Masters Plan

During a meticulously planned week of seclusion and training, Tiger Woods sharpened his game and his mind for Augusta

Issue date: April 13, 1998

Before returning to Augusta for the most anticipated encore in the history of golf, Tiger Woods spent an entire week doing the one thing he must do if he hopes to fulfill the destiny foretold after last year's astonishing pro debut: He just said no. He said no to interviews. No to lawyers seeking his signature on endorsement deals. No to friends eager to crank up the PlayStation or hit a few nightclubs. Instead, Woods spent seven days at home, alone with his game.

Taking welcome refuge in his lakeside villa in Isleworth, the ultraexclusive community outside Orlando, Woods cut off all distractions, even his cell phone, so he could fine-tune his game and his mind. Woods is clearly still wrestling with the ramifications of being an athlete who has radically altered the notion of what's possible in his sport. He knows that given his talent, charisma and ambition, what he did at Augusta last year -- shooting a record 18-under-par 270 to win by 12 strokes -- was only a prelude. Like Jack Nicklaus in his prime, he isn't playing for the money title but for history. Repeating his Masters mastery is a daunting challenge, but it is the only one that interests him right now.

It's no accident that Woods has focused on the Masters, for this is where Nicklaus made his reputation. As a boy Woods kept a chronology of Nicklaus's major championships tacked up next to his bed. Technically, he's ahead of the Golden Bear. At 22 Nicklaus had three majors (two U.S. Amateurs and a U.S. Open), while Woods at 22 has four (three Amateurs and a Masters). But from age 23 to 27, Nicklaus won six more majors -- three Masters, a U.S. Open, a British Open and a PGA Championship. Woods wants to stay ahead of that pace.

He is certainly capable of once again taking Augusta's legendary course by its nape and shaking it like a rag doll. "I wouldn't be one bit surprised to see him do exactly what he did last year," says Nicklaus, who has already predicted that Woods will surpass his record of six green jackets. "If he plays just fair this year, he should probably still win."

If only it were that easy. Woods knows that many people question whether he can perform with the same focus and passion he displayed last year. In the past 12 months he has struggled with two powerful forces pulling him in opposite directions. One is fame, which has done miraculous things for his bank account but nothing for his game. The constant crush of fans, reporters and promoters has cut into his practice time and his downtime, and death threats have made him wary outside the gallery ropes. He has sought counsel from experienced advisers like Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Ken Griffey Jr. "He puts way too much pressure on himself," says Jordan. "I tell him to make himself happy. I think he understands that."

He may understand it, but he hasn't yet found a way to do it, and the mental strain has taken a physical toll. "I am so tired," said a bleary-eyed Woods in his darkened hotel room after he struggled to make the cut at the Players Championship two weeks ago. "And I'm especially tired of talking about the Masters."

The other force pulling at him is his talent, which is still being burnished by his unrelenting desire to be the most dominant golfer ever. Despite what you might have heard or read recently, Woods is a more complete player than he was going into last year's Masters. Without sacrificing any of his prodigious length, he has made himself a far more accurate driver. The wild child who regularly flew iron shots over greens is now consistently pin high with the lower-trajectory approaches that have been the reward of a more refined swing. His decision making is more mature. His bad shots are not nearly as bad and his putting remains streaky, but even his wedge play, still the weakest part of his game, is more reliable.

The most obvious change is in his physique. The 6'2", 170-pound Woods has added 20 pounds since a year ago and has built himself up into a muscular athlete with a broad back and rippling arms. As part of his training regimen, he bench-presses 225 pounds and squats more than 300. "Tiger has gotten incredibly strong for a golfer," says his teacher, Butch Harmon. "It has given him a very stable base, which makes it easier for him to repeat his swing."

Still, the record suggests that in the tug-of-war between fame and talent, fame is at least one up. The most obvious indication of this: Woods has stopped winning (chart, above). His performance in last year's other three majors was disappointing. He was only 1-3-1 in the Ryder Cup. And after piling up six victories on the PGA Tour in his first 10 months as a professional, Woods hasn't won in the U.S. since last July. He's played well on several occasions, but he has also shown a vulnerability that doesn't square with his reputation as golf's ultimate closer. He had a dramatic final-round 65 that led to a comeback victory in Thailand in January, but his Sunday charges this season at La Costa, San Diego and L.A. all fell short, and he isn't coming into Augusta with much momentum. At Bay Hill last month he opened with a 64 that gave him an uncharacteristic early lead, then went into a slow fade that left him tied for 13th. At the Players Championship he finished in a tie for 35th.

