Tiger Woods has gone through some pretty incredible swing changes in the 10 years he has been on the PGA Tour. It’s truly been exciting and awe-inspring to watch. When Tiger first came out on Tour, his swing looked very different. Jim Hardy referred to his swing as “One Plane” at that time and you can certainly see some one plane traits in him back then. His swing was much shorter and very aggressive, especially with his upper body rotation. He really hit hard with his body to get distance and he also struggled with control of distance and trajectory because of this extreme body speed.
As he progressed with then instructor Butch Harmon, his swing morphed into the swing that we all came to admire. His very classic, high hands, wide swing exhibited many pure two plane traits and allowed him to develop more ball flight control than anyone before him. However, his swing was still relatively compact at the top, something Tiger felt cost him distance. With the prodigious distances the “youngsters” are hitting the ball these days, Tiger felt he needed to make a change to allow his swing to become longer while maintaining control. Tiger also places a lot of emphasis on swing plane and felt that this aspect of his swing needed to change as well.