Since winning last week's AT&T National, Tiger Woods has made a couple of oblique references to a mysterious putting tip from his former Stanford teammate Notah Begay III that helped him regain his touch on the greens. Tuesday, Woods offered additional details on the assistance Begay offered.
Begay saw that Woods was "bringing the putter head too far inside on his back stroke," Woods' website editor Mark Soltau wrote on tigerwoods.com Tuesday. The motion, Soltau noted, caused Woods to block putts to the right.
As an antidote, Begay suggested that his old college roommate open the toe of the blade on the back stroke, forcing it outside. That's how Woods used the flat stick in college, Soltau said, backing up comments Woods made earlier in the day during his pre-Greenbrier Classic press conference.
"[Begay] made me think back to some of the things I used to think about in college and how I told him how to putt," Woods told reporters at the press conference. "He said, ‘you might want to go back to that. I did and I putted pretty good."
Indeed he did, as Woods made every putt inside 10 feet that he faced at Congressional Country Club, and he had no three-putts. He also drained one long putt last week, a 48-footer for eagle on the 16th hole on Friday.