Hank Gives As Many Interviews In A Day As Charlie Sheen

The former Tiger Woods instructor was made available to anyone who would listen so that he could plug the season finale of his reality show. Unfortunately, he wasn't the train wreck that Charlie Sheen was, but Hank Haney did offers some interesting stuff on his former pupil. (Only Gary Van Sickle at golf.com refused to ask Tiger questions, so if you want to read about the great strides Rush Limbaugh made under Haney's tutelage, this is your Q&A.)

Rex Hoggard did his duty and asked about Rush, but then got to the topic people actually care about: what Hank thinks of Tiger's new swing.

“It looks like he’s trying to get the club deeper in the backswing and more inside and he’s trying not to move off the ball (on the backswing),” Haney said. “His backswing is definitely different, more upright. If he flattens out his swing he has a tendency to get the club behind him and, when I worked with him, he always talked about getting stuck.”

As for those who question Woods’ decision to change his swing for the fourth time as a professional Haney also offered some insight, “By nature he’s always looking to do something better. He’d be changing if he wasn’t changing,” Haney said.

Steve Elling reported that Haney is surprised by Tiger's unwillingness to play more to get in those much needed "reps," but also offered this assessment about the time it'll take for the new swing to take hold.

"The notion that it should take time, or should take a lot of time, I don’t really buy into the theory," said Haney, also a former analyst for ESPN and ABC Sports. "Once again, it's been contradictory. I thought things were coming along faster."

Who didn’t? Woods finished fourth against a thin field at the Australian Masters and was second in the short-field Chevron World Challenge last fall, but has been struggling to string together two good rounds since. Along the way, Woods pointed out that it took two years for swing changes ingrained under Butch Harmon to take hold, and 1 1/2 years for his work with Haney to congeal.

Not exactly true, Haney said. The longest that Woods went without recording a PGA Tour top 10 in their time together, which began during the Florida Swing in 2004, was three weeks -- their first three starts as teacher and client.

"That's what he says, but that's not what the record says," Haney said. "Maybe he is referring to how long it took to be confident or comfortable. There is no telling."

He also offered this defense (of sorts) of Sean Foley, the new man in Tiger's life.

Interestingly, new swing coach Sean Foley's other high-profile clients, including Justin Rose and Hunter Mahan, aren't implementing the same moves into their swings and have shown improvement over the past couple of years. Woods, still in an awkward stage, looks like a high-dollar guinea pig of sorts.
 
"It does look different from them, definitely," Haney said. "Justin Rose and Hunter Mahan have very good-looking, classic swings. Tiger looks like he is trying to do something totally different from what they are doing, so it's confusing.

Actually, Foley has made clear he doesn't try to teach one swing like certain, uh, reality show instructors.