リードベター対ウィー：誰もが間違っている

37 comments

1. What coach, player duo should I break down next?

2. all of these kids with overbearing parents tend to become head cases. And it's not just asians but they are predominantly put in this category. The other extreme is where your mother is an irish widow and she put's no disciplne on you whatsoever. There's got be a "happy medium".

3. Her parents burned her out early.

4. You should cover the Leadbetter/Lydia Ko A frame swing…😂

5. It's such a tragic story. The nail in the coffin for me wasn't even her swing. It was that 90-degree bent over posture when she would putt. That's when you knew all confidence was completely gone.

6. She didn't have the killer instinct that virtually all champions have.

7. Leadbetter is or was a disaster

8. I honestly blame her Parents — People that blame LB are just haters of LB and have a bias against him.

9. Just realized golf instruction is about as useful as any pollitian

10. Your golf swing isn't going to save you from yourself or life! Thanks Tony another thought provoking piece!

11. Well, can we say we do not know the reason she has the record she has, but there was a day we thought she would win a lot more than she did — both in majors and regular tour events? Can we say that we do not know why but maybe she did not like all the structure and extremely early exposure? What if she does not look at her career as something bad, but she is happy and satisfied with it? What if she was an elite talent but she did not want to win as much as we think she should have won? Not everyone with elite talent ends up in the hall of fame. Why do we think that our opinion of her career has any relevance? I was never a big fan of her game. She was early on more or less labelled the female Tiger. I recall thinking that her parents were not quite doing things the way Earl did. Earl made sure Tiger was the toughest golfer ever, and it showed. I do not think Michelle received the same level of mental game training. All in all, I am a relative hack, and anyone could tear my swing and mental game apart, but I would not care. I play for me and my satisfaction is personal and I don't care what anyone says about me and my game — other than my buddies in the bar after when they hesitantly tell me where my game sucks….. I hope Michelle feels the same.

12. If LA had lost the world series, Leadbetter was the first person I was gonna blame 😂😂 Imo, he hurt Michele Wie more than helped her. Same as Lydia Ko

13. I think Led gets an unfair amount of hate and he produced some amazing players. Even Foley acknowledged Led as the father of modern “Tour” coaching and I think people tend to overlook him now.

14. Remember when Julie Inkstersaid Michelle needed to learn how to win instead of being a sideshow? Her parents chased the money

15. After her parents, I always thought she might just be asking herself "Do I really want to do this?" A lot of pressure and a lot of expectations on a kid. Her parents made Earl Woods look like a saint (to me) sometimes.

16. Michelle =Burnout ! And She was Very Rich because of Nike!!

17. Sorry. Go back to her swing when she was young and then Leadbetters natural "swing de jour" tinkering.

    Its easy to analyse after the fact. Watch the analysis of her over the years through many articles and videos of Kelvin Miyahira.

    He saw her decline way before anyone else. Leadbetter took away that natural swing early on.

    He saw the same with Jordan Spieth and also said Lydia Ko would decline heavily before the decline started.

    Leadbetter took the strong clubface and rotation away. In favour of a weaker face and then wanting the hands to flip to square the face which apparently leads to more distance.

    Leadbetter didnt ruin spieths swing that was Camerom Mccormick who did the same with Spieth.

    Crazy to change the actual engine of 3 great golf swings.

18. Another great video…really appreciate the insight. I think I understand what you're getting at here. Just can't make a blanket statement that DL "ruined" her career…there's way more to it than that. She did stuff as a 15 yo that no other woman before or since could ever do. Like her play in the US Men's Public Links back around 20 years ago. Imagine being a 15 yo girl with a goal of trying to qualify for the Masters and coming pretty close to doing it! She was the first (and still only) woman to qualify for match play in a major USGA Men's event…she won her first 2 matches easily against guys that eventually played the Tour and lost to the eventual champion in the quarter finals.

19. I don’t know if it was Ledbetter’s fault or not, but when she was working with him & the K-vest, she was so out of synch that she couldn’t time up the squaring of the face and developed a massive 2-way miss while losing some distance. It was painful to watch what had once been one of the greatest swings in golf turn into such a disaster. I’m not sure which came first though.

20. IMO she never learned to win and dominate. She was shoved into the pros way too young. She should have been crushing jr and college tournaments for years. Not proving a teenage "can play" at the PGA and LPGA level.

21. If anything, I think she was more mis-managed by her father than anyone else. She never really learned how to dominate like Tiger did. Tiger didn't move up to the next level until he was thoroughly dominating the level he was playing against (the occasional tour event notwithstanding). BJ Wie never let Michelle do that. She was trying to play against men as a teenager. And of course, life got in the way as it often does.

