Former Tiger Woods coach says his book will not 'take jabs at anyone'
Former swing coach to Tiger Woods Hank Haney is writing a book about his time with the golf legend titled “The Big Miss,” to be released in March.
“I get asked all the time about Tiger, what it was like to work with him,” Haney told the Associated Press about his choice to write a book about his time with Woods. “I felt like I had a front row seat to golf history. It just kind of chronicles a little bit of what I went through, what I dealt with, how I coached and the observations I made.”
Crown Archetype, part of the Random House publishing company, plans to publish the book. Because its official release date is March 27, it will come out a week before this year’s Masters Golf Tournament. The book is co-written with Jaime Diaz, a writer for Golf Digest who first covered Woods when the champion was in his teen years.
Haney worked for six years as Woods’ swing coach, from 2004 to 2010. It was during Haney’s tenure that Woods played despite his leg injury at the US Open in 2008. The infamous scandal over Woods’ affairs also broke during Haney’s time with the golfer.
Haney told the Associated Press he didn’t know about Woods’ adultery and will not discuss it in the book except to write about Woods's return to golf after it happened.
“It's something you can't not talk about it,” said the coach. “My last tournament was the Masters, and that was his first tournament back from the scandal. I didn't know anything about the girls. That's not something I could specifically comment on. Everything I comment on is what I observed and the facts I knew. I didn't know anything about that. But I did know about how he interacted with me about that, what my observations were and other areas in terms of how I dealt with and the aftermath.”
The golfer will not be commenting on the book, Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg, said in a statement to the Associated Press. Steinberg said Woods has not seen any part of the book.
Woods’s most well-known victory while working with Haney came when he was victorious at the US Open in 2008, an even which Woods’s doctors had recommended he skip. The doctors told Woods to walk on crutches for three weeks, then take three weeks off.
“I'm playing the US Open, and I'm going to win,” Haney says Woods told them.
Haney said he did not sign a non-disclosure agreement for his time with Woods and that he didn’t have an official contract with the golf star.
The former coach said he doesn’t believe Woods will dislike the book.
“Anybody who reads it will think it's interesting, very fair and honest,” Haney said. “And that's what I wanted to do. I was on that job for six years. There were 110 days a year I was with him. I stayed at his house for close to 30 days a year. You make a lot of observations.”
Molly Driscoll is a Monitor contributor.
