In a move surprising to many in the golf industry, Golf Digest will run an interview with Hank Haney in its August issue where the former swing coach for Tiger Woods opens up about his “dysfunctional” relationship with scandal-scarred fallen icon Tiger Woods. G.D. has been quiet about Woods’s troubles during the scandal, probably because Woods writes a series of instructional articles for the magazine. Other magazines, such as Golf Magazine, have been openly and sharply critical of both Woods’s conduct and Team Tiger’s handling of the public revelations of affairs, prostitutes, and multiple links to steroids/PEDs, including BALCO and controversial HGH user and proponent Dr. Anthony Galea.
Haney told Digest in an interview that his relationship with Woods “didn’t get dysfunctional; it always was dysfunctional.” Haney mentioned that communication with Woods regarding scheduling was intermittent and disorganized.
Although the two teamed up for six of Woods’s fourteen majors, things devolved out of control at Augusta National this year. According to Haney, after Saturday’s round at this year’s Masters, Woods told Haney he was unhappy with how he’d played despite being in contention. “Then on Sunday when he warmed up, he wasn’t open to suggestions. He wasn’t asking what he should do….That was his way of blaming me,” Haney said. “Maybe I’m reading too much into it; maybe I’m being too sensitive. But when someone doesn’t talk to you … .” According to Haney, they only spoke to each other twice afterwards.
After the Masters ended, Haney sent Woods an e-mail with suggestions on what aspects of Woods’s game he needed to work on. “I got no acknowledgement at all, but that wasn’t unusual,” Haney said. “Then it got to the point where I didn’t know what he was doing or thinking. Yet the whole time he was telling the media I was still his teacher and that I was going to continue to be his teacher and I was talking to him every night.”
Haney told Golf Digest he thought Woods was surprised when he decided to part ways on the day after The Players, where Woods withdrew with a neck injury during the final round. “I think he was quite surprised, but that really would be a question for him,” Haney said.
Haney’s most important revelation – and one critically important to Woods’s rehabilitation of his image and legacy – is that Haney was present at four of the five sessions where Dr. Galea treated Woods’s knee, and that he didn’t see any indicia of steroid or PED use.
“There was never anything that went into Tiger Woods’ body that didn’t come out of his body,” Haney said.
In other news beneficial to Woods, a Florida family court has ruled that he is NOT the father of porn star Devon James’s baby. A court ruled in 2002 that Peter Watkins was thew father. That goes a long way to backing up James’s mother’s claim that her daughter is a pathological liar.
