The following short story summarizes my view on olympic lifts and golf:

I'm also very good friends with Charles Howell and his family (I live down the street from them). Charles shows me the workouts his trainer gives him from time to time to ask for my opinion. Last year he showed me a workout that involved a set of clean and jerks. I said to him "Let's think about the risk/reward here. If you do this workout for the rest of the year you'll probably gain... zero yards off the tee. Maybe two yards. You already bomb the ball. You've never played a tournament where you walked off the 72nd hold thinking 'if I just hit the ball ten yards farther I would have won' and you probably never will. The flip side is that if you mess up that lift just one time you could screw up your back and tank your career. To me, the risk reward just isn't there."

Charles agreed and nixed the clean and jerks from his workouts and didn't give it a second thought.

When Tiger first got on tour he was stick thin and he bombed the ball. Then he put on a ton of mass and still bombed the ball. Did he hit it farther? Did he hit is farther relative to his peers (so after adjusting for equipment and fairway speed)? If he did, it wasn't in any material way. At no point in his career was distance a factor that limited his potential. When TW worked with Keith Kleven he did a lot of stuff to work on joint strength, stability, and mobility (that was the header of the workout sheets, I still have it emblazoned in my mind and I probably still have them laying around in a folder somewhere).

He started doing olympic lifts when he stopped working with Keith and started working with... gosh I can't remember the woman's name... but anyways she somehow sold him on Olympic lifts and he suddenly had this image in his mind that he would be physically bigger and that he would hit the ball farther. It wasn't enough for him to just win. He wanted to win by dominating every part of the game.

I spent a ton of time with TW and, until we parted ways, I knew him very well. If asked, I would say his ego killed his game. His ego led to olympic lifting which trashed him physically. His ego also led to him working with Sean Foley which trashed him mechanically. Nothing against Sean but the entire swing philosophy Sean teaches is antithetical to how Tiger learned to play. Going from Butch to Hank was like going from the North Pole to Greenland. Going from Hank to Sean was like going from Greenland to the South Pole.

That's him losing confidence and patience. That doesn't change the fact that the guy is a killer and willing to do whatever it takes to win.

I suppose. However, confidence and patience are aspects of mental toughness.

This would explain why he completely changed his swing at the height of his career. I never understood that.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

It's always tough to hear these guys being influenced by people who simply are actually quite terrible at their jobs. Trainers and doctors who don't understand high level sport/performance and the unique demands of the specific sport and appeal to ego and current fads are extremely common.

Training of elites should ALWAYS be about durability first, rather than performance.

At Dr. Andrews clinic in Birmingham, I spoke at length with Greg Rose from Titleist Performance Institute, really brilliant guy, and even these uber elite athletes tend to make bad decisions, influenced by emotion and ego, when it comes to their training. Unfortunately, the expertise of the trainer/doctor is often of secondary or tertiary importance where "who you know" is often what gets them into the unfortunate position of influence with these guys.

The flip side is the ego is so very critical to their performance on the court/course/field that without it, they'd never get to that level in the first place. I'm sure the whole thing is a rather delicate balance.

I, personally, cannot imagine using full O lifts (at high load) for a tour player. Maybe for some at very low loads, and certainly some of the components/accessory lifts. Too much risk especially in bodies that tend towards mobility/instability in the first place. Nobody on the PGA tour has the spine of an elite lifter. They are mutually exclusive. Ballistic lifting at a high load in flexible spines is quite a recipe for trouble if technique isn't perfect.

You're 100% right: ego is a double-edged sword. Yup, olympic lifts for golfers has to be one of the worst risk/reward training decisions in sport.

So how in the world do these guys end up with trainers who have such poor understanding of the needs of their clients? Do they just google "personal trainer" and go with what comes up... I'm sure it's a matter of personal relationships mostly but there seems to be a lot of bad doctor/trainers involved with these guys. It's funny/sad/depressing depending on perspective.

I doubt that the average small town mechanic gets to work on many Formula 1 race cars but some of these athletes seem to fall into that exact trap.

I'm trying to remember a quote from True Detective Season 2 where Vince Vaughn basically says that drugs, gambling, and prostitution exist contingent on human desire.

Keith was an excellent trainer. Supposedly world class (look at the diversity of top level athletes he successfully worked with). That lady whose name I can't remember, not so much but TW sought her out. Then after one of his surgeries (there were so many) he worked with Bill Knowles, who I think had previously been a doctor at the USOC in Colorado Springs. Things were good with Bill. He was healthy under Bill. However once he was healthy for long enough it was right back to what's her name and clean and jerks.

I think we have a tendency to rationalize people's success after the fact. We like to attribute things to planning, preparation, and hard work because that explains things. That allows us to have the illusion of control.