Johnny Miller: Tiger Woods should stop trying to keep up with explosive young stars

Tiger Woods, either with a new coach behind the video cam or calling the shots himself, is about to overhaul his golf swing for the fourth time in his professional career. Johnny Miller, for one, believes it’s time for the injury-plagued 38-year-old to act his age.

Miller believes that the newly coach-less, 14-time major champion ought to stop trying to keep up with young guns like world No. 1 Rory McIlroy and act the age of the sixth-ranked golfer in the world.

“[Woods] needs to quit being Ponce de Leon looking for that fountain of youth. He’s looking for explosive power. What he really needs to do,” NBC’s lead analyst Miller said during a Tuesday teleconference ahead of this week’s Deutsche Bank Championship, “is swing a little smoother instead of exploding into it.”

Perhaps Woods should model his swing to something similar to world No. 6 Jim Furyk, who is six years Woods’ senior but also sixth in the playoff standings. Furyk is in contention for his second FedEx Cup trophy while the two-time FEC champion -- who on Monday fired swing coach Sean Foley -- is home nursing a bad back and a broken golf game.

“He needs to say, ‘okay, I’m not going to hit it as far as these young guys now.’ Not that he’s going to play golf like Furyk, but Furyk is kicking butt right now and he can barely hit it where Tiger hits a 4-wood,” said Miller. “Forget about that explosive — he keeps saying, ‘as soon as I get my explosive power back.’ He’s about 15 years late on that.”

Keeping up with the big boys has consumed Woods since he returned, albeit briefly and with woeful results, to competitive golf after back surgery in March. In just seven PGA Tour events this year — three before surgery and four afterward — Woods carded three missed cuts (including, at Torrey Pines, his first-ever 54-hole MC), two withdrawals, and a season-high T25 finish at Doral. This was all under the watchful eye of Foley, who was by Tiger’s side for four years.

Woods enlisted Foley’s services in August 2010 and won eight regular tour events in the 2012-2013 time period, but no majors. Before Foley, there was Butch Harmon (from 1993-2003) and Hank Haney (2004-2010).

A bad back forced Woods to miss the Masters and U.S. Open this year and he did not qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs. After missing the cut at Valhalla earlier this month, Tiger called it quits until December, when he hoped to be ready to compete in his World Challenge.

With all that going on, Woods seemed, prior to his first post-microdiscectomy event in June at Congressional, to resign himself to his new station in the game.

“You look at these kids in college, all the long hitters are 6’2 to 6’4. They are just big guys and they can move it out there,” said Woods, who played just two rounds before missing the Quicken Loans National cut. “As I’ve aged, I can’t play the way I used to. I was No. 2 in driving distance for a number of years [1997, 1998, 2000, 2005], only behind John Daly. Now if you average over 300 yards, I don’t think you’re in the top 10.”

Woods noted at the time that his “explosiveness” was gone and he could no longer overpower tracks that in the past required “Tiger-proofing” to nullify his length off the tee. Now, Woods said, he had to rely more on strategy and course-management.

Since then, however, “explosive” has become Tiger’s mantra, even using his new buzzword though he stood by lamely on the “Tonight Show” as Jimmy Fallon and McIlroy took turns chipping balls.

“He keeps referring to getting stronger and stronger and stronger, which is bizarre to me because he just needs to be faster and he traded speed for strength,” Miller’s Golf Channel colleague Brandel Chamblee said during Tuesday’s conference call. “Great players with longevity swung the club head; it’s less stressful on the body. What he’s doing right now is he’s making this lurching motion with his body to get the speed.”

Miller took issue with Chamblee’s description of a swing that, in its heyday, launched countless golf careers but that, after three reconstructions under Butch Harmon, Hank Haney, and Foley, has become barely recognizable.

“He’s not swinging. He’s trying to manhandle it,” said Miller, who back in 2012 offered to replace Foley to help Woods get back his natural swing, and who on Tuesday supplied some tips for free. “That’s what I’d have him work on, anyway. Just make it very basic … He should just go back to playing golf and playing at the target.”

Miller’s advice delighted Chamblee, who conceded it would take time for the aging Woods to undergo yet another swing remake but looked forward to the finished product if Woods found a coach, or were able on his own, to overcome the “over-technical tendencies” Foley instilled in him.

And, oh yeah, lose the gym membership, Chamblee said, reiterating his criticism that Woods was too bulky.

“If indeed he hires another instructor, it’s going to have to be somebody [who can] convince Tiger that all of this work he’s doing in the gym has made him so big and thick at the top that there’s no way that he could ever go back to swinging anywhere near the way he used to,” said Chamblee.

Chamblee made a point of saying that Foley was a fine instructor, but that the Woods/Foley relationship “wasn’t a good fit.”

“He’s four years into the swing change” that has not won any major titles for Woods, who last lifted one of the elite trophies at the 2008 U.S. Open, under Haney’s tutelage.

“Watching Tiger play golf now,” Chamblee, coming to the same conclusion as many other Woods watchers, summed up, “doesn’t look anything like Tiger Woods under Haney or under Butch.”