Tiger Woods and his coaches

August 26, 2014

Tiger Woods has a way with stealing the limelight and he does not even need to play in order to do it. Just a day after Hunter Mahan broke a lengthy title drought that lasted 48 tournaments and nearly three years, it is Woods again hogging all the column inches across the golfing world. The American’s decision to end his coaching arrangement with Hank Haney has set the experts thinking and the laymen wondering about the immediate future of Woods. Betting enthusiasts are lured by the gambling houses, who have lapped up the news to offer odds on a bunch of names that are being discussed as his prospective coach.

Among the men being touted are his former coaches – Butch Harman (1996 – 2003) and Hank Haney (2004 – 2010) along with a bunch of other top professionals at varying odds. Harman has come out stating that he is not interested, asserting that even if he was, it was very unlikely that Tiger might ask him. Haney had an acrimonious fall out immediately after Woods suffered an implosion of sorts as his personal life unraveled under intense public scrutiny.

As salacious details filtered out about his numerous sexcapades, Haney told at the time that Woods was out of reach despite his repeated attempts to reach the golfer. A few months later, immediately after Woods withdrew from the Players Championship, Haney sent in his resignation to Woods, apparently in a text message. This time though, it was Woods who called time on his current coach Foley.

In this feature we take a statistical look at the rewards from the three coaching relationships that have accounted for his 18 year journey as a professional. As you will note from the numbers below, Woods time with Butch Harmon contributed the most and his four year stint with Foley has been the least productive.

Feature by Anand Datla

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