The Rotary Swing Book

by Chuck Quinton

An Understanding of Tiger Woods' New Golf Swing

Tiger Woods has gone through some pretty incredible swing changes in the 10 years he has been on the PGA Tour. It's truly been exciting and awe-inspring to watch. When Tiger first came out on Tour, his swing looked very different. Jim Hardy referred to his swing as "One Plane" at that time and you can certainly see some one plane traits in him back then. His swing was much shorter and very aggressive, especially with his upper body rotation. He really hit hard with his body to get distance and he also struggled with control of distance and trajectory because of this extreme body speed.

As he progressed with then instructor Butch Harmon, his swing morphed into the swing that we all came to admire. His very classic, high hands, wide swing exhibited many pure two plane traits and allowed him to develop more ball flight control than anyone before him. However, his swing was still relatively compact at the top, something Tiger felt cost him distance. With the prodigious distances the "youngsters" are hitting the ball these days, Tiger felt he needed to make a change to allow his swing to become longer while maintaining control. Tiger also places a lot of emphasis on swing plane and felt that this aspect of his swing needed to change as well. Enter Hank Haney.

Enter Hank Haney

Hank Haney has had a long and successful career teaching many fine golfers, most notably Mark O'Meara. Of course, with O'Meara and Woods being close personal friends, it wasn't too difficult for Haney to get a foot in the door with Woods and they actually had known each other since Tiger was a junior golfer. Many thousands of people criticized the work that Haney was doing with Woods and criticized Tiger for leaving what everyone felt was a "perfect" model golf swing. After all, he did win 4 majors in a row with it, why change? And perhaps just as importantly, why Haney?

I'm sure many of you remember an article coming out in Golf Digest back in 2004 or 2005 breaking down Haney's golf swing. The article was quite unique because Haney admitted to playing very little golf over the past 10 years because he had the "yips" with his driver. The swing that Haney concocted for himself to be able to hit the driver again was not pretty to say the least. In fact, it was quite terrible looking and involved him completely looking away from the ball so that he never saw it at impact. For most instructors, coming out in Golf Digest, admitting to this for the past 10 years as a player and then publishing your very unconventional approach to hitting the big dog would be career suicide. But not for Haney. Not only was it not suicide, it really didn't seem to matter one bit. If the number one player in the world trusts you, that's all you need for credibility.

That's what prompted me to understand more about Haney's philosophy. I researched everything I could, spoke with the director of instruction at his school in Texas and sent him video of my swing. I had also received a video tape from a student of mine of Tiger working on his swing at Haney's school in Texas. The things that Tiger was doing in his swing, I had never seen before. It was truly quite remarkable. Not only had I never seen anyone swing that way, I'd never heard anyone really talk about it in depth. Haney mentions some of the things in his book about keeping the club on the same plane, etc., but he certainly didn't go in depth on how to do it. I learned more by watching this 2 second video clip about Haney's theories and Tiger's swing than after reading his book.

One Plane or Two?

So, what is Tiger doing with his new swing, is it a One Plane or Two Plane and is it for me? Those are all the questions I intend to answer in this updated section on Tiger Woods. You see, not only did I learn alot from all my research, but I took it a step further and completely rebuilt my swing to mimic Tiger's. I did this solely in an effort to learn everything I could about this fascinating golf swing and model. Using the tapes I had of Tiger, I had everything I needed to understand what was going on in his swing and felt I could learn the in's and out's of Hank Haney's swing theories and here's why. The difficulty in learning someone's swing theory is that no one ever does everything perfectly that the instructor wishes. You can certainly see this as being a significant issue with Jim Hardy's one and two plane swing theories as no one actually matches his model of a swing perfectly. His star student, Peter Jacobsen, has numerous deviations in his swing that differ significantly from Hardy's model. After working with Hardy for many, many years on his swing model and still not getting it right, it somewhat discredits the theory in my mind. But Haney had a big advantage over other swing theorists, he had the greatest golf athlete the world has ever known. Tiger was able to do everything Haney asked of him in his swing and do so to near perfection. This gives the world a 3D view of a swing theory in action done to the highest degree of athleticism attainable. Advantage Haney.

So, What is Hank Haney's Swing Model for Tiger Woods?

In it's simplest form, Hank Haney wants the shaft to travel on the same plane, or parallel to that plane, established by the shaft at address. The swing is more rotational in nature than the swing Tiger learned with Butch Harmon, giving it a flattish, laid off look at the top, although it is most certainly NOT laid off. Haney's theory behind all this is that is easier to make a consistent, solid strike and control the clubface if the clubshaft is always on plane.

That's the two second elevator pitch, now let's dive in a little deeper. The following pages are my opinion of what Haney is doing with Tiger Woods based on my study of his golf swing and my research.

Let's start with a look at Tiger's Address Position.

Next, let's look at Tiger's Takeaway.

Next, Tiger's Backswing.

The moment of truth, Tiger at Impact and the Downswing.