Susie Meyers, the golf coach of Honda Open winner Michael Thompson, said Tiger Woods “lost his soul” to be the game’s most dominant golfer by focusing obsessively on consistency in his swing. Woods has dramatically altered his swing at least three times throughout his career, and then stuck with the new swing to win majors.
Meyers was discussing how Thompson adjusts his swing patterns to fit each particular tournament while Woods aims for absolute consistency.
“Our goal is to have a new fresh beginning every shot, every tournament and see what we can do with it. We got sucked into that consistent thing when Tiger was having his long run of great golf and we thought that it was possible to do that,” Meyers said. “But what we found out was that Tiger lost his soul to do that and it’s just not worth it.”
Meyers said golf courses, like life, are frustrating, and seeking to achieve a sense of consistency may not be the best approach.
“Trying to get consistency is like going after a fool’s errand,” Meyers told to ESPN. “It doesn’t happen in life. If you try to be consistent you live in a frustrating world. Take everything for what it is and let it be, and at the end of the day, hopefully you can say you did the best you could. We don’t try to be consistent at all.”
To be fair, though, as Yahoo Sports noted, superstars like Woods and Kobe Bryant may have lost a little bit of their character in relentlessly trying to be the best players of their generation in their respective sports, but their results have shown their methods have worked for them. Woods has 14 majors while Thompson won his first tournament last Sunday.