he had taken 15 more putts than the American. He knew the score better than anyone and yet he finally succumbed to the siren voices who insisted he must be able to hit a draw and tried to change a swing that was as simple, repetitive and pure as it's possible to imagine. For awhile his game deserted him until he realised the error of his ways and reverted to what he'd always known and done; something, incidentally, that many "fiddlers" find extremely difficult to do.

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