Hank Haney: Tiger Woods works out too much, doesn’t practice enough

Hank Haney and Tiger Woods have been trading some subtle jabs over the past few weeks, and things seem to start with Haney sharing his long held view that Tiger is working out too much.

Haney, who is Tiger’s former swing coach, shared his opinion on his SiriusXM radio show two weeks ago.

“My opinion is he did too much of that. He does a lot of the gym stuff. I know you need to do some for golf, no doubt about it. You need to be in shape, you need to avoid injury, but my opinion is he really overdoes that,” Haney said. “He looks like he’s gained more muscle mass. When he was thinner and younger he was actually faster then. The strength maybe helps you get out of the rough but I’d agree that he’s overdone it. But he loves to work out.”

Haney made those comments after Tiger missed the second cut at the Farmers Insurance Open. He later clarified over Twitter that he thinks Tiger’s bigger problem is not practicing enough.

I never said it did, I said lack of practice @ron_E_G1982: Tiger's muscle has nothing to do w/his performance–I used to respect you.

— Hank Haney (@HankDHaney) January 31, 2014

Woods brought up Haney while playing in Dubai last week by making reference to some of his old habits developed under the coach. He’s what he said via ESPN’s Bob Harig.

“It’s my old pattern again. With my last coach, it was a push-block. We tried to get out of that and go to a cut [a ball that curves from left to right]. It’s harder to aim [more to the] right knowing that I’ve got to cut it.

“Last year all my misses were in the left rough. But they were all straight balls. It was dead straight because I aimed it there. Trying to aim down the right side of the fairway is a little harder. When I get it [correct], I hit these bullet cuts that go forever. And I started getting that toward the end [of the round]. At the beginning of the round, I was in that old pattern. Aim left and hit it. None of them overhooked. It just started left and stayed there.”

Then on Friday Tiger also talked about “hot pulls” on the course at Dubai.

One has to ask why Tiger is still bringing this up when he hasn’t worked with Haney for a few years. He has a new coach now and has been working with Sean Foley. Why is he still bringing up these explanations? Whatever the case, Haney is still defensive about it. He tweeted this on Thursday:

Just too review, I said, Tiger looks bigger which everyone else mentioned too and i said he hasn't practiced which he then confirmed

— Hank Haney (@HankDHaney) February 6, 2014

Sounds like they’re both sensitive about the subjects.