Even so, it would be foolhardy to declare that Woods has lost his winning edge. Golf often doles out victories to its best players in bunches, and Woods remains outwardly patient, evincing no self-doubt or panic. "Golf humbles you every day, every shot, really," he says. "I know how hard the game is." Despite the lessons in humility he has absorbed in the past nine months, Woods still believes he will be able to unleash his A game when he needs it most. Again and again this year, when asked about his drought, he would say, "As long as I'm ready by the second week of April."

Woods has been peaking for big tournaments since he was eight, when he won the first of his six age-group titles at the Optimist International Junior tournament. "Tiger's favorite thing has always been getting ready, preparing for a major," says his father, Earl. "He is an analytical, systems-oriented person, and that's how he likes to manage his golf."

Beginning in 1991, when he won his first U.S. Junior Amateur at age 15, Woods has won the most important major of his season seven years a row. In 1992 he became the first boy to win the junior twice, and he made it three straight the following year. From '94 to '96 he reeled off his record streak of three consecutive U.S. Amateurs, and in '97, of course, he won the Masters.

"Every year he would take the week before his major to mentally and physically fine-tune," says his father. "We'd drive to the site and play practice rounds, and after we got home, I'd find him lying on his bed with his eyes closed. He told me he was playing the shots he was going to need in his head."

"Even as a little boy, Tiger was very organized about his preparation," says Rudy Duran, who became Woods's first teacher when he was four. "He didn't want to rush into an event, he wanted to ease into it calmly. When it was really time to do it, he was confident and patient because he knew he was the most prepared. For the tournaments that he really wanted to win, he always had this little timer in his head."

For most golfers, to even speak of peaking is heretical, a sign of either arrogance or indolence. "When you do something extra for a major," says Tom Kite, "you're admitting that you aren't doing your best the rest of the time." Perhaps, but when Ben Hogan used to prepare for the Masters by isolating himself at Seminole, or Nicklaus would play his own version of a 72-hole tournament at Augusta the week before a Masters, they were acting on their fundamental belief that they were special players capable of a special effort in a special event.

"I liked to get to Augusta early to clean out my mind, get away from nine million questions and just play golf and really get ready," says Nicklaus. "I was very motivated, and my love for the game just drove me morning, noon and night."

Former Tour commissioner Deane Beman, then a top amateur, was Nicklaus's partner during some of those pre-Masters excursions. "I don't think Jack learned all that much about the course during those practice rounds," says Beman. "But what he did do was convince himself that he was gaining an advantage on the field. In golf, if you believe you have an edge, even if it's razor-thin, that's a very powerful force."

Woods believes he has that edge. He is confident that the game he used to overwhelm Augusta National last year -- his 323-yard driving average; his well-conceived, controlled approaches; and his unerring touch on the greens -- was the direct result of the seven-day, dawn-to-dusk golf immersion he went through at Isleworth last April. It began with three long days on the practice tee spent fine-tuning his swing with Harmon. That was followed by four days of Woods working alone. It was toward the end of the week that he played a round with his best friend on the Tour, Mark O'Meara, and shot a 59. "And it was an easy 59 -- if there is such a thing," marveled O'Meara. The following afternoon Woods scored a hole in one. It's not surprising that he flew into Augusta the next day expecting to win.

Last week Woods replicated his pre-Masters regimen. On Monday he and Harmon worked on shortening his backswing without shortening the width of his arc. They had made the same adjustment before last year's Masters, but Woods had regressed into a longer backswing over the course of the season. Harmon decided it was time for a refresher course in March after the Nissan Open in Los Angeles, where Woods badly pushed his tee shots to the right on both the 72nd hole and in his sudden-death loss to Billy Mayfair. Harmon says that this recurring problem is a by-product of Woods's extraordinary flexibility, which allows him to over-turn on his backswing. From that position he has a tendency to let his hips get ahead of his shoulders. When that happens, his club drops too far inside the target line, and Woods reflexively uses his wrists and hands in a split-second attempt to square the club face. Sometimes he succeeds and hits the ball straight, but the more common result is either a push or a hook. Woods calls this flaw "getting stuck" and says it's the reason he sometimes finishes with just his left hand holding the club. A shorter backswing makes it easier for him to keep his upper and lower halves in sync. Harmon says that in his Monday-morning session last week, Woods hit about 700 balls -- almost all with an eight-iron -- working on this one facet of his swing.