22. She had one of the best golf swings in history. So much power and grace. The wrist injury was truly tragic.

23. Tony, I’m not a Ledbetter nor Pete Cowan fan, but you make a very good argument; and this is coming from a lawyer. 🙂 Cheers.

24. DL and her parents ruined her. Her parents lived through her (and the $$$???) and DL’s methods were too mechanical for such a natural talent. It makes me wonder what her career would have been like had she sought out Butch Harmon when her swing got out of sorts. It’s worth noting you never hear about DL working with any players, male or female, on any of the tours anymore. Just sayin…

25. The wrist injury was the main issue ! She found a way to get it done but the pain made her make changes that hurt her swing – especially her wedge game. Her desire to compete also waned after her US open win !

26. Let's agree to disagree

27. Michelle Wie's problem was going to college. She was making 20 million a year. She had no business in school. What's Tiger Woods going to do with a college degree?

28. Forgive my nuanced answer, but it takes two to tango.

    Michelle was a phenom, but also a youngster – and had to grow up way too fast. My experience with coaching/teaching young amateurs and aspiring professionals, is that they seem to think that every shot is a matter of a physical swing, and not aware that as you climb the ladder of skill, it is more and more mental. And they are stubborn.

    So, the time spent in a lesson is to work on a "perfect" swing, when it may less matter; and is only 50% of the number of strokes in a round. The score matters – that's it. But this is the mindset in the golf industry.

    The students think that "if I only can be become more mechanical, and hit it perfect every time, I will be great".

    Problem is, every day is different, your body feels different, the course, the grass height, the lie, the grain, the wind, the humidity, the temperature, the bounces, etc. etc.

    And for any golfer – at any level – the time it takes to lose confidence, can just occur from one swing. And that can be a challenge for a teacher/coach to get that confidence back, sometimes a band aid, sometimes a talk, etc, or even something you think works against your shared swing plan.

    When I see the various swing changes, putter stances, etc. etc. for MW, that falls into the coach's lap. The coach is the mentor, and the adult in the room, and controls the landscape. But MW controls what she wants to hear and what she wants to focus on,

    So probably some ill-advised micromanagement of the swing comes into play, and some desire to be impossibly perfect come into play.

    From both sides.

    Very few of us have been in her shoes, where there is a daily barrage of comments, attacks, "yes maams" – all while trying to live a normal life. Trying to live up to your own expectations – and not everybody else's – is difficult at best.

    And sometimes it is just ok to walk away and say "I gave it my best". Before you go to your grave, you only answer to the person in the mirror.

    And it takes decades to understand that, IMHO

    "Accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"

29. It was a grind for her. Wrist injury made it even harder mentally. Parents were a major issue.

30. Golf is one of the few sports where the smallest of injuries to Pros get magnified by a million. Yet 50 yr old Bob w a bad back is still trying to nail down his 'Butch Harman' swing. Like the fancy clubs…there is a delusional + addictive vanity in golf…

31. Structure that fits the body type / swing is helpful. The results say that particular structure was not a good fit. The grind of golf at the elite level leads to repetitive stress injuries. A bad fitting structure / swing style heightens the stress. Whether she got hurt jogging or practicing golf, she got hurt…a lot. And, the elephant in the room: PUTTING. What has saved Lydia Ko's career through some (but by no means all) of the same issues with parents / coaches, injury is her putting and better than elite short game. Wie was a marvelous talent, but history will call her brittle. Size, build, muscle / ligament type all played a role. Still, she must be remembered for being an amazingly talented and gracious lady.

32. Julian Mellor from "Proper Golfing / Timeless Swing".

33. Lydia Ko.

34. all hype, no sauce

35. You're the best Tony. I don't buy that it was Leadbetter and I don't buy that it was something else either. I subscribe to the idea that her body, specifically her back, broke down from all the reps. I'm fairly certain she got to a place where she didn't want to do a surgery or some other less invasive procedure to keep going. I think she just had enough and wanted to start a family and that is all it was. I think she spent an enormous amount of time trying to qualify for the Masters as an Amateur and that included rep counts that may have rivaled peak Tiger, because she was at a significant disadvantage with distance, so she tried to make up for that in other ways. Essentially trying to be perfect when it just isn't possible to be perfect in other areas of the game.

36. Great content,

37. Atop the physical problems, her emotional and mental challenges seemingly were more damaging than her swing

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