Friday 6 February 2015 12:36, UK
Tiger Woods’ former coach Butch Harmon believes the 14-time major winner’s injury troubles could be due to an “out of control” swing.
More back troubles forced Woods to withdraw from the Farmers Insurance Open after 11 holes on Thursday, a day on which his chipping issues varied from a bad miss at the 10th to a sublime finish from the rough on the next.
The recurrence of Woods’ injury, after he missed much of last season after surgery to solve a pinched nerve, could be because of the force he puts into his swing, according to Harmon.
“It does look like he’s coming a lot from the inside and he’s going so hard,” said the American’s coach from 1992 to 2002 to Sky Sports.
“He’s in warp speed, it’s unbelievable how hard he goes. On the (driving) range he doesn’t go at it so hard, he goes at it controlled with some speed. Out on the golf course he looked like he was swinging out of control.
“He had a very good first warm-up, it looked to me. He went at it with the driver very hard. He was hitting predominantly fades, it looked like he was set up to hit most of his irons, most of his fairway woods and his driver with the fade.”
Wild
Although Woods seemingly grimaced after a few shots before throwing in the towel on Thursday, Harmon insists he didn’t see anything concerning before the round.
“It looked like he had an occasional wild one but it didn’t show that he was in pain,” he said.
“We went and got ready to play and then we had a big fog delay. We came back out, once again Rickie Fowler was right next to Tiger warming up, and he didn’t seem to be going at it as hard.
“But I can’t say that I saw anything in his posture and his body language that said there was an injury – but maybe there was.”
You can catch the Farmers Insurance Open on Friday at 8pm on Sky Sports 4.