After lunch, Woods worked on his putting. Although there are no statistics to support such a claim, Tiger watchers say that the six- to 10-footers he was making with regularity when he first turned pro have been dropping less frequently. Both Harmon and Earl Woods apparently agree, and both weighed in with suggestions. Harmon, who monitors Tiger's alignment, hand position and technique, recently had him change from having his hands slightly ahead of the ball at address to directly over the ball, because Woods had a tendency to close the club face going back and pull a lot of putts to the left. "Getting his hands even gives him a nice free release into the ball," says Harmon.

Earl doesn't deal with terms like "free release" or "close the club face." He believes Tiger has a gift for hitting the ball to the target, and he encourages him to trust that gift. One of Earl's favorite stories goes back to when Tiger was first learning to play. Earl asked his son what he was thinking about during his swing, and Tiger said, "Where I want the ball to go." Earl believes that Zen-like clarity is the key to Tiger's game.

"He's listening to too many people who don't really know his style, and he's gotten too worried about mechanics," says Earl. "I want him to get back to visualizing the putt and letting it go. When he trusts his instincts, Tiger is a great putter."

His son agrees. "After Augusta, I got really streaky with the putter, mainly because I didn't have as much time to practice," says Tiger. "I fell into a quick-fix syndrome instead of going back and working on the simple fundamentals I had always worked on. I stopped trusting myself, and I have to go back to that."

Both Earl and Harmon believe Tiger is at his best on courses with fast, sloping greens, of which Augusta is the epitome. "Augusta makes you use your imagination and creativity on the greens," says Harmon. "That's where Tiger excels."

Woods and his fans can also take encouragement from the fact that when he is under the most pressure, he goes back to the tried and true. He made a 15-footer in Thailand to beat Ernie Els in sudden death, and at Los Angeles, he willed in a curling left-to-right 18-footer for a birdie on the 72nd hole that would have brought him victory had Mayfair not matched it.

Here's another reason to discount his recent putting woes: He was coming off two tournaments in which his putting was mediocre last year before Augusta, and he went on to have one of the best putting weeks of his life.

On Tuesday of last week, Woods started the morning on the driving range, working through his bag, beginning with his wedge and progressing through his eight-iron, six-iron, four-iron, three-wood and driver. By the time he was finished, he had again hit more than 700 balls. After lunch, he played six holes with Harmon, O'Meara and Australian pro Stuart Appleby. He ended the day at Isleworth's short-game area, where he worked on his pitches and bunker shots.

Woods did stray from Isleworth for business on Tuesday night, attending the grand opening of the All-Star Cafe in Tampa. After schmoozing with Andre Agassi and Penny Hardaway, he slipped off to the adjacent Atlanta Braves spring training field, where he caught passes thrown by Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Jeff Blake. The next morning he awoke with a case of laryngitis, all the better to continue his mission with quiet resolve.

On Wednesday morning he again hit his way through his bag -- and about 700 balls -- and then adjourned to the putting green for more practice there. After lunch, Harmon flew back to his home in Las Vegas and Woods went out to play by himself. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were less intense, as Woods practiced and played informal rounds with O'Meara.

All this work left Woods feeling that he's primed for another strong run at the Masters. Even his fabled luck seems to have returned. In the Orlando airport Harmon received a call from Woods, who croaked that he'd just aced the 200-yard 2nd hole with a six-iron. "It's a great omen for Augusta," says Harmon. "When I left him, he was swinging the best he's ever swung. He's ready for Augusta. I think he can score even lower this year."

Woods has not lost the almost palpable confidence he has exuded since joining the Tour. He believes that whatever needs doing, he will get done. This aura was on display during SI's cover shoot when Woods marched into the ballroom of the Isleworth clubhouse, eased past a group of wary technicians and his very nervous agent and calmly cuddled with a somewhat agitated, 650-pound white Bengal tiger named Samson, who stopped growling as soon as he saw Woods.

"That young man projects supreme confidence like no one I've ever seen," said the tiger's handler, David McMillan, who has worked with wild animals for 37 years. "You can't fake that with a big cat. Samson sensed no weakness or fear in Tiger, just power and inner peace."

Those two qualities may be Woods's greatest weapons. They are the traits his mother, Kultida, tries to nurture when she takes him on their annual pilgrimage to a Buddhist temple near Los Angeles. And they are undoubtedly what Woods will be leaning on as he approaches the 1st tee at Augusta on Thursday.

"I think there is actually less pressure this year," says Woods. "There is more external pressure, but internal pressure? I think there will be less. I know what it's going to take. I now know how to win at Augusta."

Issue date: April 13, 1998