Learning from Tiger Woods

The August 14, 2000 issue of Time Magazine features an article about Tiger Woods titled "The Game of Risk - How the Best Golfer in the World Got Even Better". Although I have no specific interest in the sport of golf, I do have a long-standing fascination with the general theme of the article: how can someone learn to do something better?

That's precisely what the Alexander Technique is all about. And while Tiger Woods has probably never heard of it, it's interesting that his quest for a better golf swing parallels in many ways the process F. Matthias Alexander - the developer of the Alexander Technique - went through a century ago.

Alexander was a Shakespearean reciter who ran up against limitations in his ability to perform well on stage. At that time there were no microphones and speakers and so he had to fill an entire auditorium with just the power of his own voice. Like Woods he was very talented at his profession but he also knew that there was room for improvement. In particular, he found that his voice gave out during a longer performance and that he had a tendency to gasp for breath on occasion.

Neither his doctors nor his vocal coaches were able to help and so he set off on his own, using a system of mirrors to monitor his performance in order to see precisely what was causing his difficulties. If he were living today, he would probably use videotapes of himself to see what was going on.

That's what Tiger Woods did in order to improve his swing. "I knew I wasn't in the greatest positions in my swing at the Masters," Woods said. "But my timing was great, so I got away with it. And I made almost every putt. You can have a wonderful week like that even when your swing isn't sound. But can you still contend in tournaments with that swing when your timing isn't good? Will it hold up over a long period of time? The answer to those questions, with the swing I had, was no. And I wanted to change that."

The article notes that Woods has become "...an obsessive student of the game who reviews videotapes of old tournaments for clues about how to play each hole." Alexander too was an obsessive student of his performance and in the end his obsession paid off not only in providing a solution to his voice problem, but later in the discovery of a process that could be taught to others who wanted to improve the quality of their physical functioning.

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