David Leadbetter Discusses Tiger, Derek Jeter

This week, famed golf coach David Leadbetter spoke with Ben Lyons on The Players Tribune Sirius show - touching upon a variety of topics ranging from his coaching experience with Derek Jeter to his perspective on why Tiger Woods is struggling.

On Derek Jeter …

David Leadbetter

“He’s going to be fine. He’s very disciplined. He seems to have a real bug for the game. You can see what a determined individual he is … Now he’s putting a lot of his focus on golf. He’s got some issues. It’s interesting, in batting, some of the technical aspects of batting are very much the opposite of what needs to happen in golf. You find pitchers in baseball are normally pretty good golfers because the movement that they make off the mound is somewhat similar to the way they move their lower body. Now a batter who sort of rotates their hips very quickly were trying to sort of get through to Derek, you cannot just spin the hips on it because otherwise you’re going to hit this big slice. He’s getting there. We saw him yesterday and he is making some very good progress. I think we’ll get him there.”

On Tiger and his struggling game …
“He’s getting a little older now, he’s 39, close to 40. I don’t think his eyes are quite as good. Form does deteriorate over a period, otherwise these players would keep going. I think Tiger with all his issues and certainly his injuries, he’s an old 39 too. Whether he’s going to get it back or not, that’s going to be tough to say. He’s a perfectionist. He changes his swing a lot. He’s worked on a lot of different things. I think he’s personally gotten a little too technical, lost a lot of his creativity and his feel. Furthermore there’s some young guns out there, the Rickie Fowlers we saw last week and Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth. These guys are fearless. So the competition is much fiercer now too. I think Tiger, he might have flashes but to get back to old Tiger, I think that’s virtually impossible.”

On the mental aspect of the game …
“One of the things you think with Tiger is that he could get away from the game for a couple of months and go figure it out himself. How much knowledge has this guy gained through the years, through all of his various teachers and all his great success. You’d think he’d be able to go out there and figure it out.”

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