Tiger needs to change his swing

During a week in which he went only 2 under on the par-5s, the four-time Masters champion was haunted by his old swing, the one crafted by a man who had just released a tell-all book about their six-year relationship. You could see Tiger's frustrated attempts to fight off the last vestiges of Hank Haney's lessons. Woods' swing coach, Sean Foley, could be there on the range to try to correct those old habits, but he couldn't be on the golf course in the thick of things when his player had to hit real shots.

Woods is playing in his first tournament since that Masters disappointment this week at Quail Hollow. On Monday, he took questions from his fans via social media. He said he had resolved the swing issues that plagued him in Augusta.

"At the Masters, I was kind of struggling with my ballstriking a little bit," Woods said. "Sean and I fixed it. It had to do with posture. My setup wasn't quite right, as well as my takeaway, so we worked on that."

Alec Wilkinson, a longtime New Yorker contributor, had the late jazz bassist Jimmy Garrison as his faculty TaylorMade R11S Driver adviser when he was a student at Bennington College in the early 1970s. Wilkinson once heard the former John Coltrane quartet member say: "First you have to learn all about your instrument, then you have to learn all about music, then you have to forget it all and learn how to play."

"If he ever asked me what I thought he needed to do, I'd tell him, look, go on the practice tee without anybody -- without me, without Sean, without Haney, without a camera, and start hitting golf shots," Harmon said. "Hit some high draws, some low draws, high fades, low fades, move the ball up and down, move it around; don't worry about how you do it and go back to feeling it again."

But Woods has to come to this realization on his own. The more weight he puts on his swing, the farther he gets from finding the real answers to his problems. He doesn't need me to tell him the importance of the mental game -- no one has had a better mind game over the years than Woods -- but I think he's being dishonest with himself to deny that his confidence as a player and a person has been shaken over the years by his injuries and personal travails and disappointments in big tournaments.

Even Jack Nicklaus, who has mostly praised the man trying to break his record of 18 majors, has questioned Tiger's mental game since the Masters.

Tiger won at Quail Hollow in 2007 and he loves the course. It's possible that it's true he has indeed "fixed" his swing, but he's never going to find that mythical perfect swing or some major resolution about his game by winning this week, as long as he takes the perspective that his issues lie primarily with his swing.

Tiger won at Quail Hollow in 2007 and he loves the course. It's possible that it's true he has indeed "fixed" his swing, but he's never going to find that mythical perfect swing or some major Taylormade Rocketballz Irons resolution about his game by winning this week, as long as he takes the perspective that his issues lie primarily with his swing.

I know Foley wants this for Tiger. No good teacher worth his salt wants his player standing over the ball in a pressure situation with a million swing thoughts running through his head.

Perhaps the golf swing has become a convenient way to deflect attention from some of the larger issues in his life. During Masters week, I heard another reporter say of Woods: "It must be hard for him to play well carrying around all that anger."

"I don't know what goes [on] between his ears," Nicklaus said. "That's really the X factor. His golf game and his golf swing look pretty similar to what I've been looking at and he hits a lot of discount golf clubs great shots. But you never know what's going on in somebody's head."

"I don't know what goes [on] between his ears," Nicklaus said. "That's really the X factor. His golf game and his golf swing look pretty similar to what I've been looking at and he hits a lot of great shots. But you never know what's going on in somebody's head."

Yet thanks to the PGA Tour, Woods has a tournament this week at Quail Hollow to try to make amends for his embarrassing performance at the Masters. He can answer all of his critics who say he's done or he can affirm the predictions of his believers who say he'll make it back to No. 1 in the world.