He had his breakout year
in 1977 when he won the Masters and the first of his five Open Championships.
After winning a second Green Jacket in 1981 and the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach the following year, he struggled somewhat between 1985-1994 until discovering "the secret"
and getting rid of his "reverse-C" finish. Only then did he feel
comfortable enough to do an instructional tape. It's finally here. "Lessons of a Lifetime" is a three-hour, two-disc set that came out in April (visit tomwatson.com to place an order). It's the first full-swing video by a top player in about 20 years (click here for my review).
"I'm very happy with the way it came out," says Watson, 60. "I gave one to my son yesterday. I said, 'Jerry, this is what your old man thinks about the golf swing. This is what I learned from Papa,' my dad, his grandfather, and that’s what we’ve done."
You never have the game
by the tail and I never felt confident in saying, “Yeah, this is how you should
do it” until 1994 when I made the change. The best players of the modern era
play the way I finally learned how to swing the golf club. It confirmed to me
it was the right thing to do. I told Terry [Jastrow, the producer] before I get
too old and can’t swing the golf club anymore, I want to put it down in video
form. I’m not too concerned about the financial end of it. If it breaks even,
that’s fine with me, but I really wanted to leave a legacy to my son and other
players to say, “You know, Watson knew something about the game and he helped
me.”
Is there a correlation
between reflecting on the fundamentals for you DVD and your recent fine play at the British Open and the Masters?
Without a doubt it helped. I
always feel like after I do a clinic, for instance, I hit the golf ball better.
I reacquaint myself with what’s important with the golf swing.
Is there one lesson
that stands out above the rest?
It still starts with the
grip. Ninety-five percent of the amateurs I play with have lousy grips. They’re
fighting the club position at impact because of it. It’s the toughest thing to
change. I hate to see one of the guys in my pro-am with his left thumb straight
down the shaft. First of all, he can’t get any wrist break and, secondly, he’s
going to slice it. A bad habit takes three weeks to change. But you have to do
it an hour a day. If you’re changing your grip, get your hands on a golf club
while you’re watching TV.
Jack Nicklaus calls it
freaky the way you’re still able to make such a good turn on the ball at age
60. What allows you to still be so limber?
I’ve been very fortunate not to have any major injuries that prevented me from playing golf. I was at the Legends golf tournament recently and everybody’s got a bad back or bad knee. I do workout, but back in the time when my dad was super critical about my swing, he’d say, “Son, you over-swing. You take the club back too far.” I tried to shorten it up, but I just couldn’t do it. Stan Thirst, my teacher, said, "Tom, when you get a little bit older, your swing will shorten naturally, but right now, you keep it long and you’ll see the benefits as you get older because you’ll still be able to make a full turn and create enough clubhead speed to play well into later age."
How did your left hip
replacement affect your swing?
It was replaced in the
fall of 2008, but it was a lifestyle decision rather than a golf decision. It
really didn’t affect my golf swing too much. It affected my walking and it
affected my sleeping. I had pain keeping me awake at night. I said, The heck
with it. I don’t care if I never play golf again. I just want to sleep at
night. I had a great surgeon and haven’t had any complications. It gets a
little sore now and then, like at Augusta where you play a lot of shots off downhill
lies with the ball below your feet—the toughest lie in golf. That creates some
problems but nothing too bad.
It’s evolved from the
"reverse C" in my follow-through position. My hips slid to the left and my back
was well arched. When I made the change in 1994, I kept my spine angle more
consistent as I swung around the base of my neck. The other change is that I
don’t have the width of my swing that I used to. It’s more of a V shape rather
than a U shape. I tried a little bit last week to widen my arc out and had some
success with it. We’re always trying to improve. I don’t care who you are. If I
can widen my swing a little bit more, I catch it more cleanly and more
consistently.
How do you widen the
arc?
With the extension of the
left arm, keeping the club a little bit more together in the V position made by
the two arms in the first few feet of the takeaway just like I discuss in the
DVD. Sometimes I’ll break my wrist
a little quick, which creates more of a V swing rather than a U swing.
You spent years
looking for “it” and received criticism from people wondering why you were
fiddling with your swing when you were the top player in the world. But we see
that frequently with top players today, especially with Tiger. You obviously
don’t think it’s a mistake for a great player to keep pursuing perfection.
I was always trying to
find something that was going to work for me. I’ll never forget that in 1976 I
was playing in the U.S. versus Japan team matches, and I was playing terribly.
On the 18th hole of the pro-am I duck-hooked my ball up a mountain and had the
ball well below my feet. I said, I’m just going to take this club back shut and
open it going through. I hit it absolutely pure. I went to the practice tee immediately
afterward and practiced it. It changed the contact position. I wasn’t
over-using my hands. They were closer to my body at impact. As a result, I went
on to my breakout year the following year using that key. I used it for about a
year and a half. But my Achilles heel was the reverse C and getting the club
stuck behind me. When I made the change in 1994, the club was no longer stuck
behind me. I could control the flight of the ball. It made the game simple.
That’s always been
Tiger’s complaint, getting the club stuck behind him. Do you think he’s on the
right track, or should he get your DVD?
[Laughs] I think Tiger should get
my DVD where I talk about hands in clubhead out, and I’m not too uncertain he’s
not going to be doing that. I don’t think he swings the club now as well as he
did in 2000 when he won the U.S. Open. When he was working with Butch, I loved
the position of his arms and hands at the top of the swing. I thought he had a
better shot at the ball than he does now.
I’ve played
Pebble every year in the Wal-Mart First Tee tournament, so I’ve kept very
current with the changes in the golf course. My very first U.S. Open was at
Pebble in 1972. I shot 76 in the last round and passed 30 players. That’s how
tough the course was playing that day. I was there last September to recreate
my chip-in at 17 for the short-game session on the DVD. Pebble is my favorite
golf course in the world. I had first played it in 1967 as a senior in high
school after I was accepted to Stanford. I went out there to see the campus
during spring break. I think it cost $10, maybe $15. During my years at
Stanford I continued to go down there, usually on a Saturday mornings. I befriended
the starter who let me on for free. I’d tee off first and play in about three
hours. I never broke 75, but I’d play “pretend golf.” I’d come to the 15th tee
and say, “Alright, I’ve got to par the last four holes to win the U.S. Open,”
because that was the tournament I wanted to win most. It still is. When I was
on that tee during the final round in 1982 I thought about my Stanford days
playing the course and said, “Well, here I am.”
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