Tiger Woods this week at The Players Championship has patiently answered questions about his golf swing and his game, basically saying it’s all a work in progress, it’s something he’s been through before and is confident everything will eventually come together.
Peter Allis
To hear newly-minted World Golf Hall of Famer Peter Allis talk,however, the Striped One has gone past the point of no return.
“I find as an old player (Allis won three British PGA Championships) and the son of one of the best players of his time (Percy Allis), who was also a very good teacher in a simplistic way, I do not understand the thinking of Tiger Woods,” Allis said. “I think his golfing brain for some reason or other is completely addled.”
Right or wrong, Allis put some of the blame on Woods’ extra-marital adventures of a few years ago.
“Perhaps the good part of his brain for a period drained from here (indicating side of head) down to here (indicating lap), and that caused him great distress, probably a modicum of enjoyment at the time. But he’s gone,” Allis said. “And for somebody who can play and did play, he hit a few wild shots, but he was Gulliver in a land of Lilliputians.
“We’re talking about Nicklaus, Palmer, Player. There was Floyd and Trevino and Casper and another 10, 12 competitors. He didn’t have one real for 10 years. He didn’t have a real chaser, a real competitor. He dominated everyone. He frightened everybody. Then he gets into this trouble with the ladies, and seemingly he loses it, and then he has to start again.
“I’m not saying I’m a great teaching guru. I’d love to have a half an hour. If I couldn’t put him right ‑‑ if he can get this right, if he couldn’t be put right in an hour, I’d go home and stick my head in a bucket of ice water, because to me it’s so simple. You stand and you swing.”
Eldrick changing his swing (again), Allis said, is “like Pavarotti saying ‘I’m fed up being a tenor; I think I’m going to sing as a baritone.’ That’s as stupid as that in my opinion.”
