Perhaps you were just as confused as Scottie Scheffler was about two years ago, when TaylorMade cameras caught him in conversation with Tiger Woods, and the 15-time major winner confessed to a puzzling fact.
“When I’m flushing it, I don’t take divots,” Woods told Scheffler while on a driving range during a TaylorMade commercial shoot day. Scheffler had seen that Woods’s hitting station appeared to have barely any turf moved, even after Woods had taken a number of iron shots off the ground.
“What’s up with the no divots?” Scheffler asked.
“Why do you need to take a divot,” Woods replied.
“I don’t know, I’m asking you,” Scheffler said, desperate for a legitimate explanation.
Woods was “pickin’ it,” he said that day, ultimately landing on the above quote. When he’s flushing it, he doesn’t take divots. Scheffler was puzzled. We all were puzzled. And because Woods doesn’t make many public appearances these days, it was hard for us to really know what he meant. Early in his career, Woods says he was more “zeroed” which meant he wasn’t cutting across the ball much, and wasn’t very steep with his attack. He was “wide and wide,” he said, meaning he had a wide backswing and finished wide through contact.
But even given all that, is it really possible the best irons player who ever lived barely interacted with the turf, even in these later years when he was flushing it on the driving range? Enter YouTube golfer Grant Horvat and a recent video he made with Woods. Finally, the follow-up we’ve been waiting for.
Horvat is a TaylorMade golfer and was enjoying one of the perks that comes with his equipment deal: getting some one on one time with Woods, a TaylorMade staffer himself. In the middle of a little tee box lesson — where Horvat was working to develop some height with his woods and consistency with his driver — the two got on the topic of turf interaction.
“I think you threw everybody for a little spin when you said you didn’t take divots,” Horvat said in the video below.
“Well it depends on what shot I’m playing,” Woods interjected.
“Well you said when you hit it best you don’t take any divots.”
“Well, it’s true,” Woods said. “It is true. When I’m hitting my best. But if I have to hit a shot, I’m going to hit turf. I’m going to lean the shaft. I’m going to take turf. Now, if I’m just here flushing it, with no wind, no I don’t take divots … it depends on how the wind is.
“Now, if I’m on that range, I would feel that wind slightly into me, I’m going to start leaning on it. Now, if we had no wind, and I’m just hitting shots with no consequence or distance — I’m just sending it — yeah, I don’t take a lot of turf. I sweep it.”
Finally, some context we’ve all be waiting for. (Okay, maybe everyone else had moved on.) When Woods is warming up and making swings without any true purpose other than solid contact, he’s not going to be taking much of a divot. It may serve as good advice for amateurs out there who are endlessly focused on forward shaft lean and pinching the ball into the grass. There is a time and a place for that, and it may not be as frequent as you think.
Woods continued to say that his moments of turf interaction are mostly with cut shots, not draws, which also makes sense. The two should be different, as a cut incorporates an out-to-in swing path, and the further “in” that swing path moves, the steeper the attack will likely be, the more turf the club is bound to intersect with. Likewise, the draw swing path — in-to-out — has all kinds of space for the club to move, allowing the angle of attack to be more shallow and not automatically grab the turf.
One thing is clear when you listen to Woods: every single swing presents a unique opportunity, and each of those opportunities is riddled with context that determines the impact he tries to create. Even a slight breeze into his face on the driving range turns Woods’ brain into shot-making mode. But if there isn’t much wind at all, you may never even know he was there … flushing it.
